Chapter Eighteen.
Father and Son.
“Do you mind coming this way, Roland?” said the General soon after breakfast the next morning. “Neville writes to say,” he went on, closing the library door behind them, “that they are going to give a ball on a large scale on Friday—it’s Clara’s birthday—and is very anxious for you to go to Ardleigh to-morrow, and stay over it. This is Wednesday, so I suppose you may count upon nearly a week of it up there, to which, I daresay, you won’t object,” he added, with some significance.
“Well, I don’t much care about it. I might manage the ball, but the fact is it will be rather inconvenient to go and stay there just now. Besides, I seem to have only just left.”
The General frowned slightly.
“I hope you’ll think better of it, Roland. You cannot really have anything to keep you from going, and Neville will take it ill if you refuse. You and Clara got on very well together when you were staying there before, didn’t you?”
“Extremely well. Couldn’t have got on better,” assented Roland. They were coming to the point, he thought, but he would let his father work up to it in his own way. Let the adversary show his hand by all means, his own would be so much the easier to play.
For a few moments they sat in silence. The General’s brows were knit as he sat thoughtfully balancing a paper-cutter between his fingers. Then looking up quickly, and speaking with the air of a man who has thought it out and quite made up his mind, he said:
“I don’t know why we should fence any more with each other, Roland. It will perhaps be best, as we are alone together, to be plain and above-board. But, first of all, I may state that I have strong reasons for wishing you to accept this invitation.”
“Indeed, sir. May I ask what they are?” The General made a movement of impatience. “Now, can you not guess them, Roland?”
“I might—I don’t say that I couldn’t. But guessing is at best unsatisfactory work, and apt to lead to cross-purposes,” said Roland very quietly. “As you said just now, why should we fence? What is it you wish me to do?”
The General gave a slight shake of the head, half deprecatory, half perplexed. He had not foreseen the extent of the other’s quiet self-possession, and there was a determination underlying his eldest son’s tone which he did not at all like.
“Well, Roland, just listen to me. You have been back in England some months now, and, I presume, intend to remain. Does it never occur to you that one with your position and prospects might employ life better than by lounging through it aimlessly as you are doing now?”
“It certainly has occurred to me. Though in the matter of position, I do not feel particularly exalted—and as for prospects, with all respect, sir, I would remind you that I am without any at present.”
“This is mere fencing,” answered his father testily. “By the way, your talents in that line would be of invaluable service to you at the Bar. Now, you must be perfectly well aware that your position is one of considerable importance, seeing that you must one day occupy my place here.”
“It’s very good of you to say so, sir,” replied Roland quietly. “But,” he added to himself, “if you don’t flatly contradict that statement before another hour has gone over our heads, why, the age of miracles is recommencing.”
“Things being so,” continued his father, “it is right that you should recognise your position as my eldest son. Now did you ever contemplate the contingency of marriage?”
“I have thought of it—yes.”
“Ah!” and the General’s brow cleared perceptibly. “Now, we are not so badly off about here in the matter of choice; we are fortunate in having for neighbours some good families—very good families, indeed. But I think it would be hard to find among them anyone more thoroughly suitable than Clara Neville. She is exceedingly good-looking, most accomplished and agreeable, and has plenty of sound common-sense; in short, any man might be proud of her as a wife.”
“She is, indeed, all you say,” assented Roland mercilessly, a sort of grim humour impelling him to draw his father thoroughly out.
“Ah! I should always have given you credit for being a man of taste, Roland,” rejoined the General, with more kindness in his tone than he had used for a long time. “Then, too, she is the daughter of one of my oldest—I may say my oldest—friends, and she will inherit Ardleigh. You have seen for yourself what Ardleigh is. It is a splendid property, and adjoins this. Such an opportunity of combining the two may never—will never occur again,” he continued, speaking more to himself than to his son. “And, Roland, only think what a man with such a stake in the county as Cranston and Ardleigh might do. Why, his influence would be unbounded. Any career leading to the highest distinction would be open to him.”
In spite of the knowledge that he himself would be the chief sufferer, Roland, as he sat listening to his father, could not help feeling a kind of pity for the disappointment which awaited the latter, when his ambitious schemes were ruthlessly shattered, as they were destined to be in a moment.
“So now you see why I wish you to accept this invitation,” went on the General. “The alliance will be a most suitable one in every way, and most desirable.”
“But aren’t we getting on rather fast?” said Roland, thinking he saw a straw, and clutching at it instinctively. “What reason have we to suppose that Clara Neville regards me with any more favour than she does any other man?”
“I feel sure of this, Roland: if she doesn’t, it’ll be your own fault entirely,” was the reply.
Well, that straw had gone down with him. There was now no alternative—he must declare himself. It is just possible that, in one of weaker calibre, the temptation to procrastinate might have prevailed. The moment was not a favourable one for making his statement—indeed, it could hardly be more unfavourable; what would be easier than to put it off for a day or two? But he entertained no such idea.
“You saw a great deal of each other, I believe,” went on the General, anxious over his silence. “And you have just told me you got on excellently well together?”
“So we did, and I trust we always shall. And I am sorry to be obliged to spoil your very attractive plans. I have the greatest regard for Miss Neville, but as for thinking of her as my wife, why, I can’t imagine the possibility of such a thing.”
