Dorrien of Cranston

“How men can sit and gossip!” struck in Olive. “Talk about us poor women! When a lot of men get together the sky may fall, but they won’t move. What have you been talking about all this time?”

“Rattlesnakes, buffaloes, scalps – nothing worse,” cried her father, throwing himself into an armchair. “Mr Rowlands and I have been counting up scalps, and we find he has lifted more hair than your venerable parent.”

Roland, manoeuvring towards a vacant seat at Olive’s side, was disgusted to find himself forestalled by Turner.

He felt more nettled than he cared to own to himself. The bumptiousness of these young parsons was overwhelming. So he took up the thread of their former conversation with his host and tried to pretend he rather preferred it to carrying out his original intention. Tried to, but it was of no use. Yet why should he care because another man sat talking about nothing in particular to a certain person with whom he had intended discussing precisely the same interesting topic? Why, because, dear reader, he was an ass.

But his innings were to come. A message came for the rector, and its purport concerned Turner too. Roland, in obedience to a scarcely perceptible glance from Olive’s dark eyes, at once took possession of the vacant seat.

“What have you done with that darling of a Roy?” she asked in a low tone.

“Left him at home. When I go in he’ll nearly eat me. It’s worth while leaving him anywhere, if only to see him go mad with delight when I come back. But then, you see, he’s only a dog, and doesn’t know any better.”

“I’m afraid we must defer our cigar together, Mr Rowlands!” cried the rector, re-entering the room. “I’ve been called out to a sick bed, and hardly know when I shall get home. But don’t hurry away. Turner, you’re in no hurry, I know. Good-night. We must have another sporting conversation before long. I’ve enjoyed a chat over old times immensely.”

Turner, however, did not remain long after his host’s sudden departure, and Roland, deeming it right to follow his example, also withdrew. But he strolled down the dark street in a brown study, when suddenly there rushed at him in the darkness something which nearly upset him outright, and lo! Roy, who had broken bounds on hearing his master’s step, now came springing upon and against him just in time to save that master from over-shooting his own door in a fit of absence, and wandering about half a mile too far. And then there was such a rushing and scampering, such barks of delight, such leaping and bounding, that it took Roy a full ten minutes of exertion to work off the gladness wherewith his affectionate heart was overburdened. But then, you see, he was only a dog and knew no better.

It was long, however, before Roy’s master flung away his last cigar end, and looking out into the silent, starry night, wondered what the deuce he had been thinking about. Affected to wonder, too, how it was that his thoughts were still hard at work within the bright home circle he had just left.

Chapter Eight.

The Heiress of Ardleigh

“I sat, Nellie, the ancient couple are getting quite dissipated in their old age. What’s at the bottom of it?” And Roland Dorrien, lounging at ease in the stern cushions of the boat, gazed through a great cloud of smoke at his sister’s puzzled face, lazily awaiting her reply.

“I don’t quite see,” she began. “How do you mean, dear?”

“Why, your mother hoped I didn’t particularly want to go anywhere this afternoon, because some people were coming. In fact, a regular garden fight. Croquet and scandal, and much chatter.”

“Yes, there is. But as you say, they are getting quite lively. Why it’s more than a year since we have had anything of the kind.”

The two were seated in one of the most comfortable and roomy of the boats, on the ornamental water – whither they had betaken themselves, not to row about, but to get into a cool place and take it easy and chat to their hearts’ content. The boat’s nose was made fast to a stake driven into the bottom about fifteen yards from the shore and well within the shade of a great over-arching tree, whose boughs threw a network of sunlight here and there upon the brown surface. There was scarcely a breath of air, and at the other end of the lake the coots and moorhens disported themselves, uttering now and again their loud chirrupy cry, and little brown water rats glided from their holes beneath the slippery bank. Roy, whom his master had taken into the boat and treacherously flung overboard, was careering up and down the bank, looking like a great woolly bear, every hair in his body shaken out to its fullest length and standing on end – and barking his surprise and displeasure at his master’s treachery and his own involuntary bath, but feeling worlds the better for the last, while a couple of swans floated in the centre of the pond, looking the picture of ruffled and sullen dignity over the irruption of these disturbing elements into their own especial domain.

