Bertram Mitford (continued 6)

The exile’s heart thoroughly knew its own bitterness, as he heard once more the true, kindly tones. But it could not be. He would accompany them until they reached the high road, when he would make some excuse, and hasten to fly from the temptation to which he dared not yield. So he consented.

The waves were breaking with a hoarse, sullen boom, as though disappointed of their prey, as the party returned along the beach in the pitchy darkness of the small hours of the winter’s morning, and the light of the lanterns shone with a weird gleam upon the receding surf. Olive had been placed in an improvised litter of shawls and wraps slung on to two stout poles which they had brought with them, and was borne by two sturdy fishermen. Exhaustion and the terrors she had gone through had reduced her to a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which her mind was hardly sensible of what went on around her. Her father, still terribly anxious, walked at her side, and the stranger, who evinced no disposition to talk, had taken up his position on the other side—an arrangement not exactly to Turner’s taste, who, however, took comfort from the thought that the man was fifty or sixty at least, even though he was well-made and free of step still, and undeniably a gentleman. At last a stray light betokened the vicinity of Wandsborough.

“Now, let me see,” mused the stranger. “This is the Battisford road, I believe. Do not think me very rude, Mr—Ingelow—but on turning things over I find I must unavoidably be back in London to-day. I should have gone up by the night train but for this unfortunate—this fortunate, rather should I call it—walk of mine. On some future occasion, perhaps, I may have the great pleasure of renewing our acquaintance.”

“My dear sir, we really cannot allow such a thing,” cried the rector, aghast. “You will surely reconsider this. At any rate, put off your flight for a few hours. It is a long way to Battisford, and we are just home now. You shall be driven over later if you wish it. Now do oblige me—”

All who witnessed it thought they had never seen such a curious look before, as that which came into the other’s face. A sharp struggle was going on within him.

“Go back with them—tell them who you are,” said the lonely heart of the exile. “You will have friends—a way will be found out of your difficulties somehow, and then what love and peace and happiness will be yours!”

“You—a beggar, penniless, ruined, destitute?” whispered Pride. “You, whose memory is under a cloud, and who are without the barest means of existence—will you go back to accept the charity of those with whom you moved as equal? Only reveal your identity and see how their grateful overtures will cool!”

Said Conscience, “Leave her—assassin. Can red blood-guiltiness and pure white innocence ever mate? Leave her, ere she comes to abhor your name.” And Pride and Conscience triumphed over Heart. “I greatly fear I must excuse myself for being unable to accept your kind hospitality,” he said at last. “But if you will do me one favour, I shall feel thankful to you.”

“Certainly. What is it?” said the rector. “If you will drop me a line to this address once or twice, and let me know how the young lady gets on, it would be a satisfaction to me. I cannot but feel greatly interested in my companion in adversity,” replied the stranger, rapidly scribbling on a card, which he handed to Dr Ingelow.

“Why, most certainly,” said the rector, hardly glancing at it. “Most certainly. But—”

He stopped short, gazing blankly into the darkness. The stranger had disappeared.

Roland Dorrien returned to Battisford in the grey winter’s morning, and having put together his few possessions at “The Silver Fleece,” he left that ancient hostelry for the railway station, to the unfeigned regret of the garrulous waiter, whom even a liberal honorarium could hardly console for the loss of so congenial a recipient of local gossip. Yet, up to the last moment, he found himself inconsistently cherishing a wild hope that, his identity being cleared up, the rector might come over in post haste to insist upon his return to Wandsborough. But no such summons came, and when he took his seat in a hard, cushionless third-class carriage, down whose rattling windows the pelting rain streamed in torrents, his case was about as hopeless and desperate as the lot of mortal man could well be.

Chapter Thirty Four.

After the Storm.

Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate soon came to be recognised as an accepted fact by Wandsborough and its neighbourhood. He had fallen down Smugglers’ Ladder in the dark, for had not young Mr Ingelow found a bit of the cord of his eyeglass hanging from the brink of that fateful chasm? And his body had been carried away by the tide, as to that there was no doubt. Why, only a fortnight afterwards, the rector’s daughter would have lost her life at the same spot, to a dead certainty, had it not been for a stranger, who must have been sent there by Providence, specially for the purpose, said Wandsborough and its neighbourhood. And no sooner had the community arrived at this conclusion than its verdict was confirmed beyond a doubt. The body of the missing man was cast up on the shore a few miles from Wandsborough, and though in a dreadful state after its long immersion, the face was unrecognisable, the clothing, watch, and other possessions of the missing man were not, and the identity thus established, a coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Death by misadventure,” and the remains were interred in Cranston churchyard. One juryman, burning with zeal, was anxious to append a rider, censuring the absence of fencing along the dangerous part of the cliffs, but was stifled by the remainder, who were alive to the fact that although part of such fencing would be at the cost of the deceased’s father, by far the larger portion would fall upon the rates, i.e. themselves.

Then the gossips began to speculate as to the probable effect of the fatality upon domestic affairs at Cranston Hall. Would it result in a healing of the breach between General Dorrien and his eldest—now his only—son. In its heart of hearts the neighbourhood hoped it would. Him, at any rate, it knew, and if he was somewhat cold and reticent, he would none the less keep up his position as it should be kept up, an eventuality by no means so certain in the case of poor Hubert, had he been the one to inherit. But if the feud were to run on to the bitter end, the probability was that some stranger, wholly undesirable, would eventually reign at Cranston.

But as time went on, it brought with it no sign of reconciliation. No communication passed between Roland Dorrien and his father, indeed the General was in as complete a state of ignorance on the subject of his son’s whereabouts as the most curious of the busybodies who interested themselves in his affairs. In truth, there were times when the old man realised his loneliness and would fain have had the prodigal return, but then it must be unreservedly as a prodigal and not as one with whom terms were to be made, that must be distinctly understood. To be sure, he forgot that his son had inherited his own unyielding nature, but that is just the very thing parents of his type invariably do forget.

Finally, as the prodigal made no sign, he grew more hardened than ever in his resentment. He would not have been unwilling to abandon his cherished idea—to wit, the Cranston-Ardleigh alliance; perhaps, in time, might have brought himself to waive his opposition to the Rectory one, had the exile only approached in an apologetic spirit. In fact, it was one of those rare cases where a judicious friend, having touch of both parties, might have been invaluable. But no advances did the erring one make, conciliatory or otherwise, and the stern old man, sonless and unloved in his old age, grew more morose and reserved every day.

On his wife, the bereavement told with terrible effect. All the love of her hard, yet strong, nature had been poured out upon her youngest-born. He was her Benjamin, and now that he had been taken from her, she felt that it would, indeed, bring down her grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. And what lent tenfold anguish to her bereavement was that she regarded it as an act of the direct vengeance of Heaven. Like all women of her hard, uncompromising opinions, she believed firmly in “judgments”; unlike most of them, however, she did not believe in these applying to her neighbours to the exclusion of herself, and now fully, yet unresignedly, did she admit to herself that her passive acquiescence in, if not indirect attempts at the robbing of her eldest son of his birthright in favour of her idolised younger, had been visited by the signal and direct curse of Heaven. And, perhaps, in one sense she was not altogether wrong, for partiality and favouritism in family life is dangerously likely to breed, at any rate, the spirit of Cain.

Though fully recognising the justice of the visitation, yet, none the less, was she furiously rebellious. She remembered Roland’s last words to her as he went forth in anger from his father’s roof, words spoken in bitter and wrathful satire. “Let me congratulate you upon having things at last exactly as you have long wished them to be.” And now it seemed to her that there was menace in the words. And from that moment she hated her eldest son. Her former want of love now turned to something more positive, and she felt that she fiercely hated him, as in some mysterious degree the cause of his brother’s death.

She had not even the poor consolation of once more gazing upon the beloved face, all cold and unresponsive as it would be. Even that was denied her. Ah, but how little had she grieved for that other son when he had gone down beneath the buffeting storms which had so fiercely swept the ocean of his life, how secretly exultant she had been that his birthright had passed to his brother, whom she loved!

All that a daughter could do had Nellie done for her mother at this terrible crisis. Her patience was unbounded, even when her hardest and most unselfish efforts were met with fierce reproaches and ironical taunts. What had she cared for poor Hubert when he was alive, that she should feign grief for him now? Why, if she thought of anyone but herself, it was Roland, to whom everything must give way. At other times the grievance would be that she did not show feeling enough. No one would think that her brother had barely lain a month in his cold grave, to see the cheerful expression of her face. These and similar reproaches were her daily portion, till at last the poor girl had begun to think she really was without feelings, and if not, that the sooner she became so the better.

But there was an ever-brightening spot on her horizon. Although he had been unable to see her, Eustace Ingelow had made of the catastrophe an opportunity of renewing his vows by letter, and even this was as balm to the girl’s empty, aching heart. The rector’s son was no half-and-half lover, and in a trice the correspondence had become brisk. Of course his letters were supremely incoherent and foolish effusions, such indeed as would convulse a callous court were they produced in a breach of promise suit, but they were so thoroughly genuine, breathing throughout such a spirit of manly affection and real hopefulness, that poor Nellie took vast comfort, and found herself looking forward to the expiration of the few weeks which should bring the Oxford vacation and the writer in person with a degree of eagerness such as she had never before experienced about anything.

