Bertram Mitford (continued 3)

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.”

“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 differs in toto from 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 any entente à deux can 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?

Chapter Seventeen.

Check!

“Can I see Mr Dorrien?—Yes, certainly. Show him in here,” and the rector, making a hasty note on the margin of his paper, laid aside his pen as Roland was shown into the study.

A nervous man, full of the errand on which he had come, might have felt his besetting weakness to a painful extent at the prosaic hour of 10 a.m., here, in this judicial-looking apartment, wherein multitudinous papers disposed about seemed to speak of the more serious side of life, while the shelves of heavily-bound volumes lent a somewhat severe air to the room—and that notwithstanding the real cordiality of his reception; for it is one thing to be on sufficiently intimate terms with a man to justify your dropping in upon him informally for a friendly chat, and quite another to offer yourself as his future son-in-law. But Roland was not of the nervous order. Even had he been, it is probable that experiences of tête-à-tête interviews with a far more formidable personage than Dr Ingelow would have eliminated from this one all its imaginary misgivings, if only by contrast. So after a commonplace remark or two he came straight to the point without difficulty.

Quietly, yet attentively, the rector listened to all his visitor had to say, and listening, felt no doubt as to the eligibility of the speaker. Possibly he was not wholly unprepared for the avowal, sooner or later. Anyhow, he showed little or no surprise. It was his wont to receive important matters calmly.

“And so I must give up my little Olive?” he said, with a pleasant smile. “However, I suppose the certainty of having to part with them some day or other is one of the disadvantages a man has to labour under if he owns pretty and attractive daughters. But may I ask, Mr Dorrien, whether you have informed your family—your father—of the step you propose to take?”

Roland stared. He was considerably taken aback by this question, and, in truth, not a little annoyed. And an unwonted formality about the other’s tone tended somewhat to disconcert him.

“Well, no—I can’t say I have. Naturally, I imagined that you yourself were the first person to be spoken to on the subject. To be candid with you, Dr Ingelow, I have knocked about the world long enough to dispense with the paternal sanction to any undertaking of mine. Moreover, you may possibly be aware that my family and myself are never on very good terms—unfortunately, I admit—but still it is so.”

The rector did not at once reply. He was leaning back in his chair, one hand thoughtfully stroking his beard, while the other toyed listlessly with one of the buttons of his cassock, and his brows were slightly contracted.

“It is unfortunate, Dorrien, because the fact of things being so, rather tends to complicate the situation,” he replied at length, as the slightest possible movement of impatience, which Roland could not for the life of him suppress, did not escape his quick perceptions. “For it happens that I have certain old-fashioned ideas of my own on these matters. Wait—just hear what I’ve got to say”—laying his hand on the other’s arm with a kindly, reassuring touch—“and bear with what you think an old man’s unreasonable whims. Now go straight to Cranston and lay the whole matter before your father. Then come back here and tell me the result.”

“Am I to understand, then, Dr Ingelow, that you will only grant your consent subject to the contingency of my father granting his?” said Roland, in a tone whose bitterness it was impossible to conceal.

The rector felt puzzled by the directness of this query, but he did not show it.

“I haven’t asked you to do a very hard or unreasonable thing, Dorrien,” he said, with a quiet smile. “Now do oblige me in this. Can you not see that I am justified in requiring it? Then we can talk over matters further.”

Roland felt thoroughly outflanked. He could not tell his father-in-law elect that his own amiable parent would more readily give his sanction to an alliance of his house with the Prince of Darkness than with that of himself—yet he knew perfectly well it was so. Here, indeed, was a most formidable obstruction in the way; one, moreover, on which he had never reckoned. He could only agree mechanically to the rector’s proposal, but his heart sank within him as he took his leave. No, he had not bargained for this.

All seemed to augur badly for the successful outcome of his errand, for the General was out, and was not expected back till nearly dinner-time, he learned on reaching Cranston. But the General returned in such a state of ill-humour that it was obviously useless to broach the subject that night. On the morrow—well, it was just possible that some miracle might interpose on his behalf, but hardly probable. Never did it seem to him that he could remember a more thoroughly depressing evening than this one. His father scarcely spoke, and when he did address him it was in a tone of studied coldness; his mother would now and then make a captious remark, while Hubert sulkily plied his knife and fork, and made no attempt at conversation whatever. Heartily glad was he then to find himself at last in the smoking-room.

“Hallo! Roland—there you are,” cried Hubert, banging the door behind him, and flinging himself into an armchair. “Now one can breathe freely, at any rate. The veteran looks sweet to-night, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. What one might call re-entering the glacial period, eh?”

“Haw! haw! Rather. But ’pon my soul, you ought to thank your stars night and day that you’re out of this infernal house.”

“H’m! Why don’t you go abroad, or somewhere, during the ‘Long’! You’ve heaps of time.”

“Don’t I wish I may get it! He takes precious good care I don’t—that’s why,” rejoined Hubert, wrathful over the memory of his wrongs; and then he relapsed into silence. The fact was, he began to feel embarrassed, for he was trying to summon up courage to ask his brother a favour. He had been leading a life of terrible anxiety for the last few weeks. A bill was on the point of falling due, and he had not a notion how it was to be met. Result—another exposure. For what made it worse was the fact of his having denied further liability when his father had paid off his debts a couple of months back, and now it would come out that he had—well, stated what he knew to be contrary to fact. In his extremity, he thought of Roland, and now the moment struck him in a propitious light.