“Well, it’s rather a nuisance as far as I am concerned,” he went on. “As it happens I wanted to go into Wandsborough this afternoon – and over and above that, I hate things of this kind.”

“Roland dear, don’t go into Wandsborough to-day. Papa will be mortally offended if you do. I happen to know that he got up this affair solely on your account; he thought it would be a good way of introducing you to all the people here. And there’ll be several nice girls.”

“H’m!”

“Let me see,” she continued. “There are the Nevilles, who are coming to stay: the eldest girl is very pretty and the heiress of Ardleigh Court – make a note of that. And the Colonel is such a dear old man. Then there’s Isabel Pagnell, she seems to take wonderfully with the men – and the Breretons and – ”

“Bother the lot of them?” cried Roland, flinging the end of his cigar away in a sudden access of irritability. “Roy, don’t make that confounded row, sir. Lie down. D’you hear? And now, Nellie, we shall have to quit this cool retreat, for there goes gong Number One. Yes, it’s a nuisance; I particularly wanted to go over to Wandsborough to-day, but, hurrah for boredom instead!”

No more was said as they paddled back to the landing place and made their way along the shrubbery path. Did the girl in her heart of hearts suspect the reason of her brother’s anxiety to ride over to the town? If so, like a wise counsellor she held her peace.

Roland had transferred himself to Cranston some three days after we saw him at the Rectory dinner-table – now more than a week ago, and even that brief period had been sufficient to convince him that in his former anticipations of the conditions of life there, he was not likely to be agreeably disappointed. The same constraint pervaded everything, the same latent antagonism seemed to underlie all intercourse, and in a hundred and one small ways, the more risky because so trivial, the general harmony seemed in a state of chronic peril.

One of his first acts had been to make a call at Wandsborough Rectory to explain the circumstances of the assumed name. At first his explanation had been somewhat stiffly received, but it was not in Dr Ingelow to keep up resentment; moreover, a happy remark to the effect that the incognito had been the means of beginning what the speaker hoped he might be allowed to call a valued friendship, which otherwise he might never have known, completed the turning of the scale, and he was absolved all round. Yet not quite all round, for Olive, remembering her free and easy utterances made on the beach that morning, found an early opportunity of taking him privately to task.

“I think you might have told me at the time,” she had said, “instead of letting me run on with all sorts of local gossip as you did.”

“Why? Oh, I see. But you didn’t abuse us a bit more than we deserve. I asked you a question and you answered it. And, between ourselves, the answer didn’t surprise me in the very least.”

“That’s all very well, but you ought to have stopped me.”

“How hard-hearted you are, when all the others have forgiven me!”

“Have they? Oh, well, then, for the credit of the family I suppose I must exercise the same Christian virtue,” had said Olive mischievously. “You may consider yourself forgiven by me too. There.”

“One thing more,” he had urged, “is wanted to make that forgiveness complete. You must continue to mete me out the same treatment as you did to the stranger, Rowlands; not categorise me as an obnoxious Dorrien.”

“That will depend entirely upon your future behaviour,” she had returned, with the same mischievous flash.

The lake was barely five minutes’ walk from the house, and as the two – the three, rather, for Roy, all the fresher for his ducking, was trotting along at their side – turned the corner of the garden walk, they came face to face with their mother and two young ladies, who were speedily introduced as the Miss Nevilles.

“We’ve been in the coolest corner of the county all the morning – on the water,” said Roland, catching his mother’s displeased glance at his sister. “Nellie wanted to go indoors half an hour ago, but I positively refused to let her land.”

