Kitabı oku: «Dorrien of Cranston», sayfa 12
Then it all came back to her in a moment. She had resented his departure without a word – now she saw how he had been bound in honour not to speak it. She had felt proud, hurt and angry, while all the time he had been crushed beneath an accumulation of ruin and the woe that it involved. How she loved him now – how her heart went out to him in his adversity as it would never have done in his prosperity – how she longed and thirsted to be with him in this dark hour of his distress! All those bright, beautiful summer months passed before her, with their golden hours of love and sweetness and peace – and now! Those first furtive glances exchanged in the church, that accidental meeting on the beach, and the many rambles and long hours together, all rose up to mock her – and the moment when she had tottered between life and death on the slippery cliff path – with him. And now he was gone – gone for ever – and she was left.
Chapter Twenty Two.
What Wandsborough Said
It may seem strange that to a man of Dr Ingelow’s standard of principle and pronounced beliefs, such a cordial intimacy as that which had sprung up between himself and Roland Dorrien should be possible; still more so, that apart from the drawbacks we have narrated, and which were purely mundane, he should be ready to accept him as a son-in-law. Yet he was – and without prejudice to his own principles.
No man living was more thoroughly free from bigotry than the rector of Wandsborough. Principle was one thing – sitting on the judgment seat, quite another. So, although he suspected Roland Dorrien’s private opinions to border very closely upon infidelity, yet he did not consider him a subject for social ostracism on that account. Indeed, had the man shown a devout disposition in the face of early bringing up and subsequent associations, he would have looked upon him in the light of a natural curiosity. Roland was just the sort of man whom the ordinary Anglican parson would have regarded with lofty disapproval. But then Dr Ingelow was by no means an ordinary Anglican parson.
Of course, Wandsborough was not long in finding out that Roland Dorrien’s place in its midst would know him no more, and its curiosity once awakened, it caught eagerly at the few “straws” floating on the wind of popular report, and proceeded to piece together many romantic and preposterous stories therewith. Dark rumours as to that stormy scene in the study at Cranston Hall began to leak out. Servants have long tongues and still longer ears, and more than one virtuous domestic had stood on mental tip-toe, pausing in his or her then occupation, to listen intently as the sound of angry voices proceeded from the dread sanctum. Before night, the story had not only permeated Cranston village, but had been whispered in Wandsborough, and Roland’s abrupt departure the next day seemed a direct challenge to all tongues.
What a good time of it had Miss Munch and Mrs Bunch et hoc genus omne! Now was the time for unearthing all the little bits of half-forgotten scandal and tagging them together, and weaving them into a deliciously parti-coloured whole, amid much head-wagging and “didn’t I tell you how it would be?” – “and it wasn’t likely that such a one as Roland Dorrien would bury himself in a dull place like Wandsborough, and hardly ever be with his own people, for nothing.” First it was rumoured that the General and his son had had a stand up fight in the former’s study, then that they had thrown all the chairs and tables at each other. The more oracular declared that nothing short of a duel had taken place, and least said soonest mended; and thus the ball rolled, until the bare facts that actually were known or guessed at, became quite too prosaic for credence.
But what had it all been about? “Ah! haven’t you heard?” And then the mysterious nods and winks would increase tenfold, and the whispered communication would be received in various ways according to the temperament or capacity for humbug of the hearer – but always with a thirst for more particulars. For instance, why should Mr Dorrien have interested himself on behalf of that precious rascal, Gipsy Steve? Must it not have been on Lizzie’s account, and, of course, all young men were desperately wicked, and anyone with half an eye could see through that brick wall; and so the matter had come to the General’s ears. But this story was very soon improved upon, and presently it was that Gipsy Steve had sworn to shoot the young Squire unless he did justice to Lizzie – and it was while Roland was making this announcement to his father, that the latter had hurled an inkstand at his head, and now he had made himself scarce, fearing the ex-poacher’s vengeance. Others again scouted this version. Roland Dorrien was not the man to be afraid of anyone – rightly or wrongly – not he. Besides, Lizzie had no more to do with the concern than they, the speakers, had. It was Olive Ingelow who was the real apple of discord. Couldn’t anyone see that the two were never apart, that the young Squire spent most of his evenings at the Rectory, and how he and the young lady wandered about the lanes together, or sat on the beach all day long! – and now, it turned out that they had been privately married, and that the General had sworn he would never recognise it or set eyes on his son again.