Yes. Eustace was hopeful. That mournful search in which he had borne so active and intrepid a part had, he felt, rendered him yeoman’s service. Not only had Nellie’s father spoken gratefully to him on that occasion, but he had since received a—for him—very kind letter from the General, expressing appreciation of his energetic aid and true sympathy, and trusting that when he returned to Wandsborough he would do him the favour of calling at Cranston, in order that he might adequately thank him in person, he, the General, having given up visiting for the present.

So Eustace saw light ahead, and being very young and proportionately sanguine, his hopes flew off at a tangent and took in the interests of others besides himself. Who knew but that he might be instrumental in bringing about a reconciliation all round? Perhaps the old General was not such a bad sort at bottom, he reasoned, and if only the “padre” could be got at him, why, he was sure things would come right. Then the next thing would be to find poor, dear old Roland. They could advertise for him, or set some of those private-inquiry fellows on his track, and find him somehow, and then Olive and himself could have a double-barrelled wedding, and henceforth they would all be as jolly together as jolly could be, more so in fact by contrast with all these wretched rows which had gone before. So reasoned glowing youth, leaving out of account such considerations as that rancorous feud—bitter, burning words, which, once spoken, cannot be forgotten, no, not in a hundred life-times—black misfortune, and hope turned to the gall of despair do not pass over those concerned without leaving terrible traces of their deadly blight, even if the fruit which they have borne be that of ruin and of crime.

But if Eustace left out of sight these reflections, his father did not. The rector smiled sadly to himself as he read his son’s sanguine outpourings—sadly, for he speculated how soon and to what extent contact with the hard world would rub off the boy’s fresh, wholesome warmheartedness. Yet one suggestion had fixed his attention, for it bore upon the very plan which he had himself been meditating for some days. It was that he should pay a call of condolence at Cranston. He did not pretend to himself that it was otherwise than distasteful, but it seemed his duty. The Dorriens were not his parishioners, but they were neighbours. They had always treated him with hostility, and on one or two occasions with studied insult; yet they were now sorely afflicted, and for him to allow resentment because of his trifling wrongs to stand in the way at such a time, would be more than unworthy. It was not to be thought of.

So, actuated by these considerations, Dr Ingelow found himself one afternoon ringing at the great door of Cranston Hall. He noted the stare of surprise which came over the stolid visage of the domestic who opened it, and who in a minute returned to inform him that General and Mrs Dorrien did not see visitors at present, but that they desired that their compliments should be conveyed to him. A few days later the rector received a note stamped with the Dorrien arms, which he opened with considerable curiosity. Though stiff and formal, it was not uncivil, as in curt phraseology General Dorrien expressed his appreciation of the Rector of Wandsborough’s kindly attention, and indeed that of all other sympathetic inquirers, etc, etc. And the good priest felt that he had done his duty.

But he still had plenty of anxieties, the first and chiefest of which was on Olive’s behalf. She had never quite recovered from the effects of that terrible night, and the Wandsborough M.D., together with a great London luminary whom the rector had privily got down to see her, had confessed themselves baffled. At any rate they were clear upon one point. She must have a change; that was imperatively needed, and it must be a thorough one. For a long time she resisted. She did not want to leave Wandsborough, she protested, and why not wait until the summer, when it would be so much pleasanter abroad? But Margaret’s diplomacy overruled all these objections, and it was decided they should leave for the south of Spain almost immediately.

On one point Olive’s lips were sealed. No word passed them as to the identity of the mysterious stranger. Her lover had more than hinted at some terrible shadow overhanging him, apart from his ruined prospects. Her quick intellect put two and two together. His disguise must have been assumed with no light object, and with no living soul, not even her own father, would she share the key to the mystery. But she lost no time in despatching to the address which he had left, such a letter as should ensure her against losing sight of him again, repeating, as it did, all—and more than all—her assurances to him during that last meeting on the lone seashore; breathing a world of comfort and hopefulness and love.

Chapter Thirty Five.

Redivivus.

Again we must ask the reader to stand with us in the cheerful dining-room within which he obtained his first introduction to Cranston Hall. Now, as then, the breakfast table looks bright and inviting, as its owner sits at it, opening his letters with a grave, serious face; but now, unlike then, no warm summer sunshine searches out every corner of the floor, for the sky is thickly overcast, and tossing eddies of snowflakes are whirling past, and powdering with a sugary carpet the half-frozen lawn. Nor do the clustering roses softly beat their bruised fragrance against the window panes; in their stead only bare branches, tossing in the wintry wind which, dismally whistling round the corners of the house, enhances the snugness of the cosy room, with its blazing fire, whence reflects a sparkling glow upon the breakfast-things and the snowy cloth.

And he who now sits at the table is not him whom we first saw there, for this is a much younger man. Time, which brought its rude buffets, has at length brought its compensations, and Roland Dorrien now reigns in the halls of his ancestors. Let us look at him as he sits there. A little thinner perhaps, certainly graver, and with a brow never quite free from an expression of anxious care; there is an occasional thread of grey in his dark hair, and in the deep blue eyes may be descried a tinge of sadness which is seldom absent. He has aged, too, in appearance, and that greatly; yet barely two years have gone over his head since the night the mysterious stranger altered the hands of the old clock standing in the hall of “The Silver Fleece Inn” at Battisford.

General Dorrien is dead—has lain in Cranston churchyard a year and a half—and his son reigns in his stead.

But whatever our opinion of the deceased Squire of Cranston, the important part he has played in our story entitles him to something more than the above brief obituary. One evening at the period named, the General failed to return home, whereas it was his wont to appear punctually at the dressing bell. His wife, astonished at this deviation from his rigidly unchanging habits, grew alarmed. The dinner-bell rang—still the General did not appear. Then inquiry elicited that he had been last seen by one of the under-gardeners strolling near the ornamental water, it might have been an hour ago. No, the man noticed nothing strange about his master, who seemed quite well, if anything, rather cheerful. Thoroughly alarmed now, Mrs Dorrien collected the gardeners and proceeded to the spot where her husband had last been seen. It was, as the man had stated, close to the lake—being, in fact, barely thirty yards distant therefrom. While directing the men to scatter and proceed through the shrubbery in search of their master, Mrs Dorrien’s eye fell upon an object floating in the water, and the sight well-nigh deprived her of speech and power. In response to her signs as she sank down half-fainting, the men pushed off the boat and quickly returned with the General’s cane. That was enough. All hope was at an end. But a few minutes more and the body of the missing Squire was found, lying in barely four feet of water. Suicide? No. The medical examination proved that the deceased had been suddenly seized with a fit while standing on the brink of the pool, and had fallen in.

Those who knew the family legend were now more awestruck than they chose to admit. Within a few months of each other, two more Dorriens had miserably perished—alone, unseen, and by the agency of water. Of a truth there was something in the prophecy. When the exile, in response to an urgent advertisement for the late Squire of Cranston’s missing son, presented himself at the offices of Messrs Swan and Simcox, solicitors, Furnival’s Inn, and having duly satisfied those gentlemen as to his identity, was informed that General Dorrien had died suddenly, and that every search having been made for his will without avail, he, the applicant—who, as he stood there, could not have put down two shillings and a sixpence if his life depended on it—was heir-at-law to the splendid estate of Cranston with its dependency, Minchkil Down, etc, etc, and all personal property besides, the deceased having died intestate, it struck those respected practitioners, Messrs Swan and Simcox, that this new client was a very extraordinary sort of man indeed. For he had sunk into a chair muttering something about “too late,” and turning ghastly white, till they became quite alarmed on his account. However, good news does not kill, and the first shock over, Roland Dorrien, without any fuss, quietly, and as if he had never left it, entered upon his own.

Yet when this happened his affairs were in a very desperate condition indeed. For months after his terrible experience with Olive Ingelow on the tide-swept coast he had supported himself by sheer physical labour, more by way of forcing his mind to forget, than with the desire of prolonging his wretched existence, for he had now no longer the means of leaving the country. This could not last long. To a man of his temperament there was but one end—mental prostration, with its dire result, the lunatic asylum or the suicide’s grave. And from this his father’s death had befallen just—but only just—in time to save him.

How it was that General Dorrien should not only have allowed his unforgiven son to succeed him, but also, by dying intestate, have left his wife and Nellie almost entirely dependent upon that son’s bounty, is one of those mysteries that will never be solved in this world. His wife had a small income of her own, but out of the estate she could not touch a penny otherwise than as a free gift from Roland. And this she positively refused to do—and persevered in her refusal.

Greatly did the family solicitors puzzle over the non-transpiration of any will. They were aware of the quarrel between the General and his son, and that the former should die without testamentary instructions was not quite satisfactory. At first they suspected that there was a will, but that it had somehow got lost, but when after a most careful search it was not forthcoming, then their suspicions took the direction of foul play, in which, however, they acquitted the heir-at-law of any complicity.

And the said heir-at-law shared their suspicions, though he breathed no word of it to them or to any other living ear. But no precaution would he neglect to render secure to himself that which he regarded as rightfully his own, and which had come to him, if by chance, yet at the most fortunate of times. If it should transpire that others had the legal right, at any rate he had the moral right, and it should not be his fault if he did not keep it. So the first thing he did upon entering on possession was to institute a most thorough and exhaustive search for the missing document on his own account. He would ensure the safety of his position once and for all, and leave nothing to chance. So for several nights, when no living eye could behold him, did he remain up till early dawn, carrying on his search. Not a desk or a drawer was left unrifled, not an article of furniture unmoved. Even the very wails he carefully sounded for hollow places and sliding panels, and more than one escritoire suspected of secret drawers did he hew in pieces with his own hand, alone and with locked doors. Once, indeed, his breath came thick and his heart stood still as he lit upon a bundle of legal-looking parchments in one of these forgotten recesses. But they were only records of a private and delicate transaction of his father’s early life, and with a sigh of relief he burnt them to ashes. Had one of them been the genuine document, which was to dispossess him, it would have shared the fate of the rest. No scruples would have stayed his hand. He had drained the cup of poverty and destitution to the very dregs; but the tide had turned at last. What he had got he meant to keep, at all and every hazard.