“Keeps you tight, I suppose?”

“Tight! I should just think he did,” replied Hubert, with alacrity. Surely the conversation was working round towards a favourable opening.

“Hard luck that. Try one of these weeds.”

“Thanks. And—er—I say, Roland, there’s something I rather thought—er—you might perhaps do for me. The fact is, you see, I’m in a devil of a fix just now—don’t know which way to turn. And if the veteran should find it out I’m clean done.”

Roland eyed him rather curiously.

“Well, what is it? Cash—or petticoat? Those being the two main sources of man’s difficulties.”

“Well, it’s a bill.”

“Been flying kites, eh?”

“Yes,” answered Hubert in desperation. Why the deuce was the other so infernally laconic and quiet over it—why couldn’t he show a little feeling? he thought—and then his heart sank, for he made sure Roland would put him off with the usual excuse. But the next words reassured him.

“H’m! That’s better. If it had been the other phase of the root of all evil, I don’t see how I could have helped you to avoid reaping the traditional whirlwind. But what’s the amount?”

Hubert named it—rather shamefacedly. It was a fair sum, just topping the three figures. More, a good deal, than Roland had expected, but he showed no surprise. He had made up his mind to help his brother in this, though Hubert’s deportment towards himself had hitherto been ill-conditioned enough—and row he speculated idly as to whether the other would feel any gratitude towards him or hate him all the more.

Hubert, meanwhile, felt his fears revive during the silence that ensued, and he thought enviously of all the advantages his brother possessed. Here he was, free from this wretched home, with a handsome independence of his own, over and above being the heir to the splendid family place. Surely he would help him. He lived very quietly, and could not be short of cash himself.

“What makes it worse,” he went on desperately, “is that I told the ‘Relieving Officer’ there was nothing else outstanding, when he pulled me through before, and now he’ll find out there was. I don’t know how the deuce I did it—but, you see, this was such a big thing, and he was so beastly satirical and sneering, that somehow I got in a funk and shirked it. Hang it all, Roland,” he broke off in a kind of irritable despair, “it’s all very well for you, you see. You’re independent of him, and are not driven to do these things; while a poor devil like me—oh, well!”

“My dear fellow, there’s not the least necessity for jumping down my throat, I assure you. I wasn’t going to offer an opinion on the matter. Nor am I going to lecture you—unless, perhaps, you don’t mind my advising you to square this up and have done with it. I’ll write you a cheque when we go upstairs.”

Even while he spoke it flitted across Roland’s mind that the time would probably come when, in a pecuniary sense, his own position would be insignificant in comparison with that of his younger brother. Would he have helped him, he wondered, were their positions reversed? But then Hubert was an extravagant young dog, and would in all likelihood go through life in a chronic state of “hard-up.”

“By Jove, Roland, it’s awfully good of you,” he cried, in such a tone of genuine relief as to draw that queer smile to his brother’s face. “Thanks, awfully. The fact is you’ve got me out of a deucedly deep hole—and—er—”

“How about by-by?” said the other, recovering himself from a stretch and a mighty yawn. “It’s waxing late. Better lay hold of that candle, I’ve got one in my room. Come along, and we’ll draw the cheque.”

Hubert took the hint to say no more about it, but he went to bed with a lighter heart than he had done for many a night. He had that cheque safe in his possession. Wiser thoughts might have prevailed in the morning—his brother might have thought better of it—might have discovered that he couldn’t spare the cash—what not? He need not have feared. Whatever his faults, Roland Dorrien was incapable of going back on his word, and had the amount in question reached the limit of his worldly possessions, he would still have parted with it.

Chapter Eighteen.

Father and Son.

“Do you mind coming this way, Roland?” said the General soon after breakfast the next morning. “Neville writes to say,” he went on, closing the library door behind them, “that they are going to give a ball on a large scale on Friday—it’s Clara’s birthday—and is very anxious for you to go to Ardleigh to-morrow, and stay over it. This is Wednesday, so I suppose you may count upon nearly a week of it up there, to which, I daresay, you won’t object,” he added, with some significance.

“Well, I don’t much care about it. I might manage the ball, but the fact is it will be rather inconvenient to go and stay there just now. Besides, I seem to have only just left.”

The General frowned slightly.

“I hope you’ll think better of it, Roland. You cannot really have anything to keep you from going, and Neville will take it ill if you refuse. You and Clara got on very well together when you were staying there before, didn’t you?”

“Extremely well. Couldn’t have got on better,” assented Roland. They were coming to the point, he thought, but he would let his father work up to it in his own way. Let the adversary show his hand by all means, his own would be so much the easier to play.

For a few moments they sat in silence. The General’s brows were knit as he sat thoughtfully balancing a paper-cutter between his fingers. Then looking up quickly, and speaking with the air of a man who has thought it out and quite made up his mind, he said:

“I don’t know why we should fence any more with each other, Roland. It will perhaps be best, as we are alone together, to be plain and above-board. But, first of all, I may state that I have strong reasons for wishing you to accept this invitation.”

“Indeed, sir. May I ask what they are?” The General made a movement of impatience. “Now, can you not guess them, Roland?”

“I might—I don’t say that I couldn’t. But guessing is at best unsatisfactory work, and apt to lead to cross-purposes,” said Roland very quietly. “As you said just now, why should we fence? What is it you wish me to do?”