This rumour, once let loose, ranged at will, and these and a dozen other stories, each more preposterous than its predecessor, were circulated throughout Wandsborough, and all the region round about, and gained more or less of ready credence. Among those by whom they were accepted, opinions were divided anent the respective conduct of the General and his son in connection with the affair. Some held that the former was a domestic tyrant of the very worst order, and that the latter had, at last, justifiably rebelled – others again extolled the General as a model parent and a high-principled Christian man, while poor Roland, it was declared, had always been a depraved reprobate and an irreclaimable scamp; in short – and whatever had happened now, he had been rightly served. Then there were not wanting a few who held that between the two it was six of one and half a dozen of the other – that the Dorriens were at best an ill-conditioned, quarrelsome lot, and the less one had to do with them the better.
At Ardleigh Court the tidings of the Dorrien quarrel were received with surprise and dismay. The Colonel warmly espoused the cause of the absent, wherein his wife differed with him wholly. Young men were so intolerably self-opinionated now-a-days, she declared, that no doubt General Dorrien had not been unjustified in what he did. However, having so far vindicated her principles of contradictiousness, she was fain to admit that Roland seemed far more sensible than most young men of his age, and she liked what she had seen of him. Whatever Clara may have thought, she said very little, though on one or two occasions she had stood up – rather warmly for her – for the exile; and Maud, albeit she had wrangled a good deal with him during his stay there, was really sorry for him, though being of a romantic turn she was inclined to feel very angry with him on her sister’s account, her lively imagination having long since settled all that.
“A pack of infernal lies?” cried the Colonel with heat, referring to some of the reports which had come to his ears concerning the absent. “Pooh! I don’t believe a word of them. Dorrien’s a quick-tempered fellow – always was, by Jove! and Roland’s a chip of the old block. I suppose they lost their tempers with each other, and came to high words. As for all that slander, and bringing girls’ names into the concern, why, it’s scandalous.”
“Well, where there’s smoke there must be some fire,” suggested his wife, with characteristic originality.
“Fire be damned, ahem! I beg your pardon,” exploded the good-hearted Colonel. “And I tell you what it is. That libellous old Jezebel – what’s her name? – Frewen, for instance, will find herself in Court if she doesn’t look out. Libel’s a criminal offence, and if she comes before us, I’ll commit her for trial – I will, by Jove, as sure as I’m Chairman of Petty Sessions!”
“I think you’re rather hard on her,” objected Mrs Neville, true to her colours. “She didn’t originate these stories, remember.”
“It’s my belief she did!” retorted the Colonel. “She hates the Ingelows, and would move heaven and earth to injure them – spiteful, canting old harridan. I think Ingelow mistaken, and his vestments and candles and popish fal-lal great bosh – but hang it! he’s a thoroughly good fellow in private life, and I’m not going to stand by and see him worried and his girls’ characters taken away by that slanderous old Gamp, who probably began life in a chandler’s shop – and I’ll let him know that I’m not. I’ll call on him this very afternoon, by George, I will?”
At Cranston, as may be supposed, cheerful times did not prevail. Always gloomy and constrained, the gloom and constraint deepened tenfold in the days following upon the rupture. The General’s ill-humour was now chronic, and when he did speak it was usually to make some incisive remark calculated to render everyone thoroughly ill at ease. Mrs Dorrien was freezingly acid, and the household saw no one and went nowhere, and, needless to say, all reference to the erring one was strictly taboo. Hubert heartily wished the Vacation would be quick and come to an end, and being considerably bored, and proportionately irritable, his sister had to bear the brunt of his – among other – ill-tempers. As for poor Nellie, she felt the separation terribly. She had little thought that morning that she had seen the last of Roland, without even saying goodbye, too. And now she was forbidden even to write to him. Life was very hard – would better times ever come?
Chapter Twenty Three.
Dorrien of – Nowhere
A pair of dingy rooms in a dingy London street, communicating with each other by means of a folding door, which is at present shut. A table, decidedly unsteady on its pins and bedight in a chequered breakfast cloth, whereon is a war-worn tea-pot – which article, by the way, knives and forks, dish-covers and spoons seem to have been made specially to match – cloudy delf, cruets not guiltless of defunct flies, an uninviting loaf and a pat of butterine or oleo-margarine, or whatever is the London lodging-house equivalent for butter, and, perchance, when that cover is lifted, a brace of leathery fried eggs, undoubtedly not of to-day’s or yesterday’s origin, will be disclosed to view. And this appetising repast, and this glaringly-vulgar and soul-depressing abode must soon be exchanged for something more nauseous, for something more vulgar and soul-depressing still, for even this is somewhat beyond Roland’s means – beyond the miserable pittance he has managed to save from the wreck. There had been an accumulation of interest on the capital in the fallen Bank, which in a fortunate moment, somewhat earlier, he had been induced to invest in a small speculation, and this, together with a little which still remained out of his last year’s dividend, just availed to save him from immediate destitution.