But that was a year and a half ago, and now here he sits opening his letters. A frown comes over his face as his eye falls upon the address of one of them, and with a couple of impatient tugs at his moustache he chucks the obnoxious missive aside. Then a light step is heard in the passage and his brow clears. There is a place laid opposite his, and behind the urn, evidently awaiting its occupant. Surely that is she outside. Who is it? His sister, Nellie?

Then the door opens, and enter—not Nellie, but Olive. No longer Olive Ingelow, however, for it is rather over a year ago that she changed it, and never in all his priestly experience had the rector of Wandsborough pronounced the blessing of his Church upon a happier union than these the nuptials of his best-loved child have up till now proved.

Olive’s happiness suits her well, for she is looking lovelier than ever, and seems to bring a ray of sunshine in with her this biting, tempestuous winter morning. She seems, too, to have recovered a large portion of her old irresistible spirits, though the sparkling piquancy of the beautiful girl whom we first saw in Wandsborough church has given way to the more thoughtful sweetness of the woman who has passed to her happiness through the dark days of trial and affliction. Her husband is wont sportively to tell her that she is fast acquiring the staidness of the conventional British matron—an imputation which she makes believe greatly to resent. But Roland Dorrien’s love and adoration of his beautiful wife is as warm to-day as it was when they stood together two years ago beneath the cliffs, in the dim gloaming, with the spray dashing in their faces as they watched the huge waves thundering in, and knew that in another hour they would be lying dead in each other’s embrace.

She goes across to him now and puts her arm round his neck and lays her cheek against his.

“What is it, dear? Any bad news? No. Only those stupid old business letters,” she says, looking over his shoulder. “Put them away till later and don’t let them bore you. But just look how it’s snowing. You won’t be able to shoot to-day.”

“No, I shan’t. But it doesn’t really matter—Marsland won’t care—and I asked the Colonel, but I believe the good old chap will be only too glad of the excuse to sit quietly at home. Tom Barnes will be rather sold, I’m afraid—but we can give him a shoot at any time.”

“Of course. And now we’ll have a snug day together, all to ourselves—won’t we?”

“Olive, darling, I can’t help thinking sometimes you must be dull here, shut up all the year round with such a cross-grained animal as this,” he says, after a minute’s pause. “It must be such a contrast as compared with the jolly days at the old Rectory. Now confess.”

“I’ll confess this much—that if you don’t get that idea out of your wise old head, I shall begin to have a bad opinion of you,” she replies affectionately. “Why, I can run over at any moment and look them up, or get them up here, as in fact I’m always doing. What more can you think I want? Now let’s see what the arbiter of Fate has brought forth,” continues she, going round to her place. “Two bills—that’s your department. Letters—only one, and that from Eusty. His regiment has been ordered to India—wonder how Nellie will like that—and he is coming down here the week after next. He will be here in time for the festival.”

“That’s a goodish bit of news. Will he come to us or to the Rectory first?”

“Don’t know. That’ll have to be decided.”

“By the way, where’s Roy?” he asks suddenly. “He hasn’t been in this morning. Ah, there he is.”

For the servant entering with a tray has also admitted our woolly friend, who makes for his master and thrusts his nose into his hand with an affectionate whine, his brush wagging like a flail.

Roy, too, is restored to his rightful place in society, as his master puts it. One of the first things Roland did when the tide of his misfortunes turned, was to take steps for the recovery of his faithful follower, and Roy’s new owner, who was a good-hearted fellow, had refused the somewhat extravagant sum which was offered him for his purchase, and had handed him back at the same price. Roy’s exuberant glee on his restoration to his old master was something indescribable. But now he has long been an institution in the Cranston household and is a favourite with everyone, except Johnston, the head-gardener, of whom more anon.

The airy mood of the new Squire of Cranston fades as suddenly as it arose. He eyes for a moment the unwelcome missive which he has cast aside, then, as if with an effort, he tears it open. It is only a letter from his mother.

“Oh! What is it, darling?” cries Olive anxiously, half starting up. For with a furious imprecation Roland has dashed down the open sheet upon the table, and sits back in his chair, his face ashy white.

Only a couple of lines does this letter contain, and they are in his mother’s handwriting.

“Since you force me to speak plainly, I will—I can hold no communication with a murderer—a fratricide.”

“Roland, tell me what it is. Tell me, darling, and let me share it with you,” urges Olive pleadingly. “What cruel thing does she say?”

His hand is trembling as it heavily lies upon the open paper, as if to blot out the accusing words.

“Nothing but what is evil and ill-conditioned,” he answers hoarsely. “See what comes of doing the right thing. It’s only her reply to that letter of mine offering to make a settlement upon her. This is the fifth time I’ve done it, and each time I get more abused than before. One’s mother!”

Oh, the biting satire in the last two words. Roland Dorrien has never seen his mother since the day he passed her in anger on the stairs. There had been no affection between them at any time, and now he would not pretend to any. But he had his code of honour, and under this he would willingly have made a liberal settlement upon her out of the estate. Mrs Dorrien, however, refused to touch a penny—and went further. She rejected his overtures with scorn and even reproach. An idea had rooted itself in her mind that he was responsible for his younger brother’s death—that he had made away with him, in short, for his own advantage. It was the merest fancy, wholly destitute of the slightest clue, but it took firmer and firmer hold upon her till she was convinced of its truth, as though she had beheld with her own eyes that terrible scene on the cliff. But she had never gone so far as to put her suspicion into words until now, when, in an access of fierce grief for the lost, and fury against those who had benefited by her bereavement, she had penned those fearful words.

“I won’t let you leave me while you are like this,” pleads Olive tenderly, with her arm on his shoulder. He had been gathering up his letters to go, a move which she was determined to circumvent. “Whatever it is, remember nothing can separate us now.”

He almost shudders at her words. Can it not? he thinks. Yes, but it can—and in a manner so grisly and awful as she would never dream of suspecting. His brain is in a whirl. What could have set his mother’s suspicions to work? Even though they could have no foundation to go upon, a fixed idea like that, in such a mind as hers, might be in the highest degree dangerous.

“I must go,” he answers. “But, my darling, I promise to come back to you here in half an hour. Will that do?”

She is satisfied. A clinging kiss, and then she stands gazing after the tall, fine figure in its shooting-suit of light homespun. She sees him enter the study—his father’s study that was—and hears the snap of the key in the lock, then, turning to the window, she stands looking thoughtfully and with a troubled expression out upon the whirling snowflakes and the white, cold earth, in contrast whereto the dark trunks and gaunt limbs of the trees in the park show out like starved spectres, and the dismal howling of the wintry blast is as the warning voice of impending woe.

Amid the joys which encompass Olive Dorrien’s married life there is yet room for one great sorrow. Over her husband’s peace there hangs some dark and terrible secret, the weight of which he must bear alone.

Chapter Thirty Six.

The Sword.

Although the neighbourhood had by this time got thoroughly accustomed to the new state of things at Cranston, and had voted it a great improvement on the old, yet the said vicinity was unanimous in its opinion that the General’s successor was decidedly queer.

True, a man in his position should be popular and not eccentric, but then, there were extenuating circumstances. If the county was not so much entertained at Cranston Hall as it deemed it had a right to expect, at any rate open house was kept periodically; and, as all things are relative, the contrast between even this and the inhospitality which characterised the late General’s tenure, told to tenfold advantage. Another claim had Roland Dorrien upon the indulgence of the neighbourhood. He had taken his wife from among the daughters of the land. No stranger to them and theirs had he brought into their midst, but one whom they had seen grow up among them, and right nobly did she grace her far from unimportant, and at first rather trying, position. So, taking all things into account, the neighbourhood was inclined to congratulate itself on the acquisition of a new lord for Cranston, and to look with indulgent eyes upon his moods and vagaries.

And these were multifold. Though not of a hilarious disposition, yet there were times when he would yield himself up to the excitement of the hour with an unthinking abandon which made even the youngest and liveliest of his guests stare, and then, while they were wondering with an agreeable surprise how it was that they had never suspected Dorrien of having so much in him, the mercury would fall with alarming suddenness, and he would relapse into a moody taciturnity, for which there was no accounting. Sometimes, too, those staying at Cranston never saw their host for days at a time, except at meals, and these he seemed to get through in a half-absent kind of way, answering in monosyllables if appealed to, but never originating a remark. In his normal frame of mind, however, Roland Dorrien struck his acquaintance as somewhat cold and uncomfortably reticent, but as a peculiarly keen-witted and observant man.