The General gave a slight shake of the head, half deprecatory, half perplexed. He had not foreseen the extent of the other’s quiet self-possession, and there was a determination underlying his eldest son’s tone which he did not at all like.

“Well, Roland, just listen to me. You have been back in England some months now, and, I presume, intend to remain. Does it never occur to you that one with your position and prospects might employ life better than by lounging through it aimlessly as you are doing now?”

“It certainly has occurred to me. Though in the matter of position, I do not feel particularly exalted—and as for prospects, with all respect, sir, I would remind you that I am without any at present.”

“This is mere fencing,” answered his father testily. “By the way, your talents in that line would be of invaluable service to you at the Bar. Now, you must be perfectly well aware that your position is one of considerable importance, seeing that you must one day occupy my place here.”

“It’s very good of you to say so, sir,” replied Roland quietly. “But,” he added to himself, “if you don’t flatly contradict that statement before another hour has gone over our heads, why, the age of miracles is recommencing.”

“Things being so,” continued his father, “it is right that you should recognise your position as my eldest son. Now did you ever contemplate the contingency of marriage?”

“I have thought of it—yes.”

“Ah!” and the General’s brow cleared perceptibly. “Now, we are not so badly off about here in the matter of choice; we are fortunate in having for neighbours some good families—very good families, indeed. But I think it would be hard to find among them anyone more thoroughly suitable than Clara Neville. She is exceedingly good-looking, most accomplished and agreeable, and has plenty of sound common-sense; in short, any man might be proud of her as a wife.”

“She is, indeed, all you say,” assented Roland mercilessly, a sort of grim humour impelling him to draw his father thoroughly out.

“Ah! I should always have given you credit for being a man of taste, Roland,” rejoined the General, with more kindness in his tone than he had used for a long time. “Then, too, she is the daughter of one of my oldest—I may say my oldest—friends, and she will inherit Ardleigh. You have seen for yourself what Ardleigh is. It is a splendid property, and adjoins this. Such an opportunity of combining the two may never—will never occur again,” he continued, speaking more to himself than to his son. “And, Roland, only think what a man with such a stake in the county as Cranston and Ardleigh might do. Why, his influence would be unbounded. Any career leading to the highest distinction would be open to him.”

In spite of the knowledge that he himself would be the chief sufferer, Roland, as he sat listening to his father, could not help feeling a kind of pity for the disappointment which awaited the latter, when his ambitious schemes were ruthlessly shattered, as they were destined to be in a moment.

“So now you see why I wish you to accept this invitation,” went on the General. “The alliance will be a most suitable one in every way, and most desirable.”

“But aren’t we getting on rather fast?” said Roland, thinking he saw a straw, and clutching at it instinctively. “What reason have we to suppose that Clara Neville regards me with any more favour than she does any other man?”

“I feel sure of this, Roland: if she doesn’t, it’ll be your own fault entirely,” was the reply.

Well, that straw had gone down with him. There was now no alternative—he must declare himself. It is just possible that, in one of weaker calibre, the temptation to procrastinate might have prevailed. The moment was not a favourable one for making his statement—indeed, it could hardly be more unfavourable; what would be easier than to put it off for a day or two? But he entertained no such idea.

“You saw a great deal of each other, I believe,” went on the General, anxious over his silence. “And you have just told me you got on excellently well together?”

“So we did, and I trust we always shall. And I am sorry to be obliged to spoil your very attractive plans. I have the greatest regard for Miss Neville, but as for thinking of her as my wife, why, I can’t imagine the possibility of such a thing.”

It was out. The bolt had fallen. For a few moments the two sat facing each other without a word. At last the General spoke, but his voice sounded very harsh and constrained.

“Do you really mean this, Roland, or is it merely the outcome of some passing fancy of yours? Now, do nothing in a hurry. Take time—think it well over. I cannot believe that a sensible man like yourself can be blind to all the immeasurable advantages that the course I recommend would bring.”

“There is one advantage which has been left out of that course, father,” said Roland in a much softer tone than any he had yet employed. “That is—Love,” and he paused. “Ah! well, I am very sorry to have disappointed you,” he went on, as his father made no reply, “and on that account, and on that only, I wish it could have been otherwise. It is unfortunate, very, that you should have put this idea before me just now, for as a matter of fact this very day I intended to communicate to you my intention of marrying Olive Ingelow, the second daughter of the rector of Wandsborough.”

The trumpet had been blown, and that with no uncertain sound. War was declared. In declining to agree to his father’s plan, Roland had strayed dangerously far from his supports; in revealing his own he had burnt his boats behind him.

“So that is your intention, is it?” said his father in icy, cutting tones, when he had recovered from the effect of the audacity of the statement.

“Yes, it is. And I venture to hope, sir, that it may have your sanction.”

“Do you? But I have not the pleasure of the acquaintance of this young—lady, with whose relationship you are anxious to honour us,” was the satirical reply.

“I hope you very soon will have. Then you will see that she is in every way our equal as to birth, thoroughly well educated, and as sweet-tempered as she is beautiful. Now, father, you will not go against me in this,” he concluded, his face softening as he thought of Olive.

The General had risen from his seat and was pacing the room.

