Dorrien of Cranston

“Likely enough it’ll be my bounden duty to become moss-grown now,” he answered with a laugh.

“No, don’t move, Roland,” said his father, as he rose to give up his seat. “I’m not going to sit down,” and there was a cordiality in his tone, as well as in the light touch of his hand upon his son’s shoulder, which caused that worthy to marvel greatly. But Roland was glad to be left in peace, so he sat chatting with Clara Neville, heedless of the notes of invitation thrown out to him from many pairs of bright eyes, till at last, feeling bored, he seized upon some pretext to slip away and have a stroll round the shrubbery with Roy.

But the first person he encountered on turning into it was Colonel Neville, who started guiltily, and then burst into a hearty laugh.

“Aha!” he cried, “another defaulter! Come along, my boy, and we’ll have our smoke together,” and he puffed away at his half-smoked cigar. “We must bind ourselves not to betray each other, unless we are caught red-handed, as I thought I was just now, by Jove!” And the jolly Colonel gave vent to another of his ringing laughs, to the jeopardy of bringing about the very discovery he wished to avoid.

“Don’t let’s go towards the lake,” laughed Roland. “People are sure to wander down in that direction. This’ll be our best way.”

“But bother it! you’ve no business to desert the ladies, sir,” cried the Colonel, as they turned into an unfrequented path. “It’s all very well for an old soldier like me, but you’ve your time to serve. They’ll be raising the hue and cry for you.”

“Let them. Fact is, Colonel, I’ve been so long outside the civilised world that I was dying for a smoke up yonder just now. So the fragrant weed beat lovely woman clean out of the field.”

The old man laughed again. He had taken a great liking to this, as he thought, unfairly treated son of his old friend.

“Look here, Roland, my boy,” he said, suddenly becoming grave. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you here, safe home again. You mustn’t mind my speaking plainly to you – for, although we’ve never met before, your father and I fought in the same lines and quarrelled like fury together, over and over again, before any of you were born or thought of – so I don’t mind what I say to you. Your father’s a queer fellow, but I think he’s fond of you in his own way underneath it all, so don’t run more counter to each other than you can help.”

There was such genuine warmth in the other’s address that Roland was touched. He was about to reply, when voices were heard approaching, and almost immediately a footman hove in sight.

“Colonel Neville’s horse is at the door, sir,” he said, and from the expression of his face no doubt he added to himself, “and a precious long time he’s been waiting.”

“Ha! I’m afraid they’ve been looking for me far and wide. You must come over and see us, Roland, as soon as you can. My wife was hoping to have been here to-day, but she didn’t feel up to the attempt. So mind you come, for we shall all be very glad to see you.”

They had reached the party by now, and many a glance of reawakened interest was levelled at the younger of the truants, but in the slight stir attendant on the Colonel’s departure he escaped unscolded.

“Well, Roland,” said his father, entering the smoking-room late that evening. “How did the affair go off to-day? Pretty well?”

“Oh, I think so. It struck me that all the world looked contented with itself. And it made its fair share of row, a sure sign that it wasn’t bored, anyhow. Do you mind my lighting up, sir?”

“No, no. Light away. Why yes, I think the people seemed to enjoy themselves. By the bye, you were talking a good deal to Clara Neville. What do you think of her?” And the General stood with his back against the mantelpiece as though about to wax quite chatty.

“She seems a sensible sort of girl, on the whole, and can talk rationally. But she always gives you the idea that she is thinking more of her dress than of what you are saying to her.”

“Perhaps there is a little of that in her manner, until you get accustomed to her, that is. But after all, it’s a very pardonable fault; more than made up for by the corresponding virtue of neatness,” replied this veteran martinet, who had been wont to visit with the severest penalties a single speck on shining boot or pipe-clayed belt when parading his men. “And she is as you say, a sensible girl – a very sensible girl – and she will have Ardleigh Court.”

“Indeed?” said Roland, in an uninterested tone. “Are there no sons, then?”

“No. Only those two girls. Clara will come in for Ardleigh, as to that there is no doubt whatever. It is one of the finest places in the county, and adjoins this. You can just see the village away on the right as you come here from Wandsborough. Ah, Hubert, and have you come to do the ‘chimney’ too?” as that hopeful burst unceremoniously into the room, pulling up short at the unwonted vision there of his father. “Well, I suppose you two fellows will be able to entertain each other, so I’ll say good-night.”

For a moment Hubert sat in silence. Then he opened the door and looked out, and returning to his seat gave vent to a low, prolonged whistle of astonishment.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What the very deuce is in the wind now, that the gallant veteran should condescend to honour this classic den with his high and mighty presence?”

“Doesn’t he ever, then?”

“Never; never by any chance. And so confoundedly affable as he was, too. Well, it beats me.”