For a long time he had steadfastly refused to be placed on the Commission of the Peace, and his old friend, Colonel Neville, had waxed very sore and disappointed thereat. For Dorrien of Cranston not to have his place among the judicial luminaries adorning the Wandsborough Bench was, in the gallant veteran’s eyes, a thing simply unheard of in the annals of the county. Why, it was tantamount to a prediction of the family downfall. But Roland had stood firm, and the Colonel had taken the matter quite seriously to heart. Then all of a sudden, just as his friends had given up trying to persuade him, he had, of his own accord, expressed his willingness to serve, and the Colonel was overjoyed. But from the day of his appointment up till now he had only taken his seat on the bench three times, and then, either by accident or design, when there was a peculiarly light list of cases for adjudication. Moreover, his voice had been strenuously raised on the side of mercy, to the no small astonishment of those who had ever been wont to look upon his name as a convertible term for unbending severity. “A hard Dorrien” was how inferiors and dependents had been wont to speak of the heads of the family.

“I don’t think it exactly my line in life,” he observed to Mr Curtis, the vicar of Cranston, in reply to that worthy’s expostulation with him for his scant attendance at Petty Sessions, “to sit in judgment on a lot of poor devils who knock over a rabbit when they’re half-starving. It doesn’t seem a very ennobling kind of office to fill, does it?”

“That’s all very well, Mr Dorrien,” had replied the vicar, who was a zealous attendant at the Wandsborough Bench, and not a little proud of his connection therewith. “But birth and station have their duties, you must remember, and if those who by virtue of these advantages are appointed to ‘execute justice and maintain truth’ shrink from their responsibilities, why, it will soon be a bad thing for the country. For what is the country to do?”

“Pay some fellow—one of the Great Unbriefed, for instance—to perform these onerous duties,” was the reply, with a careless laugh, not wholly free from satire. “Plenty of sharp fellows in these hard times would jump at the billet, any one of whom would be quite as competent as we are collectively to fine Bill Gubbins ten shillings and costs for driving a horse and cart down the street when drunk and incapable, or to decide whether John Hodge or Tom Podge shall be adjudged to contribute towards the maintenance of Sarah Timms’ latest hopeful. At any rate it doesn’t strike me that the discharge of these elevating duties should be monopolised by ‘birth and station.’”

To which the vicar, a fine, hard-headed Tory of the old school, had replied severely, that he feared his friend had become imbued with some of the Radical tendencies of the day.

Roland’s eccentricities, too, had their religious side. For weeks he would never go near a church, then he would rise in the dark, three or four times a week, mount his horse and ride over to the morning office at Wandsborough church, and the little congregation assembled in the side chapel, whose gloom was hardly dispersed by the altar tapers’ soft glow, while the rain poured down upon the roof, would be astonished by a tall figure, gaitered and mud-besplashed, suddenly arriving in its midst, perhaps, just as Dr Ingelow and his acolyte were reciting the Nicene Creed. On the subject of these pilgrimages he let drop no word to anybody, not even to his wife, turning the conversation if she alluded to them; and this, with ready tact, after the first time, she never did, in having recorded which fact, by the way, we have testified volumes to Olive’s advantage. Nevertheless, she rejoiced with a great secret joy. But Wandsborough regarded these proceedings on the part of the Squire of Cranston with undivided curiosity, but diverse feelings, and the advanced Anglicans congratulated themselves mightily on the acquisition of so influential and important a convert.

Various theories, too, were advanced to account for Roland Dorrien’s eccentricities. Some went so far as darkly to whisper that there was madness in the family. There was the late General, for instance. Look how he shut himself up and never entertained, and was always gloomy and morose, and quarrelled with everybody, his own flesh and blood included. Then, to go further back, there was the General’s brother, the former Squire, an old bachelor and most queer in his ways. And now this one—at his age, and in his fortunate circumstances, a man ought not to look and act as if life was one great and protracted mistake. A few, more charitably disposed and more superstitious withal, scouted the mania theory, but declared that the present race of Dorriens must be under a curse. At any rate, it was not a little singular that two out of the three sons had met with an untimely and tragical death, and now, no doubt, the thought of it preyed upon the mind of the surviving one. But whatever it was, it must be a very serious thing, for there could be few more enviable positions and calculated to produce happiness, as the world understands it, than that of Dorrien of Cranston. On this point the neighbourhood was thoroughly agreed.

And the neighbourhood, looking at things from its own light, argued rightly. In the full health and vigour of his manhood, possessed of one of the most beautiful seats in England, its splendid domain absolutely unencumbered, a lovely wife, who adored him—if there is such a thing as happiness in the world, assuredly Roland Dorrien should have been a happy man. Yet he was not.

As we have seen, no compunction followed upon his crime—no remorse—no fear of detection and of the awful penalty which, in the event of detection, he would be called upon to pay. He was then so overwhelmed beneath the blows of Fate, that one more or less could make no difference in the wretched hopelessness of his lot. His conscience was seared past all feeling.

Then had come the change, and from a living death a single day had sufficed to restore him to the joys of life in more than all their fulness—their sweetness, beyond measure, enhanced by the black period which had gone before. He had stretched forth his hand and grasped them, he had hastened to pluck for his own this fair flower which had languished and grown beyond his reach, and in gathering it he had filled, as he thought, his cup of bliss to the very brim. Secure in the love of his beautiful wife, prosperous in his splendid possessions, what could this one crime of a troublous past avail against him?

But with prosperity his heart grew soft again, and with it the voice of compunction made itself heard—at first, but faintly, and only at long intervals. Then, little by little, the haunting vision of a face in its agony of death-terror stole across the unclouded brightness of his life, and Time, which in its course blurs over all recollections as it rolls on, only served to bring out this one more vividly. In the dead of night would that face be staring at him, in the golden hours of the bright and peaceful day, that awful, agonised gasp would sound in his ears as he heard it on the brink of the abyss; and as the horror of this ever-brooding cloud across his sunshine swept full upon him with a weird and supernatural, yet none the less real a consciousness, a dejection settled down upon his mind, which, if allowed to grow apace, might end in the most disastrous of results.

And Olive—did she ever regret the step which had linked her lot to his, burdened as it was with a secret grief in which she had no share? Never, for the fraction of a moment. Always brave, loving, and patient, she strove to lighten his load. Even when suffering from a temporary depression of spirits herself, she would brace herself with an effort and cast care away in order that she might cheer him. She studied his moods, and when in her clear-sightedness she saw the dark hour about to come upon him, any sacrifice of her own comfort and convenience did she deem of small account if only she could keep up his spirits and lift him out of himself. And she had her reward. Never was he so happy as when alone with her—and as amid the night horrors of the fatal cave, with the wild waters surging around them, he had found refuge in her slumbering innocence and purity from the supernatural terrors which came crowding in, thick and fast, upon his soul, so now, in his dark and conscience-stricken moods, hers was the image that caused the evil spirit to fly; her tones, the music that rendered his ears deaf to the accusing voice; hers the protecting presence, beneath the weight of the ever-threatening cloud which he felt would sooner or later descend upon him and overwhelm him in his doom.

Yet why should it? No human eye witnessed that moonlight tragedy. Already the circumstances had faded into past history; nor at the time had any suspicion of violence arisen to fix people’s memory. But for all that, Roland was as firmly convinced that sooner or later the reckoning would overtake him, as that he himself was a living man, and when it did, he had little enough doubt as to the issue. And now, as we see him once more after two years, that crisis seems to him within measurable distance.

Chapter Thirty Seven.

Eustace Outflanked.

General Dorrien’s widow occupied a semi-detached villa in Maida Vale. She had, as we have seen, persistently and even fiercely refused her son’s repeated offers of a settlement, liberal and freely made as they were, preferring to live on her own not very ample means to accepting a penny from him whom, without a shred of evidence to justify her in the idea, she persisted in regarding as responsible for his brother’s death. The difference in her mode of living was a trifle, she declared. At Cranston, they had always lived very quietly, so it was in no sense a “come-down.” Poor Nellie, however, had felt the change acutely, and although she tried dutifully to make the best of it, the exclusive society of a gloomy parent told upon her spirits, and the smoke-defiled air of suburban London was a poor substitute for the strong ozone of the sea. Consequently, the girl became seriously ailing, and there was nothing for it but to send her away for a change.

It was some time, however, before the widow would allow her to accept Roland’s invitation, and it was not until he threatened to go in person and bring her away by force that her mother, whom misfortune had not rendered one whit less selfish and exacting, reluctantly gave way. So Nellie returned for a long stay at her old home, and was made much of by her brother and his wife, under which bright auspices her spirits came back like magic, and day after day she wondered the more how they could all find themselves so thoroughly happy where, before, gloom and restraint, jars and wrangles, had been the order of the day. Why, she could hardly believe it was Cranston, and Olive’s warning had weight—that she must not get well and strong too quickly, or her mother would be wanting her back again.

And this warning was very urgently seconded by a certain recently-gazetted subaltern, who seemed to divide the time of his leave exclusively between the Rectory and Cranston Hall, the latter receiving by far the lion’s share. In short, Eustace made the most of his opportunities, to the satisfaction of both parties. There was a third party to be reckoned with, though, and one into whose scheme satisfaction did not enter. This was Nellie’s mother.

The widow was furious when the subject was broached to her. Never as long as she lived would she listen to any such preposterous idea. The very name of Ingelow was repulsive to her; had not that detestable family wrought mischief—not to say crime—enough? Poor Nellie was ordered home at once; and, not content with giving Roland a most unambiguous bit of her mind, Mrs Dorrien, senior, extended the attention to Dr Ingelow, who for his part consigned the vituperative document to the flames, mostly unread. But Roland, chucking his jobation across the table to Olive, laughed sneeringly at the pious quotations, alternating line by line with vehement abuse.