“My sanction?” he repeated, and it was evident that he was labouring to repress his strong excitement. “My sanction—that is what you want, is it? Then know this, Roland. As sure as you sit there you shall never have it—never. And what’s more, unless you give me your word, before you leave this room, to break off this affair unconditionally, now, at once and for all, you and I are strangers henceforth—total strangers. Do you hear?”

“I do.”

“Don’t think that I have been ignorant of your doings all this time. Don’t think that it has not been patent to us all how you preferred the society of these low adventurers to that of your own family.” There was a look on Roland’s face which would have warned most men to stop, but his father was not one of them. “And as for this—this young person you have chosen as an instrument for disgracing us, why, you must surely recollect that both your mother and myself witnessed her disreputable, immodest behaviour, and that on the public high road—”

“Just stop, sir—stop. What the devil do you mean by talking like this? Remember who you are talking about, please.” Roland had sprung to his feet, and stood confronting his father. His face was ghastly white, but his eyes glowed like two living coals, and his hands were clenched with the firmness of a vice. “Stop, do you hear? By God, if any other man had said that—” And he paused, restraining himself with an effort.

“So, so, sir,” cried the General furiously. “So you dare to stand there and threaten your father! So you dare to talk to me in this tone! You dare to stand there in your damned strength and talk to a man twice your age in that strain—I wonder Heaven does not strike you dead as you do it. But go—get away out of my sight, let me never see you again. One who can so far forget all sense of duty is no son of mine. Go! Do you hear—go?” and he pointed towards the door, his hands shaking in a perfect palsy of rage.

Roland walked to the door.

“Yes, I will go,” he said, “and that before I forget myself. Good-bye. I recall anything that may have sounded like a threat. Good-bye.”

“Go—go!” articulated the General, almost voiceless with rage, shaking his hand at the door. “I’d call down a curse upon you, but it’s needless, for you’re sure to come to the gallows some day, and after that to hell. Go. Be off with you!” The other turned deliberately and went out. On the stairs he encountered his mother.

“What is it, Roland? What has happened? You and your father have had a dreadful quarrel, I’m afraid,” she said, her cold nature roused to a state of unwonted anxiety. “Oh! dear! What is it all about?”

“Nothing, madam—except that the sweetly affectionate care and the pious home-training of my younger days is bearing its natural fruit,” was his caustic reply, for he felt a very hell of fierce wrath blazing within. “And now, let me congratulate you upon having things at last exactly as you have long wished them to be.”

He passed her. The hall door shut behind him with an angry slam, and thus Roland Dorrien went out from the presence of his father—never to look upon him again in this world.

Mrs Dorrien found her husband sitting in the study in a state of terrible exhaustion. He was a strong man for his age, but the frightful passion to which he had given way had seriously shaken him.

“Has—that—villain—gone?” he asked at length.

“Roland?—Yes. But wait—don’t be in a hurry to talk. Keep quiet for a little while,” she answered sadly.

“The deep-dyed scoundrel! Eleanor, if you had heard what he said to me as he stood there! Now listen to me. He is dead to us henceforth, stone dead. And tell the others—Hubert and Nellie—that if ever they mention his name in my hearing, or hold any communication with him whatever, that day they go after him.”

Mrs Dorrien assented sadly. She had got what she knew to be the secret wish of her heart. Her Hubert—her darling boy—would be Dorrien of Cranston; for she knew her husband too well to suppose he would ever relent. But it may be, furthermore, that her hard, cold nature felt a twinge of regret as she thought of this unloved son and realised that she would never see him again, and if her conscience cried loudly of maternal neglect and duties unfulfilled, we may be very sure she stifled it.

Yet this sin of omission was destined to bring upon her an awful retribution.

Chapter Nineteen.

“And Thus We Parted There.”

Roland Dorrien walked from his father’s door with quick, angry strides. Everything had turned out exactly as he had expected, and the halle of his ancestors would know him no more. Why should he regret it? Within them he had known nothing but coldness—had met with scant measure of affection—and now he was leaving them for ever. He passed out through the park gates with the Dorrien arms engraved upon the stone pillars—a mailed hand grasping by the neck a writhing serpent, which, with crest reared and fangs gaping wide and threatening, was in keeping with the motto underneath, “I strike”—and reached the high road. Even then he smiled satirically as he reflected that the lodge-keeper’s obsequious curtsey would probably be much less profound were the good woman aware that it was only Roland Dorrien, the disinherited heir, who walked past, instead of, as she supposed, her future lord.

Suddenly he became aware of a scuffle in the park behind him, and, turning, he beheld the deer look up from their feeding and trot away in alarmed groups. Then the cause of this appeared—something red and white, tearing at full speed down the drive. A moment more, and the object dashed against him, panting, and nearly knocking him down.

“Why, Roy!” he cried in concern. “Dear old Roy! I had clean forgotten you. And they were quite capable of having you knocked on the head if they had known you were there. Perhaps he did try, as it was,” he went on, with a dark look in the direction of the Hall.

But his reflections on the General were in this case unmerited. What had happened was this. Roy, who had been incarcerated in a disused coach-house, finding that his master did not come to emancipate him at the usual time, had raised his voice in doleful protest, but when his subtle ears detected the sound of his master’s receding footsteps, whose firm tread could mean nothing else than “gone for good,” his piteous howls increased tenfold, emphasised by a series of frantic plunges against the large double doors. Now, it happened that Johnston, the head-gardener, who hated Roy’s master with an undying hatred on account of more than one snubbing which his own impudent presumption had earned for him, and by an inverse rendering of the proverb, likewise hated Roy, thought it an excellent opportunity of wreaking his spite on the dog. So, arming himself with a broomstick, he proceeded to the scene of poor Roy’s restraint.