“Perhaps he’s going to turn over a new leaf and develop a vein of sociability hitherto undiscovered. It’s never too late to mend, you know,” said the other nonchalantly.

Chapter Nine.

“You Here!”

“Before Colonel Neville, Mr Pagnell and the Rev. John Croft, Stephen Devine, a notorious offender, charged with snaring two leverets in a field on the outskirts of Cranston Manor Farm” – began the reporter for the local news, scratching away vigorously with his spluttering quill.

The hall in which Petty Sessions were held at Wandsborough was not by its imposing dimensions calculated to impress anybody with the majesty of the law. It was small, low ceiled and badly lighted. Prisoner and witnesses, constables and magistrates’ clerk all seemed jumbled up together in the cramped space; while their worships themselves were only separated from the common herd by a long, narrow table. A most inconvenient room in fact, and times out of number had the Bench agitated for its enlargement, or better still, for the construction of another. All in vain. The justices had to go on sitting in the stuffy den, an infliction sufficient to bring them together in a state of ill-humour most unpropitious to the culprit. Even their genial and kind-hearted chairman, Colonel Neville, was wont to wax irritable under the circumstances – while constitutionally sterner stuff such as Mr Pagnell or General Dorrien was more than likely to err on the side of severity.

“Well, Devine, and what have you got to say for yourself?” said the chairman. There had been no defence set up; the prisoner had doggedly pleaded guilty. Indeed he could hardly have done otherwise, seeing that he had been caught red-handed in the act of taking one of the leverets out of the “hang,” while the other was found upon him. The head-keeper of Cranston and his subordinate had just been stating to the Bench under what circumstances they had made their capture; moreover, that the culprit was an excessively leery bird, who had long dodged the sharp watch they had kept upon him – and now the justices, having conferred together, were prepared to pass sentence.

“Please your warshups,” said the prisoner sullenly, “I’d bin out o’ work for nigh three weeks, and rent owin’, and nothin’ to keep the pot bilin’ at home. And I set the ‘hangs’ for rabbits, your warshups, which isn’t game, an’ I thowt as how that bit o’ furze were common land, and didn’t belong to nobody. And somehow when the hares got cotched, I took ’em, cos my gal had just come home, and there weren’t nothin’ in the house.”

An eager look came into the man’s swarthy hang-dog countenance. He was a heavy, powerfully built fellow of middle height, and his dark complexion and jet-black hair had gained for him the sobriquet “Gipsy Steve;” that, and the fact that no one knew where he came from, or anything about him. Among his own class he was popularly supposed to be “a man who had committed a murder,” for no reason apparently, unless it were his foreign and uncommon aspect, and a terribly evil look which would come over his dark features when crossed or roused.

Again the magistrates conferred together.

“Gaol’s the word,” said Mr Pagnell decisively. “No fine this time. The fellow’s an out-and-out knave, and now he’s trying to humbug us into the bargain. Why he’s been up numberless times before us for one thing or another, and twice already for poaching.”

“But he was acquitted the first time, and the second there was a doubt,” expostulated the clerical justice – a kindly-hearted man who, although his commission of the peace was congenial to a harmless vanity, disliked punishing his fellow men. “I think we might give him another chance.” So two of the trio being in favour of mercy, stern justice was outvoted.

“Now look here, Devine,” said Colonel Neville, “even if we believed every word of your story – which you can’t expect us to do, considering that you have already been up twice before us on similar charges – it would be no excuse, and you know that as well as we do. If you can’t get work here – and it’s your own fault if you can’t, because you quarrel with everyone who employs you – the best thing to do is to go to some other place, where you can. Anyhow, you’ve broken the law this time and we can’t overlook it, but we are going to give you another chance, though at first we had fully intended sending you to gaol. You will be fined ten shillings, that is five shillings for each act of poaching, and costs; in default a month’s hard labour.”

The prisoner’s countenance, which had lightened considerably at the words “another chance,” now fell again.

“Please, Kurnel,” he began, “I haven’t got five halfpence, let alone ten – ”

“Well, we can’t help that,” testily retorted Colonel Neville, who was feeling the effects of the close, stuffy room. “We have dealt with you very leniently as it is. Next case, Mr Inspector.”

So Stephen Devine was removed, and a yokel took his place, charged with cruelty to a horse, then came a couple of disputed paternity cases, the particulars of which, though highly instructive to the student of the manners and customs of the lower orders in rural districts, are in no wise material to this narrative; and so the business of the day proceeded, until at length the three magnates who had sacrificed themselves to the cause of justice in Wandsborough were emancipated and free to return to their respective homes.