It was out. The bolt had fallen. For a few moments the two sat facing each other without a word. At last the General spoke, but his voice sounded very harsh and constrained.
“Do you really mean this, Roland, or is it merely the outcome of some passing fancy of yours? Now, do nothing in a hurry. Take time—think it well over. I cannot believe that a sensible man like yourself can be blind to all the immeasurable advantages that the course I recommend would bring.”
“There is one advantage which has been left out of that course, father,” said Roland in a much softer tone than any he had yet employed. “That is—Love,” and he paused. “Ah! well, I am very sorry to have disappointed you,” he went on, as his father made no reply, “and on that account, and on that only, I wish it could have been otherwise. It is unfortunate, very, that you should have put this idea before me just now, for as a matter of fact this very day I intended to communicate to you my intention of marrying Olive Ingelow, the second daughter of the rector of Wandsborough.”
The trumpet had been blown, and that with no uncertain sound. War was declared. In declining to agree to his father’s plan, Roland had strayed dangerously far from his supports; in revealing his own he had burnt his boats behind him.
“So that is your intention, is it?” said his father in icy, cutting tones, when he had recovered from the effect of the audacity of the statement.
“Yes, it is. And I venture to hope, sir, that it may have your sanction.”
“Do you? But I have not the pleasure of the acquaintance of this young—lady, with whose relationship you are anxious to honour us,” was the satirical reply.
“I hope you very soon will have. Then you will see that she is in every way our equal as to birth, thoroughly well educated, and as sweet-tempered as she is beautiful. Now, father, you will not go against me in this,” he concluded, his face softening as he thought of Olive.
The General had risen from his seat and was pacing the room.
“My sanction?” he repeated, and it was evident that he was labouring to repress his strong excitement. “My sanction—that is what you want, is it? Then know this, Roland. As sure as you sit there you shall never have it—never. And what’s more, unless you give me your word, before you leave this room, to break off this affair unconditionally, now, at once and for all, you and I are strangers henceforth—total strangers. Do you hear?”
“I do.”
“Don’t think that I have been ignorant of your doings all this time. Don’t think that it has not been patent to us all how you preferred the society of these low adventurers to that of your own family.” There was a look on Roland’s face which would have warned most men to stop, but his father was not one of them. “And as for this—this young person you have chosen as an instrument for disgracing us, why, you must surely recollect that both your mother and myself witnessed her disreputable, immodest behaviour, and that on the public high road—”
“Just stop, sir—stop. What the devil do you mean by talking like this? Remember who you are talking about, please.” Roland had sprung to his feet, and stood confronting his father. His face was ghastly white, but his eyes glowed like two living coals, and his hands were clenched with the firmness of a vice. “Stop, do you hear? By God, if any other man had said that—” And he paused, restraining himself with an effort.
“So, so, sir,” cried the General furiously. “So you dare to stand there and threaten your father! So you dare to talk to me in this tone! You dare to stand there in your damned strength and talk to a man twice your age in that strain—I wonder Heaven does not strike you dead as you do it. But go—get away out of my sight, let me never see you again. One who can so far forget all sense of duty is no son of mine. Go! Do you hear—go?” and he pointed towards the door, his hands shaking in a perfect palsy of rage.
Roland walked to the door.
“Yes, I will go,” he said, “and that before I forget myself. Good-bye. I recall anything that may have sounded like a threat. Good-bye.”
“Go—go!” articulated the General, almost voiceless with rage, shaking his hand at the door. “I’d call down a curse upon you, but it’s needless, for you’re sure to come to the gallows some day, and after that to hell. Go. Be off with you!” The other turned deliberately and went out. On the stairs he encountered his mother.
“What is it, Roland? What has happened? You and your father have had a dreadful quarrel, I’m afraid,” she said, her cold nature roused to a state of unwonted anxiety. “Oh! dear! What is it all about?”
“Nothing, madam—except that the sweetly affectionate care and the pious home-training of my younger days is bearing its natural fruit,” was his caustic reply, for he felt a very hell of fierce wrath blazing within. “And now, let me congratulate you upon having things at last exactly as you have long wished them to be.”
He passed her. The hall door shut behind him with an angry slam, and thus Roland Dorrien went out from the presence of his father—never to look upon him again in this world.
Mrs Dorrien found her husband sitting in the study in a state of terrible exhaustion. He was a strong man for his age, but the frightful passion to which he had given way had seriously shaken him.
“Has—that—villain—gone?” he asked at length.
“Roland?—Yes. But wait—don’t be in a hurry to talk. Keep quiet for a little while,” she answered sadly.
“The deep-dyed scoundrel! Eleanor, if you had heard what he said to me as he stood there! Now listen to me. He is dead to us henceforth, stone dead. And tell the others—Hubert and Nellie—that if ever they mention his name in my hearing, or hold any communication with him whatever, that day they go after him.”
Mrs Dorrien assented sadly. She had got what she knew to be the secret wish of her heart. Her Hubert—her darling boy—would be Dorrien of Cranston; for she knew her husband too well to suppose he would ever relent. But it may be, furthermore, that her hard, cold nature felt a twinge of regret as she thought of this unloved son and realised that she would never see him again, and if her conscience cried loudly of maternal neglect and duties unfulfilled, we may be very sure she stifled it.
Yet this sin of omission was destined to bring upon her an awful retribution.