Читать книгу Dorrien of Cranston - Mitford Bertram - Страница 1

General Dorrien sits at the breakfast table in the cheerful dining-room at Cranston Hall, with a frown upon his face and an open letter in his hand.

He is a handsome man, with severe, regular features; a man of whom his dependents would certainly stand in awe, and his family would fear more than love. There is sternness in the glance of his keen eyes, in the cut of the closely-trimmed grey moustache and whisker, and in every movement of the erect military figure. A man of iron will, not to be turned aside from his own hard and fast rule of right and wrong by any consideration – what chance had the foibles and follies of youth with one of this mould? And there he sits, motionless, gazing upon the open letter, the frown deepening upon his brow.

The letter bears an American postmark and is from his eldest son, whom he has not seen for eight years. It is business-like in the terse brevity of its wording, for it merely, and as a matter of duty, announces the writer’s intended return to England, tidings one would think that should gladden a father’s heart.

But in this case not so. Roland Dorrien and his father had parted in bitter anger. Faults on both sides, of course. The former wild, reckless and imprudent, as youth too strictly and needlessly restrained is almost sure to prove; the latter merciless and unbending. Resentful feelings and hot, hasty temper, met by additional severity and cold scorn – thus they had parted, and save two or three curt communications on money matters had held no intercourse since. And the son, sharing largely in the paternal force of will, has made no attempt at apology or conciliation during his exile; and now he is coming home.

So the General’s reflections are not of a comforting nature. He has not softened during these years. Never was he known to give way; all must yield to him. The exile has not done this; therefore Time, rather than heal the paternal anger, has only consolidated it.

Roland is not his first-born. There was another, a fine cavalry soldier, who had already begun to distinguish himself in his father’s profession, and him the General had loved as the apple of his eye. But one day news of a terrible Alpine fatality arrived at Cranston Hall. An Englishman and his two guides – both incompetent – had been lost on the Lauteraar glacier. They were seen by another party not very far behind them on that dangerous pass suddenly to disappear – and upon these arriving at the spot, a fresh rift in the brink of a black, bottomless crevasse showed that the edge had given way beneath the doomed trio who had approached it regardless of proper precaution. There yawned the horrible fissure, its glassy blue sides falling perpendicular into unknown depths, and revealing the barest possible traces of the catastrophe to the horror-stricken witnesses. The Englishman who had thus found a nameless grave in the most stupendous of Nature’s vaults was Vernon Dorrien, the General’s eldest son, and the light of the old soldier’s life seemed thenceforth to be buried there also.

Roland was now the heir and would reign in his dead brother’s place. Not of legal right though, for the entail ended with the present Squire, who had it in his power to will Cranston as he chose. But the General had his own stern ideas of right. The Dorriens had always held Cranston from father to son, or, failing male issue, from brother to brother, and in spite of his aversion to his eldest surviving son the latter would succeed him in the ancestral domain. Right and justice would not allow Roland to be disinherited, but that he should fill his dead brother’s place was very unpalatable to General Dorrien.

And now he sits with the letter in his hand gazing meditatively out upon the sunlit lawn and the noble elms in the park, and on the wooded hollows beneath the brown heather-clad uplands; and his soul is filled with bitterness as he thinks of the man who was to have owned all this fair domain now lying cold and stiff in his vast and icy tomb. The cawing of rooks floats in through the half-open window, and the flower-beds are stirred by a cool, soft breath from yon patch of amethyst sea just glimpsed through a dip in the downs away there to the right.

The window shuts with an angry slam, the result of the sudden opening of a door. He looks up quickly as a lady enters – an elderly lady with a strong-minded face. She must have been very handsome in her youth – she is handsome yet, though her dark hair is only just beginning to turn grey, and her large eyes are clear and lustrous still; but the firm moulding of mouth and chin seems to show that her will is nearly, if not quite, as determined as that of her husband. She takes her place opposite to him at the table.

“I have a letter here” – he begins – “from Roland.”

“Yes? And what does he say?” Her tone betrays scant interest in the subject, and she busies herself with the urn.

“Very little that he ought to say – very little indeed. Why, madam, you have taught your children the Fifth Commandment to small purpose.” And he hands her the letter with a bitter smile.

She takes it frowning, but without a word, for she has long learnt the futility of trying to stem his taunts or his anger. Her domineering spirit would long since have reduced most men to submission, but in her husband she had found her master; and thus for many a year a cold-hearted peace has reigned between them, but their characters are too much alike ever to harmonise, and they know it.

“He does not say he is coming home,” she remarks, handing back the letter – “only to England.”