“Ha-ha! Honour our parents, indeed! No, no. That string’s played through, Mrs General Dorrien.”

He was for keeping Nellie at Cranston altogether, but apart from the objections of the girl herself—who, in spite of everything, refused to leave her mother, now that the latter was all alone—the rector strongly objected to his son being a party to such desertion. They must wait and have patience. It was only a question of time, and both were young. A little self-denial and consideration, even for one bitterly hostile, would do them no harm—in fact, they could not but be the gainers by it in the long run. Thus the good old man. But his son-in-law was not of this way of thinking; however, he yielded the point.

Then Eustace, deserted by his supports, resolved upon a bold venture—nothing less than an advance upon the enemy’s camp under cover of a flag of truce. The widow received him, but to the end of his life the youthful warrior was sure he would retain a very lively recollection of the interview, though a confused idea of what was said in the course thereof. As he remarked to his sister, Sophie, when reporting progress—“Sweet relative—future mamma-in-law? Blackguarded a fellow without a break for twenty-five minutes by the clock, and then, before he could get in a word edgeways, turfed him out into the street. Take my word for it, Sophonisba, my jewel, I wouldn’t tackle that same ancient and formidable party again—no, not for all the V.C.s ever struck.”

Left to her retirement, the General’s widow did two things, neither of which tended to her own peace of mind nor to the happiness of her daughter. She went in strongly for the Gospel according to Calvin, and she cherished and fed her grief for the loss of her idolised son. Her crapes were as heavy as in the first month of her widowhood, and no little awe did the stern and gloomy countenance, and the tall figure swathed in deepest black, inspire among the elect of the flock shepherded by the noted evangelical luminary whom Mrs Dorrien had elected to “sit under.” She lived alone with her daughter, visiting, and being visited by, nobody, in order that she might more freely brood and indulge her grief. She suffered terrible anguish at times, yet looked upon her loss in the light of a judgment, and while admitting the justice of it as concerning herself, yet none the less luridly did her resentment burn against him whom, rightly or wrongly, she regarded as its instrument.

Chapter Thirty Eight.

“Give me your Confidence.”

It was Monday morning, and a bright and beautiful day. Three people sat at breakfast at Cranston Hall, the third being Frank Marsland, Roy’s quondam purchaser. The wintry sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky, though without power, for the hard frost lay in silvery patches, wholly unaffected by his searching beams.

“Do you feel like skating to-day, Marsland?” said Roland, breaking off from the discussion of a grand festival service they had attended at Wandsborough Church the night before, and as to the detail of which the guest had been seeking information from Olive.

“I should think so. Ice good, eh, Dorrien?”

“First-rate. I had it flooded last night, and it’ll be like glass.”

A sound of voices in the hall, then the door opened without ceremony, and there entered Eustace and his youngest sister, each armed with a pair of skates.

“Salve! All hail, Macbeth! Glorificamus, all round!” cried the former. “Roland, old chap, you don’t seem quite the thing. In the words of the poet, you look decidedly ‘chippy.’”

“Enough to make one, you ruffian, to have a cyclone like yourself bursting upon one’s quiet breakfast-room without any warning.”

“Haw! haw! Coffee, yes, decidedly. Breakfast? no—emphatically,” cried Eustace, running two replies into one. “And, Olive, I must say, it’s disgraceful of you, reared in the sweet seclusion of a virtuous rectory, only just sitting down to breakfast at ten o’clock. Disgraceful, I repeat.”

“Oh, Eusty, in the words of the poet—shut up!” laughed Olive. “Mr Marsland, I don’t think you’ve met my sister?” And she introduced them. Sophie had grown up a very pretty girl. Her vivacity, however, was dashed with a tinge of shyness in the company of strangers, which was rather “fetching.” Now she looked very engaging in her furry winter costume, her bright face sparkling with animation, and crowned by a becoming arrangement of golden hair. Marsland’s somewhat susceptible heart was impressed.

“No. But I think we should have broken the ice, anyhow, Mrs Dorrien,” he answered with a laugh.

“Break the ice? No you don’t,” cried the irrepressible Eustace. “At least not till this evening, when we flood it. And now, look sharp and finish the oats, good people, for we’ve come to pick you up, and Spelder Fields is over two miles off.”

“All right. I’ll send and order the waggonette,” said Roland, getting up.

“Waggonette be hanged!” was the ceremonious rejoinder. “We are going to ride Shanks His Mare. And I tell you what, Roland, you lazy dog, you had better do ditto. Some leg work, this gorgeous morning, will do you all the good in the world. Quite set you up again,” he grinned, with a wink at Marsland.

“Set me up, eh? But I turned in before you did!”

“Did he, Olive? No, I won’t bet. I’ll have no chance against your combined perjuries. But Roland, why didn’t you turn up at our place last night and feed, instead of sneaking off home. The dad was expecting you. He wanted to run you against that great gun, Hurrell, the padre who held forth. Wasn’t he lively, eh?”

“Eusty, you irreverent boy, don’t talk shop,” said Olive impatiently.

“All serene. We had a regular sacerdotal feed though, with the dad in the chair and Margaret in the vice-chair. Concerning whom, old Crustibore, the ex-archdeacon of Seringapatam, who’s stone deaf and takes snuff, remarked to his neighbour in a strident stage-whisper what a young-looking woman ‘Mrs Ingelow’ was, to be the mother of that dashing fellow opposite. I thought the dad would have choked. As for me I roared outright, but I took care to look in another direction, so it didn’t matter.”

“It wasn’t ‘dashing fellow’ at all, Olive,” struck in Sophie. “What Dr Crustibore really said was ‘that lanky rascal.’”

All shouted, except Eustace, who affected to regard the interruption as unworthy of notice.

“Yes,” he went on. “It’s a pity you weren’t there to keep Sophie in order. She behaved disgracefully, the more so that ‘great was the company of the preachers.’”

“Ah! I’ve been waiting for that quotation,” cried Sophie, sharp as a needle. “Olive, he made use of it about twenty times last night—went all round the room planting it everywhere. I heard it myself at least ten times, and knowing Eusty as we do, it’s safe to put the total figure at twenty. And now he’s transplanted it here. I knew he would. Dragged it in by the head and shoulders, too—literally.”

“Twenty times! Say a hundred while you’re about it.”

“It was twenty at least. Why, Margaret heard him three times, and scowled at him for a profane person.”

“Who hadn’t got any ‘birthright’ to sell,” cut in Eustace. “But you should have heard that child. She got in among a knot of those doleful chaps, all neck and spectacles, regular gargoyles, you know, and played the very mischief. You know that lank chap, Berriman, who brought out those asinine articles on celibacy. Well, she soon worked round to that topic, and made of it a peg whereon to hang such a jobation, that they stared at her in horrified amaze, and scattered as if a shell had dropped in among them. You see, she spoke feelingly. That sort of doctrine tends to spoil trade.”

“Pooh! None of your gargoyles for me,” laughed Sophie.

“No. Nothing less than a gay Hussar will suit her,” rejoined Eustace. “There are two in the regiment that’ll be just the thing—both much of a muchness. I’m going to bring them over next time I get leave, and then, O Sophonisba, my child, you can smile on the survivor.”

“No,” retorted the girl mischievously. “I don’t like soldiers—cavalrymen least of all. Civilians are much nicer. Look at Roland, for instance. He doesn’t tire one with a lot of third-hand chaff.”

“Oh, come! I say, Olive, do you allow that?” cried the irrepressible subaltern. “In view of the approximate passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill, I call upon you to quell such sentiments, and to repudiate their enunciator—trix, rather.”

The ice at Spelder Fields was in fine order. It was a large, flooded meadow on one of the Cranston farms, and although the Squire could have kept it closed to the public, that course would have roused such an amount of ill-feeling as to render the experiment not worth while, for it had been used from time immemorial. It was the rule, however, that anything tending to spoil the ice should be rigorously excluded, and elides were strictly taboo, while any approach to yahooism was promptly nipped in the bud. As the townspeople could not turn out till evening, during the daytime the privileged few had things all their own way.

We shall not, however, follow our party throughout the day. Be it briefly recorded, however, that Marsland surrendered at discretion to Sophie’s blue eyes and golden hair, and fresh, bewitching ways, and constituted himself her guide, philosopher and friend, and fetch-and-carry generally, through the uncertain and mazy evolutions of the ice—and how Eustace poured out the vials of his exuberant chaff upon them and upon everybody, and notably upon a brace of shaven and spectacled young clerics, who rather fancied themselves on skates, and, with singular unanimity of intent, were bent on imbuing Sophie with the same idea, but that our friend Marsland sailed in and cut out the prize from under their guns, apparently with the full approval of the prize itself.

“Time to knock off and give King Mob his innings,” cried Roland, whirling up to the bank and casting himself thereon.

“Oh, hang it, old man! Isn’t it rather soon?” objected Marsland, who, hand-in-hand with a certain blue-eyed young lady, glided by just in time to catch the suggestion.

“Rather soon! I should think it was!” echoed Sophie.

“I think Mr Dorrien’s right,” said Clara Neville, who had just been taking a turn or two round the ice with the first speaker. “It’s disagreeable being here when the place is full of rough people. Besides, it’s getting late.”