“Hold yer rouw, ye beast—wull ye!” said Johnston spitefully, just opening a crack in the door and raising the stick cunningly. But Roy was not quite such a fool. He had withdrawn from the door and crouched away at the back of the room, growling savagely.

“Aha, ye cowardly beastie,” jeered the man. “Iss-ss!” and he poked at him with the stick.

Roy wae now walking to and fro, growling, and every time drawing nearer and nearer to the door, but keeping carefully out of reach of the blows which the biped brute every now and then aimed at him. Suddenly, with a terrific snarl, he made a rush. The trap-door let into the large ones flew open as he flung himself against it, and Johnston, knocked aside by the unexpected weight, rolled sprawling in the dust, and the dog was free. Pausing a moment to make his teeth meet in the thigh of his enemy as he lay, now thoroughly frightened, Roy darted off like an arrow on the track of his master, and came up with him, as we have seen.

“My dear old beauty!” said Roland, passing his hand lovingly over the smooth head, and looking down into the soft, faithful eyes. “You’re worth a regiment of mere human animals! And yet they call you only a dumb, soulless brute. Well, you won’t be sorry to shake the Cranston dust off your paws, anyhow. Come along!”

He turned into the footpath across the fields, which saved a mile of hot, shelterless high road, and his face never relaxed its hard frown as he went over that terrible interview again. “Well, the old man and I opened our minds to one another with a refreshing candour, at any rate,” he said, half aloud.—“Hallo!”

He stood staring blankly, not quite certain whether he was dreaming or not. For there, as if she had started out of the earth itself, was Olive—Roy meanwhile leaping around her and thrusting his importunate nose into her hand, and otherwise claiming his meed of attention.

Roland paused for a moment, staggered. She was looking very lovely, in the neatest of cool walking-dresses, and the blood rose softly to the bewitching face as she met his astonished gaze. She had seen him long before he had caught sight of her, and half shyly, half mischievously had noted the effect of the surprise. But overhearing his last reflection, the glad look changed into one of concern.

“What has happened, dear?” she began.

Instead of immediately replying he gave a couple of quick looks around, and—a few seconds afterwards Olive was readjusting a somewhat displaced hat, a soft, bright blush suffusing her face.

“There! I feel better now?” cried he who had treated her so unceremoniously, speaking with quick vehemence. “What has happened? Squalls—breakers—high seas—everything. To put it tersely, my venerable ancestor and I have been exchanging opinions of each other in terms far more forcible than polite.” But Olive looked very grave.

“Oh, Roland. Was it about—about—I mean anything to do with ourselves?”

“H’m! H’m! Well, as to that, it was about things in general. But don’t distress yourself, darling. It was bound to come sooner or later, and for some time past the South Cone has been hoisted on that particular coast. And now we have agreed to keep carefully out of each other’s way henceforth.”

“But you’ll make it up again, dear. People get in a rage with each other and quarrel, but it doesn’t last for ever. It would be awful if it did.”

“But this will. Olive, you don’t know him, and I’m afraid, darling, you don’t half know me. He would have to sing very abjectly small indeed, before I could forgive what he said—certainly no consideration of loss or gain would induce me to do so. So here I stand—as here I came—nobody.”

“You are everybody to me, love,” she answered bravely and cheerfully. “All will come right one of these days, and even if not, we cannot do without each other, whatever we can do without.”

Sunshine after storm: balm to the wounded spirit. It is probable that, for the time being, all considerations were forgotten, except that they were alone together. The summer air breathed warm and free around them. Underfoot the grass, recently mown, was short and turfy, beneath the shade of the trees couched a few lazy, ruminating sheep, and the drowsy roll of a mill-wheel, with its accompanying drip-drip of water, was just audible, but everything was soft and slumbrous in the silent meadows. They were alone—and he who had just bartered away his splendid birthright for the love of this girl beside him, felt that he had his reward. He could hardly believe that not an hour had passed since that tornado scene of wrathful passion in yonder Hall, which they could just discern through the trees.

“But, Olive, how on earth did you put in an appearance here just in the nick of time?” he asked presently.

“Pure accident. I had been visiting two bed-ridden crones whom Margaret had promised to go and see, but couldn’t. The path leading home struck into yours—so—so I couldn’t help being behind you and hearing your wicked words—and they were dreadfully wicked,” she answered mischievously. “But—hark!”

A male voice was heard approaching, alternately whistling and singing snatches of a popular song of the day, then a tall, active figure cleared the stile in front of them and drew up short.

“Hallo!”

“Oh, Eusty, you disgraceful defaulter. Is that how you keep your promises?” cried Olive. “Didn’t you vow you would come and meet me, and now I’ve had to walk through two fields full of horrid cows all by myself—and it’s no thanks to you that I haven’t been frightened to death.”

“Oh, here—ahem—I say, hold hard!” cried the Oxonian, quizzically surveying the pair. “All by yourself—eh? Well, it strikes me, young woman, you’ve fallen in with a pretty substantial escort.”

