Chapter Thirty Four.
After the Storm.
Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate soon came to be recognised as an accepted fact by Wandsborough and its neighbourhood. He had fallen down Smugglers’ Ladder in the dark, for had not young Mr Ingelow found a bit of the cord of his eyeglass hanging from the brink of that fateful chasm? And his body had been carried away by the tide, as to that there was no doubt. Why, only a fortnight afterwards, the rector’s daughter would have lost her life at the same spot, to a dead certainty, had it not been for a stranger, who must have been sent there by Providence, specially for the purpose, said Wandsborough and its neighbourhood. And no sooner had the community arrived at this conclusion than its verdict was confirmed beyond a doubt. The body of the missing man was cast up on the shore a few miles from Wandsborough, and though in a dreadful state after its long immersion, the face was unrecognisable, the clothing, watch, and other possessions of the missing man were not, and the identity thus established, a coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Death by misadventure,” and the remains were interred in Cranston churchyard. One juryman, burning with zeal, was anxious to append a rider, censuring the absence of fencing along the dangerous part of the cliffs, but was stifled by the remainder, who were alive to the fact that although part of such fencing would be at the cost of the deceased’s father, by far the larger portion would fall upon the rates, i.e. themselves.
Then the gossips began to speculate as to the probable effect of the fatality upon domestic affairs at Cranston Hall. Would it result in a healing of the breach between General Dorrien and his eldest—now his only—son. In its heart of hearts the neighbourhood hoped it would. Him, at any rate, it knew, and if he was somewhat cold and reticent, he would none the less keep up his position as it should be kept up, an eventuality by no means so certain in the case of poor Hubert, had he been the one to inherit. But if the feud were to run on to the bitter end, the probability was that some stranger, wholly undesirable, would eventually reign at Cranston.
But as time went on, it brought with it no sign of reconciliation. No communication passed between Roland Dorrien and his father, indeed the General was in as complete a state of ignorance on the subject of his son’s whereabouts as the most curious of the busybodies who interested themselves in his affairs. In truth, there were times when the old man realised his loneliness and would fain have had the prodigal return, but then it must be unreservedly as a prodigal and not as one with whom terms were to be made, that must be distinctly understood. To be sure, he forgot that his son had inherited his own unyielding nature, but that is just the very thing parents of his type invariably do forget.
Finally, as the prodigal made no sign, he grew more hardened than ever in his resentment. He would not have been unwilling to abandon his cherished idea—to wit, the Cranston-Ardleigh alliance; perhaps, in time, might have brought himself to waive his opposition to the Rectory one, had the exile only approached in an apologetic spirit. In fact, it was one of those rare cases where a judicious friend, having touch of both parties, might have been invaluable. But no advances did the erring one make, conciliatory or otherwise, and the stern old man, sonless and unloved in his old age, grew more morose and reserved every day.
On his wife, the bereavement told with terrible effect. All the love of her hard, yet strong, nature had been poured out upon her youngest-born. He was her Benjamin, and now that he had been taken from her, she felt that it would, indeed, bring down her grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. And what lent tenfold anguish to her bereavement was that she regarded it as an act of the direct vengeance of Heaven. Like all women of her hard, uncompromising opinions, she believed firmly in “judgments”; unlike most of them, however, she did not believe in these applying to her neighbours to the exclusion of herself, and now fully, yet unresignedly, did she admit to herself that her passive acquiescence in, if not indirect attempts at the robbing of her eldest son of his birthright in favour of her idolised younger, had been visited by the signal and direct curse of Heaven. And, perhaps, in one sense she was not altogether wrong, for partiality and favouritism in family life is dangerously likely to breed, at any rate, the spirit of Cain.
Though fully recognising the justice of the visitation, yet, none the less, was she furiously rebellious. She remembered Roland’s last words to her as he went forth in anger from his father’s roof, words spoken in bitter and wrathful satire. “Let me congratulate you upon having things at last exactly as you have long wished them to be.” And now it seemed to her that there was menace in the words. And from that moment she hated her eldest son. Her former want of love now turned to something more positive, and she felt that she fiercely hated him, as in some mysterious degree the cause of his brother’s death.