He enters, and listlessly draws a chair to the table. There is a smell of escaped gas in the room, which, mingling with a vaporous whiff from the kitchen of unmistakable cabbage in process of boiling, nearly upsets him. Quickly he throws open the window, admitting a rush of air from the dark, misty street, that makes him shiver; but anything is better than the abominable atmosphere of the house, and again he draws his chair in and attempts to breakfast – attempts. Even Roy, who comes in for most of his master’s share, and who has an especial weakness for bread and butter, feeds with a lack of enthusiasm which shows that he, too, is not unaffected by the change of circumstances. And why not he as well as his master? Here, no scamper over breezy downs, no life in the strong, pure air of the salt sea, no sunshine and green fields, and at other times no snug, cheerful rooms, where he may make himself thoroughly at home. His walks are taken in gloomy streets, where he is continually jostled and trodden on – his beautiful coat would seem to have been given him expressly for the purpose of collecting pailsful of metropolitan mud, and he himself is treated as the natural enemy of mankind. Sticks and stones are slily hurled at him from alleys and doorways; twice has a desperate attempt been made to steal him, only failing the second time by great good luck, the fastening of the muzzle into which his nose had been deftly betrayed, having given way, and he, taking prompt advantage of the casualty, had nearly bitten off three of the enemy’s fingers, and made good his retreat. Park-keepers eye him with no benevolent glance when he indulges in a scamper in those elysian fields of public recreation, and, even there, other dogs resent his intrusion, and would carry out the canine equivalent for “’eaving ’arf a brick” far more than they do, were it not that Master Roy, good-tempered as he naturally is, can make great and effective play with his eye-teeth when roused – as more than one quarrelsome bull-terrier or black retriever could testify in pain and sorrow for a fortnight after.
Roland Dorrien’s reflections as he sits in this dismal hole, trying to imagine that he is breakfasting, are of the very gloomiest. More than a month has gone by since he learned the worst, and as yet he is without plans for the future. Of his own free will and by his own act he has cut himself adrift from all who might have befriended him in his extremity. No, rather he prefers to sink or swim – probably the former – alone. A few days after we last saw him, Venn received a few lines notifying that he thought it better under the circumstances to take himself out of everybody’s way for a time – most likely he should go abroad, but anyhow, had settled nothing; and Venn, on receipt thereof, had repaired post haste to his friend’s lodgings, only to find he had kept his word. He had disappeared, literally, leaving no trace. And the good-hearted stock-broker had been sorely apprehensive. Men had been known to do queer things with far less excuse than Dorrien might show, and his pulse would beat quicker more than once when he came upon newspaper reports of any of those ghastly “finds” only too common in the metropolis. And Dr Ingelow, too, who had run up to Town for the purpose, had enquired so anxiously, and seemed so distressed, that he, Venn, could give him absolutely no tidings. Dorrien was a queer fellow, to go and cut all his friends in that way, but then, he was always given to making the worst of things; however, it was to be hoped that some day he would turn up again, and things might come right; and so honest Venn, if he did not altogether dismiss the matter from his thoughts, soon brought himself to regard it with no great anxiety, and plied his daily avocations as if nothing had happened. “Every man for himself” is the world’s motto – and vae victis!
And now, within a few streets of him – yet as completely hidden as if on a solitary rock in the Northern Hebrides – Roland sits, engaged in his usual occupation – brooding. What is there left that makes this wretched life worth dragging on any longer? Why should he not end it? Even if he will prolong it, he must toil hard at some uncongenial drudgery till the end of his days – harder than the broad-arrow-wearing wretch, wheeling his barrow in the quarries of Portland. He must sink into a mere machine, – lose sight of the fact that he had ever known better things, as completely as if it had been a dream. He must be prepared to place himself at the beck and call of others – of low, repellant cads, it might be – in order to earn a scanty wage, to put up with the bumptiousness, the insolence of some snob in authority, and be thankful for the privilege of existing. No – never! Better perpetual sleep – oblivion – annihilation. Then he would laugh bitterly to himself. Why, even such a mill-horse lot was barred to him. He was quite useless. His neglected, pitch-and-toss kind of “dragging-up” had been such as to fit him for nothing, and here, in the fierce competition for the morsels that enabled men just to keep body and soul together, where would he be? Nowhere. He was not of the material to hold his own amongst the raying, hungry crowd competing for a starvation pittance. At times a plan would suggest itself as his thoughts turned towards the Western wilds, where five years of his life had been spent. There, at any rate, he might be free. There life might be just worth living. He was fond of shooting – might he not adopt the life of a professional hunter, supporting himself by the proceeds of his rifle? The rolling plains and the vast silent forests, the serrated ridges of the distant sierras crowned with their dazzling snowcaps, the blue sky and the free air of heaven – surely this would be a good exchange for the gloom and filth and indescribable desolation of the great, murky city! Twice he had been on the point of sailing, and both times he had thought better of it – or worse – at the last moment, and had stayed. An insane, yet overmastering, impulse made him cling to the land which contained his heart’s shrine, and, although utterly without hope, yet he could not bring himself to place the ocean between them – not yet.