“Upon my word, Neville, you do let those rascals down uncommonly easy,” observed Mr Pagnell to his brother magistrate, as the two rode homewards. “Poaching is the very thing we ought to stamp out ruthlessly in these days. Why, that ruffian Devine has simply got off scot free.”

“Poor devil,” answered the kind-hearted Colonel, who under the influence of fresh air and the prospects of no more Sessions for a month, had quite recovered his good humour. “Poor devil, I believe he’s been trying to keep square since his daughter came back. But he’ll have to do his month, for he’ll never be able to pay his fine.”

“Won’t he! You’ll see that he will, and we shall have him up before us again next Bench day. The fellow’s an irreclaimable scamp. Well, our ways part here. Good-bye.”

About half way between Cranston and Wandsborough, but in the latter parish, and in an angle formed by the footpath across the fields with a deep lane, stands a cottage – one of those picturesque, snug-looking nests which you shall see in no other country in the world – thatched, diamond-paned, and a bit of half garden, half orchard in front, and a background of elder trees and high hawthorn bushes. But, for all its external picturesqueness, an exploration of the interior of this abode would reveal a very poverty-stricken state of things. There is a neglected look about everything, and the rooms, bare of all but a few worthless sticks of furniture – too worthless even for the bailiffs or the pawnshop, seem to point eloquently to the sort of person their occupier would be – shiftless, hang-dog, ne’er-do-well, and not unfrequently drunken. It is the abode of Stephen Devine, alias Gipsy Steve, whose acquaintance we have just made.

At the moment when that worthy learns his fate in the Wandsborough Sessions room, there stands in the doorway of his abode a girl. Her dress, appearance, and the rough dusting-cloth in her hand seem to show that she has paused in the commonplace but laudable occupation of tidying up, and is there at the door for a breath of fresh air and a look round; and her coarseness of garb and surroundings notwithstanding, the girl would assuredly attract from the passer-by no mere casual glance, for she is of striking and uncommon beauty. Her almost swarthy complexion ought by all rules to go with jetty locks and dark flashing eyes, but it does not. The masses of hair crowning her well-carried head are light brown, just falling short of golden, and harmonise wonderfully with the smooth tawny skin, and her eyes are large, limpid and blue. The mouth, too, is not the least beautiful feature – full, red and sensuous. She is a tall girl, of splendid build and proportions, and the light, closely-fitting gown displays a figure which would have commanded a fabulous price in the slave-markets of old, and the easy, restful, leaning attitude as she stands in the doorway defines the swelling lines of her finely moulded form. A magnificent animal truly, and withal a dangerous one. Such is Lizzie Devine, the poacher’s daughter.

The passer-by referred to above would assuredly pronounce her to be no ordinary cottage girl, and he would be right. She had not inhabited the humble abode where we find her more than a fortnight; for she had only just returned from what the neighbours vaguely termed “foreign parts,” which vagueness neither Lizzie nor her father were disposed to reduce to definition. Here she was, anyhow, beneath “Gipsy Steve’s” poverty-stricken and highly disreputable roof, and the neighbours looked at her askance, as in duty bound. For this did Lizzie care not one rush. Her movements and pursuits were as mysterious as the antecedents of her father. The gossips hate mystery – therefore, said the gossips, she must have been after no good. Some thought she had been “a play-actress,” some thought even worse. Some thought one thing, some another – but Lizzie didn’t care what they thought. Neither she nor Steve mixed with their neighbours – she from choice, he from necessity; for he was disliked and feared as a quarrelsome and dangerous man. One thing was certain, whatever occupation Lizzie had been pursuing, she had returned home with empty pockets, and this ought to have told in her favour, for the ways of evil are lucrative.

She stands in the doorway looking out over the sunlit fields, and her thoughts are chaotic. At first she wearily wonders whether her father will be discharged with a reprimand, and if not what she can pawn in order to pay his fine. Then her reflections fly off at a tangent. Away in the distance, the chimneys of Cranston Hall appear above the trees, and on these the girl’s clear blue eyes are fixed, while she indulges in a day-dream. Yet she is a hard, practical young party enough, for she is twenty-four, and has seen a very considerable slice of this habitable globe.

Suddenly her frame becomes rigid, and the blood surges to her face, then falls back, leaving it ashy pale. What has she spied to bring about this convulsion? Only a man, of course.

He is advancing along the field path with an easy swinging stride. As she gazes, a large red and white dog comes tearing over the further stile and scampers joyously past his master. The girl stands in a state of strange irresolution, her heart beating like a hammer. He has not seen her – one step inside and he will have passed by. But her chance of retreat is gone. While she is doubting, the man passes the gate, and as he does so looks carelessly up.

Roland Dorrien is not wont to exhibit wild surprise over anything, but the start which he gives as his eyes meet those of the girl before him, proves that his astonishment is genuine.