Chapter Thirteen.
Breakers Ahead.
“I sat, Nell,” said Hubert Dorrien, coming into the morning-room, where his sister sat alone. “What the very dickens is wrong now? The veteran’s in an exemplary state of grumps.”
“Well, he isn’t particularly amiable this morning; but then he isn’t always, you know,” answered Nellie.
Hubert shook his head moodily.
“Ah, yes, but there’s something in the wind. He’s far worse than usual, and now he and the missis are hobnobbing together in the library. Now, Nell, be a good girl and tell a fellow what it’s all about.”
“But, Hu, I give you my word I haven’t an idea. It may be nothing, after all.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed her brother irascibly. “I believe you do know, though. You women dearly love beating about the bush and all that sort of thing,” and throwing his leg over the arm of a chair, he flung himself back, his face a picture of unreasonable peevishness. Nor could he afford to await with indifference the paternal storm, for Master Hubert’s conscience was a tolerably blemished article, and now he was speculating with a troubled mind as to which of his peccadilloes might have come to the paternal knowledge.
The girl made no reply, as she bent over her work, while her brother sat uneasily swinging his legs, the apprehensive frown deepening on his brow. Then they heard the door of the study open and their father’s voice saying:
”—And send Hubert here; I want to talk to him. If he is out, he had better come directly he returns.” And the door closed as Mrs Dorrien replied in the affirmative.
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Hubert. “Well, it’s of no use putting off the evil day. Here goes. Oh, it’s nice to have a father! Well, mother, and what’s it all about?” as Mrs Dorrien entered the room.
“I don’t know for certain, dear,” she said anxiously. “But I think your father only wants to talk to you about your allowance.”
A very blank look came into his face. “Couldn’t be much worse,” he muttered, and went to meet his fate.
And soothly, a bad quarter of an hour was in store for him, for it happened that the General had received certain bills on his account—not University duns, but long outstanding London debts, and, as to one, a letter of demand. Cold, sarcastic and incisive was the lecture he poured forth on the head of the luckless Hubert. He reminded him of former scrapes of the kind, of the fact that he would have little or nothing hereafter but what he obtained by his own exertions, and wound up by recommending him to apply himself to his reading with renewed determination.
Hubert, who thought he was getting into smooth water again, began to promise, but once more his father cut him ruthlessly short.
“And now, for the third time,” he said, “I shall have to get you out of the embarrassment into which your own folly has plunged you—but I shall not do so without exacting some guarantee that you will make a good use of your time in return. Your mother tells me that you and Roland are invited to spend a fortnight at Ardleigh Court.”
“Oho!” thought Hubert, noting a slight frown which came over his father’s face at the mention of his brother. “Oho!—so Roland’s in the veteran’s black books, too! Wonder what about.”
”—This invitation you will decline,” went on the hard, condemnatory voice. “Amusement and work in your case don’t agree—and work you must. Every morning from breakfast time till luncheon during the next six weeks I shall expect you to be at your books, unless I see special reason to make an exception. You have done literally no work at all since your return home this vacation, and it is high time you began. And for the last time these”—tapping the bills lying upon his desk—“shall be paid. Are there any more of them outstanding, by the way?”
Now why had not Hubert the courage to make a clean breast of it. Here was an opportunity such as would not occur again. Ah I that slightly receding chin.
“Only two or three, for small amounts,” he faltered.
“Very good. Make a list of them here,” handing him a piece of paper.
”—And that is all? Yes? Then I need not detain you here any further—except again to impress upon you the necessity of attending to what I have been saying.”
Hubert went out of his father’s presence with hot, seething rage at his heart. He to be confined to the house every morning like a schoolboy, with a set task to do. “Gated,” in fact—and that by his own father, and in his home. It was humiliating in the extreme. And there was no way in which the devil within him could find vent.
“Well, dear?” said his mother enquiringly, as he burst into the morning-room, where she had been anxiously awaiting the result of the interview. “And now I hope things are all right.”
“All right?” echoed Hubert, his countenance ablaze with wrath and disgust. “All right? No, they’re not, they’re as wrong as they can be. Here am I set down to work every morning like a wretched schoolboy. I swear, it’s damnable the way in which he treats me.”
“Oh, Hubert—hush!” cried his mother and sister in one breath, both horror-stricken.