Ill-natured friends were wont to whisper that the fair Clara was getting somewhat passée and soured, and that the qualifications of the future aspirant to Ardleigh Court would not be so narrowly scrutinised now as of yore. But the answer to this libel was that she had refused two very good offers and one indifferent one. Her sister, Maud, was married, and Clara was left alone in the ancestral halls. And now she had made up her mind to smile favourably on Frank Marsland, who had on a former occasion or two begun to show her attention, when again that detestable Rectory furnished a thorn for her side. That chit of a girl had upset the plan, even as her sister had done years before. Poor Clara had not enjoyed her day.

“Er—Dorrien—if you don’t mind, I think we—er—I—will have half an hour more of it,” stammered Marsland. “Miss Sophie says she’d rather walk back—er—and I’ll see her safe home.”

“All right, Marsland,” replied his host. “Olive dear, do you mind driving back without me? You can take Margaret in the waggonette.” He had taken off his skates, and was standing with one foot on the step of the vehicle, wherein sat his wife, wrapped in furs, and looking very sweet in the crisp, frosty air. “Your father and I are going to walk. Oh, and by the way, he says they all can go straight back with us to dinner, so you’d better go on ahead and arrange accordingly.”

“Very well, dear. But I quite envy you your lovely walk.”

“Not a few quite envy me my lovely something else,” he replied meaningly.

“What? Oh, you dear old goose!” she laughed, blushing at the delicate compliment, her dark eyes flashing at him a bright glance of affection. “Now go and find Margaret—there she is, just coming off the ice—and then we’ll go.”

“Well, Roland, my boy, this sort of thing makes a man feel young again,” said the rector, as they began to step cut briskly on their homeward way. The sun had gone down, and the bare trees stood against the cloudless sky in delicate tracery, as in a steel engraving. The dead leaves crackled underfoot, and behind them the ring of the skates on the ice, and the voices and laughter of the skaters grew fainter and fainter.

“I suppose it does,” answered the other shortly, with a glance around as if to make sure that no one was within earshot. Then after a pause—

“Look. From where we now stand, it will take us the best part of an hour to walk home—I can call it home now—and the Hall is nearly in the centre of the estate. Well, all this I gave up of my own free will—flung it away with both hands. For what? For love. But even that which I had bought at the price of my birthright, was snatched from me not many hours after its purchase, for the very day after I had done this I learned that I was a ruined man.”

“My dear boy, I can never blame myself enough for my short-sightedness in that wretched business,” cried the old man in a distressed voice, letting his hand fall affectionately on the other’s shoulder.

“There is no question of blame in the matter,” went on Roland, speaking quickly and decisively. “And now, do you ever regret that things turned out as they did? Have you ever had during this year and a half which has passed since you gave Olive to me—any reason for misgivings as to her future?”

“Never, Roland—never! Not for a moment! You have been as a dear son to me, and my other children look upon you as a brother, indeed.”

Again there was a pause. The rector, understanding well that these questions were leading to something, refrained from interposing.

“Well—now I ask—could anything that might happen—that might come to light, rather—cause you to entertain such misgivings now?”

It was the rector’s turn to hesitate. Whither was the conversation drifting? His mind reverted to the rumours current in Wandsborough shortly after Roland’s disappearance, and his brow slightly clouded. Before he could reply Roland struck in.

“I know what you are thinking of. I solemnly assure you again, that those rumours were absolutely false. Whatever might happen would affect myself alone. On Olive’s account you need feel no anxiety whatever.”

“That is all I was hesitating about, Roland. And now, my dear boy, if you feel that you can give me your confidence, it may be that you will have no cause to regret it.”

The younger man made no immediate reply. If ever there were time and place for confidence, it was here, in the sweet and peaceful quiet of the evening, the moonlight sleeping upon the hill and the bare, leafless woods lying still and ghostly against the slopes. That confidence he was resolved to make at all costs. No longer could he bear his terrible burden unaided, for a desperate idea had occurred to him. Who could he more certainly trust than his old and revered friend, the rector himself? No man living. But what he shrank from was the possible—nay, probable—loss of intimacy that would result from the avowal. Dr Ingelow was an Anglican priest, but then he was also a father. No word would pass his lips—but would it not hasten his steps to the grave once the old man learned that his daughter’s husband was a murderer, a man whose life would be forfeit for the rest of his days? And how should he meet a murderer on terms of friendship from day to day? To Roland, circumstanced as he was, there seemed a strange, subtle, protecting influence in the cordial intimacy existing between himself and the old priest, and he dreaded to cut away this sheet-anchor with his own hand. So this idea had slipped from him in despair, and he seemed as one hopelessly drifting.

And then again a new hope leaped into existence. Dr Ingelow had been a great traveller in his younger days. He knew what it was to carry his life in his hand. He had seen men shot down on very slight provocation in wild, lawless regions where a man must be ready to answer for his acts, and even his words, with his life, if not quick enough to defend it. Surely no man living was more qualified to judge of a case by its own merits. He would take a broader view than the cut-and-dried rules of a high-pressure, artificial state of society, recognising that England is not the world, nor yet its law-giver.

And now, walking beside his friend in the gathering gloom, Roland thought the moment had come. The remembrance of his resolution was strong in his mind, and he could imagine the rector once more the cool, wary traveller in wild countries, where friends stood by each other to the death.

“My confidence!” he echoed huskily. “I greatly fear I may regret giving it, but—” and again he paused, his features working strangely.

What a wonderful thing is life with its contrasts! Only two friends returning home this lovely evening from a day of healthful exercise, the cheerful voices of those they had left behind scarcely out of earshot. No more than this would the casual saunterer along that unfrequented footpath through the plantations meet or see. Yet, what could be of more awful moment than the subject of their discussion! If the supernatural powers to which one of these two lays claim exist, such powers are bounded by no considerations of time or locality; are dependent on no such matters of detail as official insignia. They exist or they do not, and if the former, can neither be qualified nor limited. Can it be that these silent woods—these glittering stars looking down through the leafless boughs, are about to witness a solemn act of absolution, and that from one of these men will be lifted a terrible weight of blood-guilt—even the curse of Cain! Surely it seems that those peaceful stars reflect the light of angelic eyes, and that even the voice of God might be heard in this secluded place.

But it is Earth after all. Whatever confidence might have been imminent, an interruption befalls, a diversion is created—and by what? Only a dog.

Ranging at will, forgotten of his master, Roy’s quick ear has detected a stealthy footfall among the dry crisp leaves, and there he stands, with hair erect and fangs bared, snarling savagely at a dark, thickset form, whose efforts to pacify him only seem to augment his hostility.

“Come away, Roy, you rascal—come away, sir, d’you hear?” cried Roland. The dog obeyed, and retreated reluctantly to his master’s side, keeping up a running fire of most threatening growls. “Down, sir. And now, who are you?”

“It’s only me, sir,” answered a gruff voice.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Devine? By the way, have you been over at the Hall?”

“Well, sir,” answered the man in rather hang-dog fashion, “I’ve a bin over to see Mister Lucas about them dawgs the Kurnel was to have, and took a short cut back.”

“I see. Is that shoot to come off the day after to-morrow, do you know?”

“Well, sir, the Kurnel don’t seem to have made up his mind. But he’ll be sure to let you know. There’s lots o’ rabbits in the cliff jest above Smugglers’ Ladder, sir,” added the keeper, in a different tone, looking Roland keenly in the face. “Such lots are there, that they pitches each other over, sometimes. I see’d one wunst, one moonlight night.”

Although feeling as if suddenly shot through the heart, Roland made no sign. With a short nod, he turned away. Roy, still growling deeply, walked close at his side, as if his instinct told him that his beloved master might come to need more than all the watchfulness of the most faithful of friends in the impending peril. It was the third time of late that Stephen Devine had let fall a sinister hint.

This interruption had given the rector time to reflect, and with a foresight which, when he came to look back upon it in the days that were coming, seemed to him little short of inspired, he now saw that the interruption was an opportune one. He was the first to break the silence, and his tones were very grave and solemn.

“Roland, my dear son, I will gladly receive your confidence, but not here. There must be no possibility of interruption, and no half measures—and—there may be other reasons. I can see you are overwrought and tired now, therefore rest and place yourself in a calm and composed disposition. Then we will talk, and more freely.”

Not another word passed between them. The confidential strain in which they had been interrupted seemed to preclude lighter topics. And they were nearly home now.

Chapter Thirty Nine.

The Web Weaves.

The bright, frosty weather lasted nearly a month, and was followed by a whole month of rain and squalls, culminating in a truly furious March. The trees in the park bent and groaned beneath the lashing wind; and night and day driving showers hurled themselves against the window panes with a crash as of volleys of gravel. At such times, even from Cranston, the thunder of the surf upon the cliff-girt coast could be plainly heard, and safe in her comfortable, luxurious home Olive would shudder at the dull booming of the billows and at the recollections conjured up by the sound. But it was with feelings of deepest thankfulness that she dwelt on that dark and terrible time, while realising her present lot of joyfulness and peace.

And, during this period of conflicting elements, a great and singular change had come over Roland Dorrien. He seemed like a man from whom a great weight of care had been suddenly lifted, an impending danger miraculously averted. His brooding despondency had completely left him, and though he was grave at times, it was with a seriousness far removed from that moodiness and settled gloom which had caused the charitable to whisper hints about hereditary insanity. His cheerfulness, too, became free and unaffected, displacing those wild, excitable fits of hilarity, followed by their corresponding periods of reaction and gloom. The neighbourhood marvelled, but it could do no more, for the cause of this metamorphosis in the Squire of Cranston was known only to one living person and guessed at by another—Dr Ingelow and Olive.