“But not until I had passed the cows, you detestable boy,” replied she, with a tinge of colour in her bright, laughing face.

“I say, Dorrien, she implies that you’re nobody,” went on her brother, without heeding her. “Says she had to come along all by herself. Rough on you, that—eh?”

Roland laughed, and coming to the rescue turned the scale of “chaff” against Eustace, who was fain to acknowledge at last that he was in a minority, and to cry quarter.

“Hallo, Dorrien, don’t sheer off,” cried Eustace, as, having reached the town, a halt suddenly took place. “Tack in and get your eye-teeth into some cold sirloin, anglicè—lunch!”

But the other shook his head.

“Oh, stow all that,” went on the reckless youth in response to some excuse. “Now, don’t let’s have any more talk over it, but ’bout ship and steer for the ecclesiastical hang-out. There are only our two selves. The reverend Padre won’t be in till this afternoon, and the other girls have gone out to lunch at the Gaskells. Olive, tell him he must. He’ll obey orders from you.”

Roland hesitated. He had frequently dropped in in this informal way, and now the temptation to sit for an hour at the same table with Olive, with the prospect of a whole afternoon of her society, was strong. But he remembered that his negotiations with her father were still pending, and he had a shrewd idea that the next interview might not go off quite so pleasantly. Meanwhile, it might strike the rector in the light of a shabby thing, were he in a sort of way to steal a march upon him in his absence. So he heroically and steadfastly refused. Had he known what was to happen within the next twenty-four hours he would probably have yielded.

“I’ll look round later,” he said. “I want to see the rector as soon as he comes in. That’ll do instead, Eustace, won’t it?”

“Hang it! I suppose it must!” was the careless reply.

And then he bade good-bye to Olive. Only a pressure of the hand, and a look into each other’s eyes—no sweet, clinging embrace. An unceremonious good-bye, as between people who expect to meet again in the course of the same day, no murmured word of love and trust and moving farewell. Yet perhaps it was better so. A little nod and a bright smile as she turned away, and thus they parted, these two. Little recked they how and where they would meet again.

Roland turned away in a very restless, dissatisfied frame of mind. Everything seemed to be working round unfavourably. The rector might not return home till late, and meanwhile he was condemned to these hours of waiting. Though cool enough in an emergency, he was of a nervous disposition, and uncertainty and inaction in a matter of this kind was intolerable. Everything assumed an exaggerated aspect. What if the rector should, after all, refuse his consent? Hitherto he had not believed Dr Ingelow would offer any serious opposition; now, on turning things over, it seemed first possible, then only too probable, that he might. And Olive—he felt pretty certain she would, however reluctantly, refuse to disregard her father’s wishes, once they were clearly laid down; nor in his heart of hearts would he have desired that she should, paradoxical as it may seem. Lovers are proverbially selfish, and it might be that Roland Dorrien was less so than the general man. He had lived his life very much alone, with the result that he had thought much, and developed a maturity of judgment considerably beyond his years. How could he expect this girl to give up her bright, happy home—how happy he himself had had ample opportunity of observing—to wound, beyond all healing, those who had surrounded her life with every tenderness and care, at the bidding of one whom, six months ago, she had hardly heard of? He knew that he had won her heart as no man would ever again win it, yet he would despise himself were he to require such a sacrifice of her. No, the only thing would be to wait for more favourable times.

So the afternoon wore on, and his restlessness increased more and more. He could not read, thinking was worse, and there was no one to talk to. Well, he would stroll round towards the Rectory again. This time luck favoured him. As he approached it he caught sight of Dr Ingelow coming from the opposite direction, and the two met at the gate.

“Ah, I was half expecting you yesterday,” said the rector, as they shook hands. “But come into the study. There we shan’t be disturbed.”

“And I fully intended to have returned yesterday,” replied Roland, when they were seated. “But the fact is, my father didn’t get back till late, and I had no opportunity of speaking to him until this morning.”

“Yes. And—”

“The result was precisely what I expected. He was utterly unreasonable and impracticable. In short, Dr Ingelow, I don’t see how I can avoid explaining that he has a violent prejudice against you and yours. That may have had a great deal to do with it, but he had reasons of his own, which, as they concern others, I am hardly at liberty to mention. Anyhow, I could not for a moment think of falling in with his views, and the result was a regular row.”

“Do you mean that you quarrelled?” asked the rector.

“If a tolerably brisk interchange of compliments, and a mutual agreement to keep carefully out of each other’s way for the rest of our mutual lives constitute a quarrel—and I rather think they do—why, then I must admit we did,” was the grim reply, and his face grew dark over the recollection thus revived.

“Excuse me, Dorrien—you see I always consider myself to a certain extent privileged—but I can see at a glance that you’re a quick-tempered man. Now, isn’t it just possible that you were rather hasty?” said the rector, in his kindest manner, bending a searching glance upon the young man. “I mean,” he went on in response to a decided shake of the head, “you may have forgotten that, however harsh—even unjust, as you think—your father may be, you still owe him a certain amount of respect—of duty. Nothing can get rid of that fact.”

Roland looked up quickly.

“Duty?” he echoed, with an intensity of bitterness which was not lost upon the other. “Duty! My dear sir, I can assure you that that very word formed subject matter for a pretty lively discussion between us, ending as I have described. However, to drop these wretched family details, which must be most tedious to you, you see now I have done my best to meet your wishes, and if I have failed it has been through no fault of my own—that I can say with a perfectly clear conscience.” He spoke with a suppressed eagerness which had been absent from his speech in their first interview. Then the last thing he had anticipated was failure in this quarter; now it was different.

