The World Before Them Volume I Part 12

"Dolly," cried his mistress, "be that you?"

Dorothy threw open the gate.

"I 'spose you all thought I wor lost. I ha' strange news for you, Dorothy."

"Bad or good?" asked Dolly, in a voice scarcely above her breath.

"Bad enough. This be what I heard in the market. That you, Dorothy Chance, had played the fule wi' Gilbert Rushmere. That the old folk turned you off for your bad conduct. That Gilly run'd away, to get rid on ye, an' went an' listed for a soger, an' be gone to forin parts. An'

the old woman be quite crazed, an' well nigh dead wi' grief, an' has not been out o' bed for a fortnite. That Rushmere goes cursing and swearing about the house, an' wishing you in the bad place, an' that he had never seen your black face. That's the news I heard, and for sartin it be bad enough an' no mistake."

Dorothy's colour went and came as she clung to the gate for support.

"You cannot believe that of me, Mrs. Letty. You cannot have the heart to believe it," she gasped out, in a tone of entreaty, appealing to the heart and conscience of her accuser. "It is false! cruelly false! I never did aught amiss with Gilbert in my life."

"Folks say it's true, at any rate," retorted the little souled creature, with a malignant glance of triumph at her pale trembling victim. "I tould you I never did 'blieve that c.o.c.k an' bull story wi' which you gulled mother an' Joe. It didn't sound probable like--it didn't."

Joe's wife rode slowly up the avenue, to communicate what she had heard to the a.s.sembled household, leaving Dorothy at the gate crying as if her heart would burst.

The cruel and unjustifiable conduct of her lover, the distress of his parents, and her own desolation, was almost more than she could bear; and when to all this suffering was added the abominable slander just uttered by her unfeeling mistress, the weight of undeserved injury that pressed upon her brain was maddening. It changed all the benevolence of her nature into wrathful bitterness and unmitigated contempt.

A word had never before been breathed against her character. She had always been spoken of as a modest good girl, and pointed out as a model for imitation to all the young women in the parish,--and the base calumny just spoken by Letty Barford, and her evident satisfaction in repeating it, filled her with more grief, than even the sad news of Gilbert's enlistment.

"What shall I do!" she cried. "I cannot stay here. I cannot hold up my head among these people with all this shame cast upon me."

In a few minutes her resolution was taken. "I will go home," she sobbed, "and hear the truth from their own lips,--they must need help in their present distress. Who can feel for them like me, whose heart is bleeding from the same wound. Mother knows my innocence--she will pay no heed to these wicked stories. Yes, I will return to her this very night."

She drew herself up proudly, wiped away her tears, and walked with a firm step back to the house, tied up her few things in the bundle, and entered the kitchen with the courage that conscious integrity can alone give.

Men, women, and children, were gathered together in the middle of the room, all talking at once.

"Hush!" said Letty, glancing towards the door, as Dorothy came in.

"Here's my lady herself."

"Dolly," cried the yeoman, "Dolly, la.s.s, I do'ant 'blieve one word o'nt.

It's all a malicious invention of Nance Watling's. Face it out, Dolly.

I'll stand by you at ony rate."

"I want no one to take my part, Mr. Barford," returned Dorothy, her spirit rising as she spoke. "I don't care who invented or who believes such a vile story. It is false. I can live it down."

"That's right, my girl, take it with a high hand," retorted Letty, who concluded that Dorothy's speech was levelled at her. "It makes a body laugh, when a beggar's brat gi'es hersel' sich airs."

"For shame, Letty," said the old lady, whose faith in Dorothy's goodness had been a little upset by her daughter-in-law's relation, but who still regarded her with affection. "What harm has poor Dolly ever done to you?

Those who have gla.s.s windows of their own," she added, in an aside, "should be the last to throw stones."

"To show you all that I am innocent," continued Dorothy, taking no notice of Letty's insulting speech, which she considered infinitely beneath answering, or Mrs. Barford's doubtful sympathy, "that I am not afraid of meeting my dear foster parents, I shall go home this very night." Her black eyes flashed, the colour deepened in her cheeks, and the hitherto quiet girl looked sublime in the intensity of her disdain.

"I think you are right, Dorothy," said Mrs. Barford, who foresaw that there would be no peace with Letty if she remained. "If the old people will receive you again, home is the best place for you. I would not stay here to be insulted by Mrs. Letty, let the story be true or false."

"Who wants her?" shrieked Mrs. Joe. "The sooner she goes the better."