And now this morning the dingy room, with its glaring, vulgar adornments (!), fades from his gaze, as in imagination he is back at Wandsborough. Every one of those hours, too lightly valued at the time, he has mentally gone through again and again. Every tone of a certain voice – every expression of a certain very sweet and bewitching face, from the moment he first espied that latter in Wandsborough Church, is present in his memory now as vividly as though he were actually living through the bygone time all over again.
“Please, sir, Missus says can I clear away?”
The whole picture fades as suddenly as did its reality a few weeks ago, as in a rich cockney twang the unkempt, down-at-heel slavey prefers the above request.
He moves to the window. The outlook is about as inspiriting as that of a London by-street usually is. A barrel organ, grinding out a popular melody, as though it were a dirge, heaves in sight and sound; and a gang of woeful and decrepit bipeds from a neighbouring Union is discharging its burden upon the ratepayers by shovelling the mud and slush from the middle of the street in mechanical and dejected fashion. He glances at the clock, but there is relief rather than consternation in his mind as he awakens to the lateness of the hour – relief, that he should already have got through so much of the morning. How many mornings were to be got through on this side of – what?
“Come, Roy. Out!”
The dog jumps up and works himself into something like his usual state of excitement attendant upon the welcome summons, and they sally forth. The street is one of those in the vicinity of Hyde Park, and thither they turn their steps. At any rate it is open – and away tears Roy, trying perhaps to imagine himself on the turfy slopes about Minchkil Beacon as he scampers over the grass, scattering the few sooty disconsolate sheep right and left. Entering near the Marble Arch, Roland walks straight across, nor pauses till the bridge on the Serpentine is reached. It is a dull grey day, and the air is steely and cold. He stands on the bridge, lazily trying to imagine that he is gazing upon a broad river with its green sloping banks shaded by feathery elms, away in the heart of the sweet, peaceful country. The leaves have hardly begun to fall, and save for the muffled din of traffic, there is little to betoken the proximity of a mighty city. Then he wanders on, and eventually reaches the Round Pond.
“That’s a fine dog of yours, sir.”
Quickly he looks up at the speaker, a man of about his own age, and who wears the appearance of most well-to-do English gentlemen with nothing remarkable about them, and assents. Then the other, who is evidently of a communicative disposition, launches out into a dissertation upon dogs in general and dogs in London in particular, and the drawbacks attendant upon their comfort and well-being in the metropolis; and Roland, nothing loth, finds himself conversing with something like zest. It is long since he has exchanged an idea with anybody, and now he finds a certain amount of diversion in this stranger’s talk. Roy, too, seems to take to him, for he wags his tail and suffers himself to be patted in a way that is remarkable; for of late, like his master, though with different reasons, he has taken to viewing all mankind with suspicion.
“And so he comes from America, does he?” says the stranger again. “Do you know, I haven’t seen a dog I fancied so for a long time, and I’ve often seen you and him here before to-day. Now, I hope it’s no offence – and, if it is, I really beg pardon – but you wouldn’t feel disposed to part with him, I suppose?”
Part with him! Part with Roy – dear, true-hearted Roy, his second self, the one faithful friend who shared his exile. The idea seemed to sting him like a lash! Yet, why should it? He need only answer in the negative, and there wae no harm done. But the question had seemed to come significantly at this moment, for of late he had been haunted by a growing conviction that the time for such a parting was not far distant.
“Oh, no offence, of course,” he replied quietly, but there is a troubled look in his eyes which the other sees and makes a mental note of. “But I don’t want to part with him.”
“Of course. I can quite understand your not relishing the question,” says the stranger good-humouredly. “I hate to be asked to sell a favourite dog myself. But – at the risk of being importunate – if ever you should want to sell him, would you mind giving me the first offer? You shall name your own price. Fact is, I’ve taken an extraordinary fancy to him. Here’s an address that’ll always find me.”
Under the circumstances Roland thinks there is no harm in accepting the card which the other tenders him, and which bears an address in Kensington, and the name of his new acquaintance, he learns through the same agency, is Frank Marsland. But he does not feel bound to reciprocate the confidence, and after a little more conversation they part: Roland, to dismiss the matter completely from his mind, as he makes his way back to his rooms, and the stranger to wonder who the deuce that good-looking fellow can be who seems to haunt the Round Pond with that splendid dog, and who always looks, by Jove! as if he had committed a murder or was about to commit one.