The rector shook his head deprecatorily.

“I don’t like to hear you take that tone. I fear your view of the relation between father and son cannot be borne out. The Fifth Commandment is explicit on the point. But there, this isn’t the time for sermonising, you’ll say,” he added with a grave, kind smile. “Only, the idea of a breach of this relationship is, to my mind, one of the most painful things in the world.”

Roland looked unconvinced. He conjectured rightly that the good priest’s early youth had been fortunate in its natural guardians, and now his own children adored him, which made all the difference.

“You will think me bold in stating that the religious side of the question does not weigh with me in the least—circumstances alter cases,” was his reply. “And at any rate, Dr Ingelow, you will allow that I have never tried to win your favour by feigning a religion which I did not feel. However, to confine ourselves to the matter in hand. I have tried my utmost to satisfy you in what you asked, and have failed. But as I am perfectly in a position to marry independently of my father’s consent, I trust your answer will be favourable.”

Outwardly calmness itself, the rector was in reality much perplexed. A terrible family quarrel had taken place, indirectly owing to him and his—a reflection sufficiently distressing to one of his refinement of feeling. Then, again, this young man must not be allowed to throw up his prospects for life in a fit of rash impulse and hot temper. No—at all costs this must be prevented.

“We will waive the question of duty,” he said. “But is there no chance of a reconciliation? Surely there is. When you get to my age you will realise that life is too short for these prolonged feuds; quarrels between blood relations are of all things the most heart-rending, and the day may come when you will bitterly regret this one. And then, to take a lower ground. How can you, in a moment of anger, and all for the sake of a few hasty words, throw up your really splendid prospects? And how can I be a party to your doing so. Surely you must see that it is impossible.”

“There is no chance of any reconciliation,” answered Roland deliberately. “I would hardly forgive one or two of the things he dared to say, even if he were to go down on his knees and beg me to—and I think even you would hardly expect him to do that. As for what you are good enough to call ‘a few hasty words,’ I tell you we exchanged opinions of each other that would have made your hair stand on end could you have heard us; nor was that all. In the matter of prospects, I have always considered my chances of ever possessing Cranston to be so very vague and shadowy as not seriously worth reckoning in the light of prospects. And then, look what such ‘prospects’ would involve. Perhaps twenty years of absolute slavery to the whims and caprices of the hardest and most unloving of masters. Only think of that! And at fifty I might find myself in possession, and Heaven knows I should deserve to. So, in renouncing these most shadowy prospects, this morning, I could not feel that I was actually undergoing any real loss. But I thought I had made all this clear to you yesterday—I mean as regarded the uncertainty of any prospects beyond the actual means in my possession,” he added in an anxious tone.

“I don’t think you understand me, Mr Dorrien,” said the rector, rather stiffly. “I might have hoped you would have known me better than to suppose that I was reasoning otherwise than disinterestedly in this matter of your eventually possessing Cranston or not; or that the latter contingency would detract in my eyes from your eligibility to become my daughter’s husband, you being otherwise in a satisfactory position. What I did mean to convey was this. You are young now; all your feelings and aspirations are strong, and warm, and healthful, and you are capable of self-sacrifice; you dearly love my child. I can see that readily enough, although you are not one of the effusive order of lovers,” he went on, his tone softening, and a quiet, kindly smile gleaming in his eyes. “You would make any sacrifice for her—and for all this I honour you. But, as I said before, you are young. Well. You give up this inheritance, and you do so cheerfully. Middle age comes on, and you see what should have been yours in other hands. You are a stranger in the home of your ancestors—you have the cares and vexations—ay, and the disappointments of life crowding upon you, while another enjoys in ease and luxury your noble birthright, which has then passed away from you for ever. How will you feel then? Will you have the strength resolutely to bear up against this most mortifying contrast, to banish the thought of it far from you—or will it embitter—eventually perhaps crush the remainder of your existence? This is what I have been thinking of while we have been sitting here. Now have you thought of it?”

He laid his hand on the other’s arm with an affectionate gesture, and his dark eyes were full of sympathy as he bent his glance upon the young man’s face, awaiting the answer.

“I have thought of it, Dr Ingelow,” was the quiet reply. “I had already done so—had weighed the pros and cons most carefully before I spoke to you yesterday. And—”

He stopped short. He was nearly giving the rector an inkling of the other insurmountable obstacle which stood in the way of reconciliation, and any material advantage it might bring with it, but with a natural distaste for discussing family matters with an outsider—however sympathetic—he forebore. Had he not done so, it is possible that the answer to his wishes might have been different; as it was, Dr Ingelow would not give up the notion that the quarrel between Roland and his father, however grave, was yet capable of being healed, and it was not for him, a Christian priest, irrespective of other considerations, to be the means of widening the breach.

