Читать книгу Dorrien of Cranston - Mitford Bertram - Страница 8

“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.

“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.