“Hush? Oh yes! Aren’t we horrified?” he said jeeringly. “Women are so very easily shocked, I know. Faugh?” and he flung himself from the room.
But it was not on his younger son’s account that General Dorrien had come down that morning “in a state of thundercloud,” as that graceless delinquent had facetiously put it; and to let the reader into the real cause, it will be necessary for him or her to assist in the discussion which took place previous to the unlucky Hubert being summoned to the library.
“I don’t really know what to think, much less what to Bay or do,” said the General. “You saw for yourself, Eleanor; you saw them together. Now, what do you make of it?”
“Well, I do think it’s too bad of Roland, and shows a great want of proper feeling on his part. After all these years he has been away he does not give us much of his society. He seems to be quite taken up with those—people,” answered Mrs Dorrien, though, to do her justice, she answered with some reserve. Her heart was cold towards her eldest son, and not one spark of love had she for him; all was lavished on the younger. Yet, she told herself, she hoped she had a conscience.
“You are right,” said the General decisively. “It shows a complete want of proper feeling. To be hanging about the public roads like that with the girl! Why, I believe he was about to—pah! It is disgraceful—disgusting and disgraceful, absolutely. Who are these Ingelows, by the way, Eleanor?”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered loftily, as if the bare suspicion of her knowing anything about them was an imputation to be resented. “I believe they are well-connected and all that. But that anything serious should be the outcome of this would be most deplorable, I should think.”
“It would, indeed. Highly deplorable, and in fact I won’t entertain the idea of anything of the kind. Moreover, if what I hear is true, Roland spends a very great deal of his time in the society of this girl.”
By which remark it will appear that the town of Wandsborough was in no way behind its provincial contemporaries in its passion for gossip.
“He may be only amusing himself. There may be nothing serious in it, after all,” hazarded Mrs Dorrien, her conscience prompting her to try and urge a plea for the absent one. But she could not have struck upon a more unlucky chord.
“Amusing himself! Well, I am surprised at you, Eleanor,” cried the General, firing up. “Amusing himself? And do you remember what came of it on the last occasion of his similarly ‘amusing himself’? Disgrace—pure and simple. Is that a prospect to contemplate with ordinary coolness, I ask you?”
“It strikes me forcibly that this young woman is well able to take care of herself,” was the acid reply. “And I don’t see what we—what you can do in the matter. Roland is different now and, I fear, terribly difficult to deal with.”
“As to what I can do—well, never mind,” answered the General very grimly. “But it seems to me that Roland has not left off his old ways—or, at any rate, is fast returning to them. Why, we shall have another action for breach of promise threatened before we know where we are; these professional people are keen upon the main chance, and that Jesuitical brood above any,” he continued, with a sneer. “And what I now say is that Roland had better be careful—for I will not be disgraced through him a second time with impunity. He has his own means, of course, but if he intends to take up his ultimate position in the county, let him show himself worthy of it.”
Very decisive and stern and uncompromising was the General’s tone and attitude as he concluded this last remark, and his wife, listening, was conscious of a warring tumult of feelings. Yet she dared not sacrifice right and justice to the cause of the one ruling passion of her life—her love for her younger son. So again she spoke in extenuation.
“It is a pity. But he will be going to Ardleigh Court next week—and there’s no telling what change in his fancy his stay there may effect.”
This time she touched the right spring. For she knew that her husband ardently desired a match between his eldest son and Clara Neville—a match that would bring about the union of the two fine old estates into one magnificent property. Hence he had “sounded” Roland on the subject, as we saw earlier in this narrative.
“There may be something in that,” was the mollified reply. “Clara can be exceedingly engaging when she likes, and I know Neville would be delighted. He seemed to take a great fancy to Roland.”
“I think he did.”
“And if only Roland would throw himself into his future interest here. He ought to live here and help to look after things, but he seems to prefer an idle life, and the society of those Rectory people to that of his own family,” said the General, relapsing again into ire over the thought.
“It is most unnatural of him, I must say, to dislike his home as he does,” assented Mrs Dorrien. Yet they forgot, did that worthy couple, how it would have been difficult indeed for anyone to feel any love for a home thus constituted.
“Well, it is useless discussing the matter further at present,” was the decisive rejoinder. “But mark my words. Never—never, I say—while I can prevent it, shall Roland bring into this house a daughter of that despicable popish renegade. So he can act as he thinks fit. My mind is made up.”