“Well now, Dorrien,” he went on, after pausing to allow the other to continue the remark if he wished, “you must see yourself in what an extremely difficult position I am placed. How can I allow my child to marry into a family which positively refuses to receive her? I cannot do so, I fear, with any consideration for our own self-respect. Then, apart from that, you are man of the world enough to know that nothing remains private for long, and that this family quarrel of yours will soon be in everybody’s mouth. Now, I ask you, how can I and mine accept the position of arch-mischief-makers, feud fomenters, schemers—call it what you will—in which common consent will place us when it becomes known how you have renounced your brilliant worldly prospects for Olive’s sake? Put yourself into my place for a moment—that may bring it home to you. No, Dorrien, surely you must see that this is a position we cannot consent to occupy, and, honoured as we are by your proposal, I fear we must pain you by declining it—for the present, at any rate.”

Roland did not answer at once. In the rector’s decided tones he felt that his fate was sealed. There was no getting over this opposition, and now, day by day, an insurmountable barrier would rise between him and his love. The room seemed to go round with him—the heavily-bound, solemn-looking volumes, the carved chairs, the still, white Christ upon the black cross in the niche, all passed in succession before his eyes.

“And yet I had thought, Dr Ingelow,” he said at last, and his voice was thick and unsteady, “that you, if any man, would be above mere worldly considerations, when the life’s happiness of two people was in the balance.”

“My dear boy, don’t—pray don’t talk in that awfully desponding tone,” said the rector, moved to the heart by the utter dejection set forth upon the other’s countenance. “Now, listen,” and going over to him he placed his hands upon his shoulders, in heart-felt, sympathetic touch. “Wait a little while, then do your best to make up this lamentable difference—who knows but what you may succeed far more readily than you think? Then you shall have my hearty consent.”

“That will be never,” came the reply, quiet, but decided. “The thing is impossible. So I suppose you will tell me that it’s a case of resigning oneself to the will of Providence,” he continued in a tone of indescribable bitterness, and with an approach to a sneer.

The other made no reply, and for some moments there was silence. There was not a spark of anger or resentment in the priest’s heart at the implied scoff, and the compassion in his countenance deepened as he gazed upon the man before him, plunged in the depths of disappointment. He was no mean judge of character, and he had seen much in Roland Dorrien to like and admire—yet he felt sure that the course he himself had adopted in the present instance was the right—in fact, the only safe one.

And Roland himself? As he sat there he was going through a mighty struggle. He had tried fair means and failed, now he would be justified in employing foul, said the tempter. If he could induce Olive surreptitiously to link her lot with his, why then, when the step was irremediable, her father would soon forgive her. The rector was the very last man to bear rancour, especially towards his favourite child. He would soon come round, and then how happy they would all be! The end in this case would amply justify the means, and then—was not all fair in love and war? No, it was not. Roland Dorrien had a code of honour of his own. Had Dr Ingelow been such a man as his own father, for instance, he would have felt abundantly justified in throwing all scruple to the winds, but now he could not do it. He had sat at this man’s table and been treated by him in every respect as a trusted friend. His doors had ever been open to him to come and go as he listed, he had been admitted unreservedly and welcomed in this family circle at a time when in his own home he was a stranger. Months had passed in this pleasant, trustful intimacy, and now he felt that he would rather die than betray the confidence of this kindly, open-hearted friend, for whom, in spite of what had happened, he felt no whit less of warm regard. It would be a mean and shabby trick, the very thought of which he would strive to put far from him.

“Forgive me,” he said at length. “I am an unmannerly brute to talk like that. A cad, in fact.”

“Roland, my dear boy,” answered the rector in his most affectionate tone, casting all ceremony to the winds. “Believe me, I have already forgotten it, whatever it was. Now try and face your trouble bravely—you are not alone in it, remember. And, Roland, you will not—not attempt to see Olive alone until—at any rate until I have spoken to her. You are too honourable for that, I know.”

“I will not. But, Dr Ingelow, I cannot promise to give her up altogether. It is only fair to tell you that.”

The rector shook his head sadly.

“I am afraid you must bring yourself to face facts,” he replied, as they clasped hands. “Good-bye. We need not look upon each other as enemies on account of this, need we?” he added, laying an affectionate, detaining hand on the other’s shoulder. “Good-bye for the present—and, God bless you!”

Chapter Twenty.

Darker Still.

“Things are never so bad but that they might be worse,” is a clap-trap disguised beneath the gold leaf of philosophy. When a man’s leg has to come off—without chloroform—it doesn’t make the impending “bad quarter of an hour” a bit less redoubtable to impress upon him the indisputable fact that he might have had to lose an arm as well.

When Roland awoke the next morning—he had engaged a room in the principal inn at Wandsborough—it seemed as if the outlook before him was about as black as it could be. He had made an enormous sacrifice for love, and all in vain; the fruition of that love was denied him. Wrapped in gloomy reflections, he hardly noticed a letter lying beside his bed. It had come the previous evening, but he had chucked it aside as not worth bothering about. Now he took it up and carelessly tore it open. Suddenly an alarming change came over his features, an awful, rigid, grey look, as if he had been suddenly turned to stone. This is what he read:

“My Dear Dorrien—

“I am rather afraid that I shall be the first to make known some confoundedly bad news. In a word the Tynnestop Bank has ‘gone,’ and the smash is complete. Now the question is, have you got rid of those shares of yours or not—you know we were talking about it when you were up here? If not, I’m deuced sorry for you, for I fear there’s no chance—the smash is too thorough, and it’s supposed they won’t pay sixpence in the pound. Bang they went! without a symptom of warning, and everyone’s asking how on earth it was managed so quietly. If you think it’ll be any good, run up here and talk things over.