And the latter rejoiced with an exceeding great joy, and her cup of happiness was now, indeed, full. Never by word, or hint, or look had she sought to arrive at that which had caused her husband to return home in the small hours of a certain dark winter morning with such an expression of relief, yes, and of peace upon his face as she had never dared hope to behold there again. Never, even to herself, had she ventured to conjecture, except with the most reverential awe and thankfulness, as to the instrument of this miraculously restored peace; the power which had exorcised the evil spirit and restored to her this man in whom her life was wrapped up—restful, free from care, happy. If she dimly guessed at the nature of that power, she was content to stop there.

This afternoon the rain crashed and volleyed on the panes in such wise as to render the snug morning-room doubly snug. Suddenly Olive broke into a peal of laughter.

“Roland, dear, that seems a desperately engrossing book you have got hold of.”

“Hullo! And why?”

“Because you haven’t turned a page for eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes! I timed you by the clock.”

“By Jove! no more I have! No. Fact is, I’ve been thinking out an idea.”

“Let’s have it then.”

“Well, then—how should you like to go away for a time? To travel, in fact?”

“Oh, immensely,” she cried gleefully. “Where shall we go. Italy? It would be delightful to get out of this hideous weather for a couple of months. No, I should like to go to a new country this time. What about Spain? Or better still, Algiers? There—I’ve set my heart on Algiers.”

“All right. We can’t go too far, I think, nor yet too soon. So see if we can’t manage to get away at once. I feel as if my life depended on it.”

Hardly had he spoken the words than they struck him with a prophetic import. The fact was, he had been revolving this plan for some time past. It would be good for them both, in every way, besides which he felt an irresistible longing to leave the neighbourhood for a considerable period. It seemed to him in some instinctive way that such a course would do away with the last lingering possibility of danger. His apprehensions on the score of certain hints which Devine had from time to time let fall, were lulling. The fellow could have had nothing tangible to go upon. He was a shrewd rogue, merely talking at random in the hope of hitting the right nail on the head, but he, Roland, was too old a bird to hop upon any such palpably limed twig. Yet, on the whole, it might be safe to take a long change. Time blunts the edge of every weapon, even that dangerous one Suspicion.

They discussed the new scheme eagerly for half an hour, and then Olive got up, declaring she should go into the conservatory to get a little air. He laughed.

“Glad to get rid of you, dear. Only you won’t get much air there, I should think, unless it’s hot air. Wait—I’ve just got to dash off a couple of notes to a couple of tiresome fellows, and then I’ll come after you.”

Ten minutes later he had finished his writing.

“What an infernal day,” he muttered, as he took his way down the covered passage leading to the conservatory. Suddenly he stopped short, arrested by the sound of a voice. In the harsh, northern tones he recognised that of Johnston, the Scotch gardener.

Strange as it may seem, this worthy was still in the Cranston service. That it was so may be due to various reasons. The canny Scot, on the sudden and unlooked-for accession of the General’s exiled son, had hastened, with many plausible yet abject apologies, to make his peace with the reigning lord, for the berth was an uncommonly good one, and one to be kept at all costs. Roland, who knew the fellow to be a great rascal and felt towards him a hearty contempt, had kept him on, and his reasons for doing so were various. In the first place, it would save trouble, for the man was good at his work; then he had an idea that he might ascertain whether Johnston really had recognised him that day at Battisford, but as time went on and the man made no sign, his suspicions were lulled. However, the arrogance of so presuming a knave must be kept within bounds, and Johnston no longer dared tyrannise over his betters, by virtue of his office, as he had been wont to do in the old times. On one or two occasions, Roland had come up in time to overhear him rebuking in his old bumptious strain a guest who had ventured to pick a flower, and the trouncing he had got had made the worthy Scot squirm.

He hated his master with a bitter, rancorous hatred, but still he stayed on, for he foresaw the day when he might be revenged on him upon whom he now fawned, saw it dimly still, but opening wide possibilities. So patiently and warily the crafty Gael had watched and waited until the weapon should be ready to his hand, and then how he would strike! But to resume.

A frown of terrible import came over Roland’s face as he paused for a moment. The rain was volleying against the glass sides of the conservatory, but above its rattle, he could hear his wife’s voice, speaking in what seemed to him a tone of scared expostulation, and then the Scot replied:

”—A don’t want to hurrt yere guidman, but after these yeers of surrvice a’ think ye might promise me that place for my bairn, Davy. Ye wouldn’t be wanting to leave this bonny hoose yeerself, awm thinking.”

“Johnston! How dare you talk to me like that!” came the startled and indignant rejoinder.

Roland waited to hear no more. The blaring insolence of the fellow’s tone set his blood surging. There was a half-scream from Olive as he entered suddenly, confronting the astonished speaker.

“Go,” he said. “You are discharged this instant. Go out of my sight, before I forget myself.”

But Johnston had been drinking; yet, even though backed by a certain amount of “Dutch courage,” he deemed it advisable to withdraw a few paces.

“Would ye murrder me—too?” he yelled.

Roland still controlled himself with an effort little short of superhuman, but his face was white and icy.

“Go,” he said. “You are discharged.”

“Dischairged!” echoed Johnston sneeringly, for he had backed away to a safe distance. “Dischairged, am I? I’ll have the law on ye if ye assault me, but it’s a noose ye’ll come to for this day’s wurrk.”

And with this parting shot, he took himself off.

Olive was terribly alarmed and disturbed. The violence of the incident, and the dark and mysterious threats had upset her not a little. Tenderly, Roland set to work to soothe her.

“My darling, tell me all about it.”

She told him—how Johnston had accosted her directly she entered the place, asking her to use her influence to get his wages raised and also to procure a place for his son, who, by the way, was an out-and-out young rascal. She could see that the man had been drinking, and so had answered him quietly at first. Then his manner had become insolent and threatening, and he had hinted at terrible mischief which it was in his power to work his employer in the event of refusal.

“It was only talk, Roland, wasn’t it?” she urged, clinging to him. “Darling, tell me that he has no power to harm you. He has not—has he?”

As a matter of fact the threat had momentarily struck him with a pang of the old alarm. Momentarily, because, invoking reason to his aid, he decided that the rascally Scot had got his suspicions at second-hand from Gipsy Steve when the precious pair were in their cups. The suspicions of these two scoundrels were harmless. Only if he flinched might they become dangerous. So he had acted with decision, as we have seen.

“Not the slightest?” he answered reassuringly. “If he has I’ll give him every opportunity of putting it to the test. Off he goes this very evening, bag and baggage.”

Chapter Forty.

The Ban Again.

The Cranston party had organised a picnic to Durnley Castle.

It was May—bright, flowery, laughing May—neither spring nor summer, but something of both. The sun’s rays were not too powerful this glorious afternoon, as with a delicious warmth they poured down upon the fields studded with golden buttercups and delicate bluebells, and distilled the sweet scent from blossoming hawthorn hedges, where the linnet and grey-backed shrike sat patiently upon their eggs, secure in the recesses of their thorny covert. Fair to the eye were the velvety coppices, with their newly-donned mantles of bright green, whence issued the soft coo of the turtle-dove, and the flap of the cushat’s wing among the branches. Then, too, how light-hearted the joyous, oft-repeated note of the cuckoo, sounding over the pleasant landscape!

Durnley Castle was a fine ruin, with massive ivy-grown walls still rising to a considerable height; and standing as it did on a lofty headland, the views of the coast obtained from it were superb. Otherwise it was much like other ruins of the kind, its scarp being literally strewn with bits of sandwich paper, ancient and modern, broken bottles, and similar relics of generations of picnic parties. It was under the care of a clan of cottagers, whose thatch might be detected among the trees hard by, which care mainly consisted in taking precious good care to collect sixpences, but stopped short at clearing away the abominable rubbish aforesaid.

“Eva,” cried Ned Medlicott, the curate’s twelve-year-old, running up to his sister, a pretty girl of eighteen, to exhibit some kestrel’s eggs. “Look at these. Did you ever see such stunners!”

“‘Stunners,’ indeed,” was the laughing reply. “Why, how did you get them, Ned?”

“I didn’t take them,” explained the boy; “Mr Dorrien climbed the tree—but—”

“But the great thing is, here they are, eh, Ned?” cried Roland. “And it’s my private opinion you’ll break them before you get home.”

He was thinking how thoroughly happy the boy looked, and how easily he had been made so, and the thought seemed to please him.

“Hullo, Eustace! Late as usual,” he went on, as some new arrivals hove in sight, toiling up the steep escarpment. “Thought you had wrecked your party.”

For Eustace had brought round the rest of the party by sea, in a sailing craft, chartered at Minchkil.

“Oh, did you? Now look here. Do you know what Thought did? No? Well, I’ll tell you—Thought we had had a precious dry walk up from the boat, and lost no time in beheading one of those jolly long-necked bottles over there. Aren’t I right, Mr Medlicott?” turning to his companion.

“Oh, of course, you always are,” answered the latter with a laugh. He was the senior curate of Wandsborough, a middle-aged, scholarly man—owning a vast family, two representatives of which were with the party, as we have seen.

“Worse and worse!” said Roland, with a shake of the head, and mischievously barring the way. “Eustace, I wash my hands of you—‘fizz’ before tiffin isn’t good for little boys like you.”