“What a beautiful dog! Is it yours, Mr Dorrien?” said the eldest.

“Yes. Come here, Roy, and exhibit yourself.” Roy obeyed, but manifested no great effusion in response to the young lady’s somewhat timid caresses. His master decided that Clara Neville was at the moment thinking more of the fit of her gloves and the pose of her head, than of the dog or anything else. She was a tall, slight girl, faultlessly dressed, and in good style altogether; but in spite of the regular profile and wavy profusion of her golden hair, the face was not altogether a taking one – an unfriendly critic would have pronounced it a somewhat cold and ill-tempered one. But then she was the heiress of Ardleigh Court – whose place in the county ranked little below that of Cranston, and this would cover far graver shortcomings. Her sister, Maud, was a quiet, dark-haired little thing, with no pretensions to looks. Yet there were many who thought that a future lord might be found for Ardleigh Court much sooner were she the heiress.

Their father, a jolly, bluff veteran with an ever-ready laugh, was as complete a representative of one type of old soldier as his friend and erstwhile companion in arms, Reginald Dorrien, was of another. The Colonel was the kindest-hearted of men. Cheery, frank and full of life and humour, he was an immense favourite with the rising generation, and indeed with everybody. Everybody except his wife and eldest daughter, by whom – such is the irony of events – the old man’s jovial and kind-hearted character went entirely unappreciated. They chose to consider it lamentably lacking in dignity.

“Dorrien,” cried Colonel Neville to his host as they sat at luncheon, “is it true that your fellows have dropped down on that rascal Devine again?”

“Yes. Caught him in the act. Two hares, or three – I forget which. He was taking them out of the hangs when they dropped upon him.”

“Ah! We must make it lively for him at the Sessions the day after to-morrow. The law ought to empower us to send a regular poacher to serve in the army. Why, when we were up country on active service some of our best men were ex-poachers. Why, Dorrien, you yourself remember poor Wilkins that time we – ”

But the jolly Colonel’s reminiscence was cut short by his eldest daughter, who appealed to him to settle a divergence of opinion between herself and Nellie. This was a regular tactic of Clara’s. Her father was never to be suffered to launch out in reminiscence. Old men, she declared, old soldiers especially, with a mania for reminiscence were always bores. So the exploit of “poor Wilkins, ex-poacher,” was destined to remain unnarrated.

Of all the more or less inane phases of entertainment devised by society with a view to doing its duty by its acquaintance, the garden party is not far from being the most tiresome. The Cranston one bore a striking family likeness to others of its kind.

Roland, who hated the whole thing, and wished all the people at the deuce, and through whose head was buzzing a confused string of names – belonging to people to whom he had been introduced – found himself, before he was aware of it, in a vacant seat next to Clara Neville, and almost felt grateful to her for being there. She would do to talk to, as well as anyone else, and he would be spared the trouble of opening up fresh ground. So an involuntary sigh of relief escaped him, which that young lady, for all her imperturbable calm, made a careful note of.

“Don’t you play croquet, Mr Dorrien?” she said.

“I don’t. Nothing on earth would induce me to embark in the very feeblest attempt at amusement ever devised by a stark idiot for the scourge of civilised man.”

She laughed. “Do you know, between ourselves, I quite share your opinion. The game is, as you say, terrible boredom. But you have been a great traveller, have you not?”

“No. Nothing out of the way. I’ve knocked about a good deal, but only where everyone else has.”

“Ah, you must have seen some strange things. And I think every man who can should travel. Not in the beaten tracks – on the Continent – but in far wild countries where he is entirely dependent on himself. It must open up the mind a great deal, and do a world of good.”

“Yes, it has a very salutary and hardening effect; there’s no doubt about that.”

“I suppose now you are home again, you will settle down for good,” she went on. “And this is really a very beautiful spot, is it not? But you travellers are never happy for long in one place?” she added, turning to him with a very engaging smile, the more valuable on account of its rarity.