"She be'ant a' going alone ow'r that lonesome heath," said the compa.s.sionate Joe, who could not bear to see a pretty girl in distress, and who could not look in Dorothy's indignant face and believe her guilty, "if I drive her whome mysel."

"You'll do no sich thing, Mr. Joe Barford," cried Letty, putting her arms akimbo, and stepping between her husband and Dorothy. "I 'spose you want to run off wi' the brazen-faced minx?"

"Thank you, Mr. Barford," said Dorothy sternly. "I am able to take care of myself. There is nothing to fear."

"Nothing to fear," repeated Joe, lifting his hand with a gesture of astonishment. "Why, la.s.s, the place is haunted. Did'st never hear that?"

"Yes, wi' her precious mother's ghost," sneered Letty. "Like mother, like child."

Dorothy started. She cast upon the speaker a look of ineffable contempt, and left the house without a word of parting to its inhabitants, never stopping for a moment till she gained the high road. "Good heavens!" she cried, when once more alone, and beneath the wide canopy of the night, "are these people fiends, that they rejoice in the supposition of my guilt, and condemn me on mere hearsay, without the least proof that I have committed this great sin?

"Is this human nature, of the wickedness of which I have heard so much, and which I found so hard to believe. I will never trust to kind looks and flattering words again. I tried to serve these people to the best of my ability; they all seemed pleased with me and spoke me fair, yet the first breath of evil that a.s.sails my character has turned them into bitter enemies. If this be life, how much better to--!" The rest of the unspoken sentence her better reason silenced.

This was only one of the many hard lessons people learn in the world.

Dorothy was as yet a novice to the world and its crooked paths, and she felt indignant at the sorry treatment she had received from it during the past few weeks.

CHAPTER VII.

MIDNIGHT ON THE HEATH.

Dorothy walked on at a rapid pace for upwards of an hour: the night had now fairly closed in upon her; the moon shone bright, and the air was warm and balmy, but the road was long and lonely; not one solitary cottage was to be found beside her path, after she turned into the upland road that led across the heath.

People of limited education, born and brought up in out of the way country places, are apt to be superst.i.tious. Dorothy was not above the common weakness of her cla.s.s. Ghost stories, dreams and presentiments, not to say anything of bewitchments and distempers, caused by the withering glance of the evil eye, were subjects that generally formed the topic of conversation round the winter hearth, and were devoutly believed as truths, by the simple narrators, who derived from them an inexhaustible fund of amus.e.m.e.nt.

This fear of the invisible world, so inherent in simple natures, has been implanted for a wise purpose. It keeps alive a consciousness of the immortality of the soul, which otherwise might be disregarded by those who are separated by poverty and distance from coming to the knowledge of revealed truth.

As Dorothy hastened on, some of the wild legends she had heard from childhood glanced through her mind. The tide of angry feeling that had raised her above fear, was fast subsiding, and a thousand weird fancies flitted through her brain. She began bitterly to repent having refused the honest yeoman's blunt offer, to see her safe over the long lonely upland waste, stretching out into the far distance, which lay so still under the moonshine before her.

It was too late to go back. She could not think of that now--but she could not help owning to herself that she was horribly afraid, and she ran along the steep rugged path as fast as if she had been pursued by a host of evil spirits.

Something sprang up against her. She gave a loud scream.

It was Pincher, who had missed her from the kitchen, and had followed upon her track.

Dorothy kissed the dear old dog in her excess of grat.i.tude--his presence gave her courage. Who has not felt the comfort and companionship of a faithful dog at night, and on a lonely road. Dorothy felt that she was safe now, she had a trusty friend to protect her, who, if need be, would lay down his life to defend her.

The girl and her four-footed companion walked on lovingly together beneath the broad light of the moon, conversing to each other in their own peculiar way.

They had now mounted the steep ridge of the heath that commanded a fine view of the ocean, which lay heaving and gleaming like molten silver against the horizon, sending up a deep, mysterious voice through the stillness of the night.

How grand it would have appeared to Dorothy at any other time, for her soul, simple and innocent as that of a little child, was steeped in the poetry of nature, which the Divine Mother alone whispers to the good and pure of heart. Now, the mournful music made by those coming and retreating waves, breaking the death-like silence which reigned around, filled her mind with a chilling dread.

She was fast approaching the deep hollow where her mother died, and the terrible words that had dropped from Joe Barford, that it was haunted by her ghost, rushed into her mind, filling it with an ungovernable fear.