“And he does not express a shadow of regret for his shameful behaviour before he went away, or for his treatment of me. And yet he talks about ‘his duty to inform me of his return.’ His duty!” repeats the General with bitter sarcasm.

“You know I told you, at the time, you were too hard on him. Things might have been worse.”

“Too hard on him! Might have been worse! Eleanor, are you mad? A son of mine to be threatened with a common breach of promise action by common low people. I don’t see what could be worse.”

“Well, it was only a threat. The boy was imprudent, of course; but then, he was very young.”

“But old in vice, no doubt. But it was not so much the disgraceful affair itself that I felt, as that a son of mine should be mixed up with low, vulgar people.”

“They were not so very low. The father was a professional man – a surgeon in good practice, and – ”

“And would assess his daughter’s affections at 4,000 pounds, and would exhibit the young lady in open court as a butt for the ribald wit of a filthy mob, and for the questioning and brow-beating and broad jeers of a set of profligate barristers. Really, Eleanor, I am at a loss to see how lowness and vulgarity could descend much further.”

To this conclusive retort she makes no reply. Then tentatively —

“But don’t you think, Reginald, that he ought to come here now? He ought to be known in the county, if – if – ”

“If he is one day to take his place here – is not that what you wanted to say? Well, whether he does so or not depends upon himself. I may bequeath Cranston as I choose. Most men would cast off a son for a tenth of the undutiful conduct Roland has shown towards me; but I waive that. I only desire to be just. Roland will take his place here just as if he were the inheritor at law. But if ever he disgraces himself again, not one shilling will he get from me, and Cranston will go to his brother. So you had better find an early opportunity of warning him.”

It is lamentable to have to record the fact, but her husband’s resentment against his son was not so displeasing to Mrs Dorrien as her conscience told her should have been the case. For even as all his affection is buried in the grave of his first-born, so does she dote upon her youngest. For the exiled Roland she has little love. He is too strong of will for her; and no more than over his father has she ever been able to exercise over him that power she delights in. But to see her idolised Hubert installed at Cranston as its heir – even though in his brother’s place – is a tempting picture to the eyes of this woman, whose one weakness is love of her idol. To do her justice, conscience prevails, and she is about to urge even more in defence of the absent one, when a step is heard on the stairs, and the General exclaims:

“Hush. No more now. I hear Nellie coming down. Oblige me by not mentioning this” – tapping the letter – “to her, or to anyone, at present.”

“Good-morning, papa,” cries a fresh, cheerful voice, and the old man’s face softens perceptibly beneath his daughter’s kiss. She is a tall, largely-made girl, but not in the least gawky or ungraceful; and although her features are too irregular for conventional beauty, yet a profusion of soft brown hair, blue eyes and the warm flush tingeing a clear skin, together with a bright, taking expression when she smiles, combine to render Nellie Dorrien a pretty girl – some think, a very pretty girl.

“You’re late, child,” says the General, not unkindly. “Better sit down and get your breakfast. I must go and attend to my correspondence” – and gathering up his letters he goes out.

“I do think, Nellie,” began her mother, as soon as they were left alone, “I do think you might take the trouble to be down a little sooner. Your papa is so vexed when everybody is late, and now you are both late, and he’ll be doubly so.”

“But he was not a bit cross, mamma, at least not with me.”

“Not with you! No, perhaps not. But Hubert isn’t down yet, and it’ll all fall upon him. However, as you are safe, it doesn’t matter about poor Hubert,” added Mrs Dorrien acidly.

“Really, mamma, I don’t think it’s quite fair to saddle me with Hubert’s derelictions. Surely he is old enough to take care of himself,” gently objected the girl.

“Of course. Selfishness is the order of the day in this house, I ought to have remembered that.”

Nellie gave a little shrug of her shoulders, but made no reply. She was far from being a selfish girl, but she could not see why everything and everybody should be made to give way to Hubert and his convenience, as it had to do wherever her mother’s authority or influence reached. For Mrs Dorrien chose to fancy her youngest son an invalid, on the strength of which that interesting youth at the age of twenty-two would have taken first prize at an unlicked cub show – supposing such an institution to exist. Nellie herself knew this reputed debility to be sheer fudge – which knowledge she unconsciously shared with certain convivial and raffish spirits who were wont to meet more nights a week than was good for them at the “Cock and Bull and Twisted Cable” in Wandsborough, and these latter could have accounted for the poor boy’s chronic seediness more to his mother’s enlightenment than satisfaction.

“Hallo, mother. Morning, Nell!” cried the object under discussion, entering the breakfast-room and sliding languidly into his place. A sallow, loosely-built, light-haired youth, somewhat deficient in chin, and with an irritating drawl.

