Chapter Thirty Five.
Redivivus.
Again we must ask the reader to stand with us in the cheerful dining-room within which he obtained his first introduction to Cranston Hall. Now, as then, the breakfast table looks bright and inviting, as its owner sits at it, opening his letters with a grave, serious face; but now, unlike then, no warm summer sunshine searches out every corner of the floor, for the sky is thickly overcast, and tossing eddies of snowflakes are whirling past, and powdering with a sugary carpet the half-frozen lawn. Nor do the clustering roses softly beat their bruised fragrance against the window panes; in their stead only bare branches, tossing in the wintry wind which, dismally whistling round the corners of the house, enhances the snugness of the cosy room, with its blazing fire, whence reflects a sparkling glow upon the breakfast-things and the snowy cloth.
And he who now sits at the table is not him whom we first saw there, for this is a much younger man. Time, which brought its rude buffets, has at length brought its compensations, and Roland Dorrien now reigns in the halls of his ancestors. Let us look at him as he sits there. A little thinner perhaps, certainly graver, and with a brow never quite free from an expression of anxious care; there is an occasional thread of grey in his dark hair, and in the deep blue eyes may be descried a tinge of sadness which is seldom absent. He has aged, too, in appearance, and that greatly; yet barely two years have gone over his head since the night the mysterious stranger altered the hands of the old clock standing in the hall of “The Silver Fleece Inn” at Battisford.
General Dorrien is dead—has lain in Cranston churchyard a year and a half—and his son reigns in his stead.
But whatever our opinion of the deceased Squire of Cranston, the important part he has played in our story entitles him to something more than the above brief obituary. One evening at the period named, the General failed to return home, whereas it was his wont to appear punctually at the dressing bell. His wife, astonished at this deviation from his rigidly unchanging habits, grew alarmed. The dinner-bell rang—still the General did not appear. Then inquiry elicited that he had been last seen by one of the under-gardeners strolling near the ornamental water, it might have been an hour ago. No, the man noticed nothing strange about his master, who seemed quite well, if anything, rather cheerful. Thoroughly alarmed now, Mrs Dorrien collected the gardeners and proceeded to the spot where her husband had last been seen. It was, as the man had stated, close to the lake—being, in fact, barely thirty yards distant therefrom. While directing the men to scatter and proceed through the shrubbery in search of their master, Mrs Dorrien’s eye fell upon an object floating in the water, and the sight well-nigh deprived her of speech and power. In response to her signs as she sank down half-fainting, the men pushed off the boat and quickly returned with the General’s cane. That was enough. All hope was at an end. But a few minutes more and the body of the missing Squire was found, lying in barely four feet of water. Suicide? No. The medical examination proved that the deceased had been suddenly seized with a fit while standing on the brink of the pool, and had fallen in.
Those who knew the family legend were now more awestruck than they chose to admit. Within a few months of each other, two more Dorriens had miserably perished—alone, unseen, and by the agency of water. Of a truth there was something in the prophecy. When the exile, in response to an urgent advertisement for the late Squire of Cranston’s missing son, presented himself at the offices of Messrs Swan and Simcox, solicitors, Furnival’s Inn, and having duly satisfied those gentlemen as to his identity, was informed that General Dorrien had died suddenly, and that every search having been made for his will without avail, he, the applicant—who, as he stood there, could not have put down two shillings and a sixpence if his life depended on it—was heir-at-law to the splendid estate of Cranston with its dependency, Minchkil Down, etc, etc, and all personal property besides, the deceased having died intestate, it struck those respected practitioners, Messrs Swan and Simcox, that this new client was a very extraordinary sort of man indeed. For he had sunk into a chair muttering something about “too late,” and turning ghastly white, till they became quite alarmed on his account. However, good news does not kill, and the first shock over, Roland Dorrien, without any fuss, quietly, and as if he had never left it, entered upon his own.
Yet when this happened his affairs were in a very desperate condition indeed. For months after his terrible experience with Olive Ingelow on the tide-swept coast he had supported himself by sheer physical labour, more by way of forcing his mind to forget, than with the desire of prolonging his wretched existence, for he had now no longer the means of leaving the country. This could not last long. To a man of his temperament there was but one end—mental prostration, with its dire result, the lunatic asylum or the suicide’s grave. And from this his father’s death had befallen just—but only just—in time to save him.
How it was that General Dorrien should not only have allowed his unforgiven son to succeed him, but also, by dying intestate, have left his wife and Nellie almost entirely dependent upon that son’s bounty, is one of those mysteries that will never be solved in this world. His wife had a small income of her own, but out of the estate she could not touch a penny otherwise than as a free gift from Roland. And this she positively refused to do—and persevered in her refusal.