“Hallo—Sophonisba!” sang out Eustace. “Cut out one of those long-necked bottles, and sail round here with it, sharp! Your dear brother-in-law’s getting mean in his old age. Marsland, tell her to. She’ll do it if you tell her,” added the mischievous dog, grinning all over his face, while his youngest sister looked viciously at him without complying.

“There, there. Go and do for yourself, Eustace,” said Roland, letting him pass. “And now that we are all here, we can gather round the festive—table-cloth. Assort yourselves, good people, and do it well; if you don’t it’s your own faults. Stewart, keep an eye on that subaltern of yours, and don’t let him have too much champagne, or my wife says you will be held responsible as his superior officer.”

Captain Stewart—in whose troop Eustace was—and who had run down with him for the occasion—vehemently declined responsibility, and set to work devoting himself to Eva Medlicott, to the no small satisfaction of that young lady.

“‘Shop!’ Bear witness all!” cried Eustace, tossing off his glass with the air of a man who had walked a mile up a steep hill at mid-day. “He’s talking arrant ‘shop.’ Roland, old chap, consider yourself fined a case of this same ‘gooseberry.’ Stewart and I will take it up to Town with us to-night.”

“Nonsense, you’re not going to-night,” said Olive.

“Am. With deep grief I say it—but—‘painful necessities,’ as the schoolmaster says upon certain occasions! If we miss that train I’m broke. Chief desperately glum—vows I’ve had four times too much leave already. Isn’t that so, Stewart?”

“For once, Ingelow, truth and the exigencies of the Service compel me to support your statement,” gravely replied the captain, whose attention was divided between his fair companion and the dispensing of a pigeon-pie to many hungry applicants.

There was a laugh at this, and then, the contagion spreading, the fun grew apace, and never a merrier party made the grey old ruins ring. It wae a model picnic party, not too large, all fairly well known to each other, or, in the case of an exception or two, acquisitions to any circle, and all young, except perhaps the curate, who was such a thoroughly good-natured man that his quietness—“slowness” we are afraid they called it—was quite forgiven him. Then there were no elderly chaperons to spoil sport with their whisperings and confounded sharp-sightedness, and not even a botanically-minded old maid to drag off some wretched youth to grub up fern-roots for her, when he would fain be wandering perdu in another direction with a very different sample of charmer.

The Dorriens had been obliged to defer their foreign trip. Business of all sorts, connected more or less with the property, which could not well be left to others, had kept cropping up in the most vexatious manner since we heard them making their plans nearly two months ago. To Roland these delays had been irritating in the extreme, but now he thought he saw the end of them, and had made up his mind to start early next month. There was one bright side to it all. He had heard no more mysterious hints. These seemed to have ceased since the departure of Johnston, who had left the neighbourhood altogether when summarily dismissed from Cranston.

Luncheon over, the party dispersed themselves abroad according to taste—in pairs or in squads. Others preferred taking things easy where they were. Besides those named, there were half a dozen other people who are not specially concerned with this history.

“Hallo! Who are these chaps, I wonder?” suddenly exclaimed Eustace, who was having a quiet weed with his brother-in-law, in a snug, sunny corner of the ruin. Two men were strolling leisurely towards them, stopping every now and then, as if admiring the view to seaward. The foremost had a telescope slung round him, while the other carried a butterfly-net and specimen box. They might have been a brace of well-to-do tradesmen.

“Where? Oh! The advance-guard of a cheap trip, most likely. Two waggonettes of hooraying yahoos to follow,” was the somewhat dissatisfied reply.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the foremost of the new arrivals. “Excuse my asking, but is there any objection to me and my friend going over the castle.”

“None whatever, as far as I know,” answered Roland good-naturedly. “By the way, is there a trip behind you?”

The men looked mystified for a moment, then the naturalist replied.

“Oh, no, gentlemen, only we two. We walked over from Wandsbro’, we two did, just to look at the view from here, and catch a few butterflies.”

“Caught any?”

“Not to speak of, sir. Just these two or three,” opening his green box. A tortoiseshell of dissipated aspect, and a couple of orange tips stood displayed.

“H’m! Well, as far as I know you’ll find nothing to prevent you going where you like. Only I should advise you to be careful in walking about the walls, because they’re unsafe in parte.”

The men thanked him and walked away. Eustace and Roland, grateful that the invasion took so mild a form, puffed their cigars lazily, and straightway forgot all about it. Had they been aware of it, what matter to them that the strangers, exploring round the ruins, should light upon the Cranston footman, lunching on the relics of the spread, and that the said strangers, being of an engaging manner after their kind, should, in a trice, find themselves on the best of terms with James, resulting in much friendly consumption of Cranston ale, all round.

“That your governor, up there?” said he of the telescope presently, jerking a thumb in the direction he had just left.

“Which?” asked James laconically.

“Tall gent—light clothes—talks like God Almighty.”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“Good governor?” said the butterfly-catcher.

“So, so. Too much shirt, though—rather.”

“Hey?”

“Too shirty, for them as doesn’t like it,” explained James.

Then, with tongue loosened by a liberal allowance of ale, indiscriminately poured upon the absorption of the residue of unfinished champagne bottles, the faithful James proceeded to give his new friends a full, true, and above all, humorous account of his master’s idiosyncrasies, whereat the strangers laughed till they could no longer sit upright. But even the graphic James missed the real humour of the thing, as conveyed from one to the other of his listeners in a swift and irresistibly comic glance.

The afternoon had reached the debatable ground lying between itself and evening, and the diverse and errant members of the party had found their way back to the rendezvous. And last of all arrived Marsland and Sophie, trying to look as if they had been there all the time; and the latter, catching her brother’s eye, read therein a mute and satirical assurance that she had not heard the last of her tardy arrival and eke of its circumstances.

“Don’t wait for me, anybody who wants to stroll on,” said Olive, who was superintending the putting away of the things. “I’ll come on afterwards.”

“And, by the way, Stewart, do you mind taking the ribbons going back?” said Roland. “I’m going home by way of the angry deep.”

The Captain declared himself delighted, as in fact he was. A smart whip, he flattered himself he would show those four slashing bays of Dorrien’s at their best.

“Ta-ta, Stewart. Good people, I hope all your lives are insured! I know what Stewart on the box means,” sung out the irrepressible Eustace, with a fiendish chuckle over the misgiving which he had flung in among the driving party. “And now for the rolling deep?”

We will follow the party in the boat. Besides Eustace and Roland there were two young ladies from Wandsborough and Mr Medlicott and Ned. Item, an amphibious youth from Minchkil, who represented the “crew.”

It was a lovely evening. There was just enough breeze to propel them gently and without rocking, and a fragrant whiff of sweet hawthorn reached them even there. As they stood out to sea, the moon shone out brighter and brighter in the clear sky, glancing upon the tiny ripples as though its light were touching the moving spear points of a host. Then, as they presently rounded the headland, a hollow and tuneful echo seemed wafted back to them as the waves plashed against the semi-circle of cliff with the inflowing tide.

Eustace and the two Wandsborough girls were deep in a wordy war of banter and laughter, the former steering villainously in consequence. Roland and the curate were puffing at their cigars and lazily conversing in the fore part of the boat, and young Ned was playfully pulling Roy’s ears. Suddenly through the stillness of the night, above the musical ripple as the bow of the boat cleft the water, above the bell-like plash of the waves upon the shore, a strange, mysterious sound came wafting over the moonlit sea, a sound as of the deep-toned howling of a dog.

The sky, studded with stars, is without a cloud. Yonder, shadowed by the lofty headland, the grey rock-turrets of The Skegs stand forth spectral under the clear moon. Again that most dismal sound floats out upon the night air, but no one seems to hear or notice it. No one? One—that is. One who has heard it before. The curate, glancing at his host, is surprised and alarmed at the latter’s face, for it is ashy white; and following the set and rigid gaze, behold! a dark shadow is resting blackly upon the summit of the haunted rock. And Roy, with his hackles erect and gums drawn back, is snarling aggressively in response.

The terrible and grisly Ban once more. What does it portend?

Chapter Forty One.

The Sword Falls.

Olive was rather unwell on the morning after the picnic. It was nothing to worry about, she declared. She supposed she had overdone it, and was a little tired. Any way, she would stay in bed till the afternoon. So Roland and Sophie sat down to a late breakfast alone, Marsland having left earlier to spend a few days at Ardleigh.

“What a jolly day we had yesterday!” the girl was saying. “Olive didn’t catch cold, did she, Roland?”

“No. She’ll be all right after a good sleep. Roy, you vagabond, shut up. That melodious voice of yours is matter in the wrong place just now.”

But Roy, who had been lying curled up on the rug, refused to be silenced. His threatening growl became a deep-toned bay, and his ruff began to rise, as with fangs bared he sprang towards the door, which was yet shut. There were voices in the hall. Then the door opened.

“Come here, Roy, d’you hear, sir?” cried Roland, seizing him by the neck and dragging him by main force towards the rug. “Now. Lie down, sir.”

The dog would hardly obey, but half rose again, keeping up a running note of growls.

“Please, sir,” said the butler, entering, “there are two gentlemen want to see you very particular.”

“Who are they?”

“They won’t give their names, sir, and I never saw them before.”

Roland frowned. “Suppose I must send the fellows about their business. Back in a minute, Sophie.”

It may be that an ugly misgiving shot through his mind at that moment, but if so he showed no sign of it. As Jervis said afterwards, with awe and admiration in his voice: “Master was out-and-out the very coolest party he’d ever seen.”