“At last, Hubert dear. I began to think you must have had a bad night, and was getting anxious!” said his mother fondly. “How are you this morning, my boy? You don’t look at all well.”

She was right – in one sense. He had had a bad night, the above-mentioned sporting hostelry containing proportionately less whisky and soda, not to mention other varieties of tipple more or less deleterious. The General’s hair would have stood straight on end had he known when and how his youngest-born had arrived home.

“Oh, I’m all right, mother,” growled that guileless youth, “except that I’ve got a deuce of a head on. But I say, what was the veteran looking so mortally black about just now? I met him on the stairs, or rather I saw him – he didn’t see me, thank Heaven – and he was scowling like an assassin. He had a lot of letters in his fist. By the way” – breaking off with a start of alarm – “no one has been dunning him about – about me, don’t you know. Eh?”

“No, no dear,” quickly answered his mother. “It was not about you. Your father is put out over his correspondence, but it is not about you. That I may say.”

“That’s lucky,” said Hubert, greatly relieved. “I didn’t know who might have been at him. But, mother, what was it about?” he persisted, his curiosity awakened in proportion as his fears were lulled.

“Nothing that you need mind,” returned Mrs Dorrien, rising and taking refuge from further questioning in flight.

“Nellie,” began the young man, as soon as his mother had left the room, “I wish you knew the Rectory people.”

“So do I. I just met the girls once at the Nevilles’ garden party, and rather liked them. But mamma would sooner cut off her head than have anything to say to them. But why do you wish it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The eldest isn’t up to much – too cold and stuck up. As for the young one – Sophie – she’s a detestable brat. Tries to snub a fellow, don’t you know. Thinks herself no end clever. But the middle one – Olive – fact is, she’s a monstrously pretty girl.”

“Ahem! And when did you make that discovery?”

“Why I saw her at the station the other day – and rather took stock of her; and I tell you, a fellow might make something of her.”

“Or the other way about – she might make something of a fellow,” returned his sister, with a slight curl of the lip.

“Go it!” exploded the other wrathfully. “Of course it’s very funny and all that. I see what you mean, and the joke’s a poor one. I thought you might be of some use to a fellow; but if you want to play the fool instead, why there’s an end of it.”

“My dear boy, I can’t help you in the very least. You know mamma hates the sight of them, and as for papa he declares that if he had his will he would try poor Dr Ingelow by drumhead court martial and have him shot. It’s hard lines that we are to be at daggers drawn with people whom everybody says are awfully nice, just because their opinions are not ours, I must say.”

“Well, I rather agree with the veteran. All that papistical stuff is awful bosh, and a parson who goes in for it is no better than a wolf in sheep’s clothing – as old mother Frewen always says. But all the same that’s no reason why we shouldn’t know the girls.”

“Why didn’t you make acquaintance with the brother at Oxford?” asked Nellie.

“Oh, I don’t know. Didn’t think it worth while then. These freshmen are generally a bore.”

“Freshmen! Why this is his fourth term.”

“Is it? I didn’t know. Hallo – I say – there’s the veteran calling you, outside. Better look sharp, the old man’s face is getting apoplectic,” he added teasingly, discerning that the French window was jammed and wouldn’t open, and that the frown was deepening on their father’s face where he stood at the other side of the gravel walk.

General Dorrien had been comfortably off before he succeeded his elder brother, with whom he had been on bad terms, and whose death, some five years previous to the opening of this narrative, took place on the high seas during the voyage home from South America – a voyage undertaken by medical advice. The General accepted his new position and its responsibilities perfectly naturally and easily, and at once set to work vigorously and with military precision to rectify the numerous derelictions which had prevailed and thriven under the sway of his easy-going predecessor. It stood to reason that many suffered by the change. Consequently the new Squire was not beloved. But if unpopular with his dependents, by his equals he was received with open arms. He had been a brilliant soldier in his time, and had served with distinction in more than one of our wars in the East; the county therefore felt proud of his fame, being, in fact, not wholly free from some idea of having itself contributed thereto. Then the late Squire had been a bachelor, but here was a family who would keep up Cranston as it should be kept up. There ought to be a law against old bachelors occupying such a place as Cranston, said the county, in its joy at seeing a family once more in possession at the Hall, and a family comprising two eligible sons – one of them a right royal “catch” – and a daughter who would certainly not be dowerless. So although on further acquaintance the General was feared rather than liked, yet the county was very well satisfied. But its feminine side longed for the return of the eldest son to his ancestral home, with a solicitude that should have been insidiously flattering to the unconscious wanderer had he been aware of its existence.