The World Before Them Volume I Part 8

"I am proud too, mother. Perhaps I may refuse to come."

Mrs. Rushmere looked at her in surprise.

"Dorothy, don't say that."

The glance of the hitherto meek girl filled her with wonder.

"Yes, dear mother, and I mean it too. The trodden worm, I have heard, will turn again--and my heart has been trodden into the dust. Our first parents never returned to Eden after they had been driven out."

"Lauk-a-mercy, child, you don't mean to compare yourself with them, or call this poor place Paradise? They would have been glad to come back, had G.o.d seen fit to recall them."

"Mother," said Dorothy, solemnly, "there is only one thing which could bring me back to Heath Farm. If Gilbert should not return."

"Gilbert not return! Whatever put such an unlucky thought into your head, Dorothy. Return, aye, surely he will, if he be not back already.

It is such a beautiful day for the carting. He would never suffer that fine crop of hay to be spoiled; and father, with no one here to help him to bring it in. He would never act so foolishly to spite you. No, no, he will be home soon. I have no fear of that."

Dolly was less sanguine. She did fear it. A vague presentiment of evil was at that moment pressing heavily on her heart. She knew that Gilbert, when roused to anger, was stubborn and wilful; that the spirit of resistance was as strong in him as in the old man; that he was but a second edition of his father. But she saw it was best to keep her fears to herself; that what she had already hinted, had frightened the kind little woman, and filled her with alarm about her son.

"It is a pity that father had not kept in his displeasure until after the busy time was over," she said, in her simplicity. "It is so hard to leave you, mother, to do all the summer work. I hardly know how you will get through it alone."

"Pa.s.sion costs money, child, but it is of no use talking about it now. I shall have to hire a girl in your place. I am too old for the stooping and lifting. Oh," she continued, with a sigh, "what a pleasant world it would be, if it were not for the bad tempers of the people in it. I hear Lawrence calling to us in the court below. You had better go to him, Dolly, and bid him good bye, before he takes the team to the field.

Dear, dear, what can keep Gilly? What shall we do without him?" and she cast a dreary look from the window up the road.

Dorothy took up her bundle, and embracing Mrs. Rushmere, with her whole heart and soul in that last kiss, ran down into the paved court below.

She found Mr. Rushmere busy adjusting and sorting divers pieces of harness.

"Confound the fellow," he muttered, in vexed tones, "for taking himself off, just at a time when he knew that I would miss him most. What the deuce has he done with Dobbin's dutfin?"

"It's in the barn, father," cried Dorothy, in a cheerful voice. "He took it there to mend it. I will get it for you in a minute."

Away ran the light-footed girl, ever ready to render a service to the old man, and to shield Gilbert from blame. In a few minutes she returned, with the missing article in her hand.

The farmer watched her as she came up, and a deep regretful sigh burst from his lips.

"Well, 'tis a bonny la.s.s. I don't blame Gilbert much for loving the like o' her. She is pretty enough, and good enough, to be my daughter--but, then,--her mother. G.o.d knows what she may have been--and what's bred in the bone, they say, is hard to get out of the flesh. She was handsome too--if she had not been so wasted with misery--though the girl is no more like her than I am like the moon. She was fair as a lily, with bright golden hair, and bore no resemblance to this dark-eyed, black-browed wench. If I could only think that she had been an honest woman, I should not care. But there's the difficulty. My Mary thinks me a hard-hearted man. I know she does, and that I have acted unkindly by Dolly, but I have done it for the best, and she will think as I do by and by. It is right that she should quit. I have kept her these many years for naught. She can now take care of herself."

"Father, I am going. May G.o.d bless and reward you for all your kindness to me," said Dolly, with quivering lips, as she dropped the piece of harness at his feet.

"Stop," cried Rushmere, putting his hand into his pocket, and drawing forth a heavy yellow leathern bag, "you must not leave me without a penny in your purse, to buy you a night's lodging," and he slipped three guineas into her hand, and drew her towards him and kissed her.

Dorothy's first impulse was to return the gold. She thought better of it. The sum was not large, and he could afford to give it, and she had honestly earned every fraction of it. She might want a little money; she had none of her own, so she thanked him heartily for his gift, bade him good bye, and walked away as fast as she could, to hide her tears.

Her path to Mrs. Barford's farm lay down the sandy lane, and then back of the house, six miles over the heath in a westerly direction, and away from the coast.

The morning was pretty far advanced, and she could not reach her place of destination before noon. She had many misgivings in her mind about these Barfords, and what sort of reception she was likely to receive from them.

She did not know much about them. She had seen and spoken with them occasionally, both at market and at church. They were a grade below the Rushmeres; were without even the plain education that she had received at the village school, and spoke the common dialect of the county. Mrs.

Barford had held a better position, she had heard her mother say, but she had made a low marriage--her son a lower one still; and though the farm was good, and they enjoyed a tolerable competence, they were not received into the society of the yeomen of a better cla.s.s. They were no favourites with Gilbert, who had p.r.o.nounced them decidedly vulgar--a common term of reproach in the mouths of persons who have themselves no great claims to gentility.

Mrs. Barford might, or she might not, believe Dorothy's statements; the latter began to think that the whole affair would have a bad look, and justly excite the suspicion that she had done something wrong, or Mrs.

Rushmere, who was known to be very fond of her, would not have consented to her leaving them in such an abrupt manner.

Dorothy's mind had been too much agitated by the sudden blow that had fallen upon her, to give her position a calm consideration; and now, when she thought it over, she inwardly shrunk from the disagreeable investigation that it involved. If she had not promised Mrs. Rushmere to follow her advice, her path would have been to the sea-port town, about two miles distant, and not over the heath to the west of Hadstone. It was, however, of no use drawing back now, and with a heavy heart she commenced her journey.

As she proceeded up the lane, she paused at the stile where she and Gilbert had held their last conversation. She fully expected to meet him there, and lingered for some minutes under the shade of the ash tree, and looked anxiously up and down the road, wondering how he could let her leave the farm, without intercepting her, to say a last good-bye.

Poor Dorothy. How bitterly she repented having sacrificed so much, out of a foolish sense of grat.i.tude to his father. Ought not Gilbert's happiness, she reasoned with herself, to have been dearer to her than all the world beside? Could a heavier punishment have fallen upon her, by yielding to his request to become his wife, than she was now called upon to endure?

The old man could only have turned her out of doors for disobeying him, and he had done that, and left her friendless in the world, without Gilbert's love to console, or Gilbert's arm to win for her another home.

Had not her very integrity brought about the thing she dreaded? And when she thought on these things she wept afresh.

The next turning in the lane would hide the old house from her view. She stopped and looked at it through her blinding tears. It was the home that had sheltered her orphan childhood; she had never slept a night from under its moss-grown roof. Its walls contained her world--all that she most loved and prized on earth. It was a bitter agony to bid it farewell, perhaps for ever--to see the dear familiar faces and objects no more.

And Gilly--what had become of him? Fear knocked loudly at her heart, whenever she asked of it this agitating question. She looked for him at every field-gate, at every turning of the lane, and could not believe it possible that they were thus to part.

Climbing the steep hill that led up to the heath, an old Scotch terrier, who had been her playmate from a child, sprang suddenly to her side with a joyful bark.

"You, Pincher, would not let me go without saying good-bye. You, at any rate, will miss poor Dolly, if she be forgotten by all beside."

Pincher looked wistfully up in her face, and seemed to understand that something was wrong with his mistress. Was he conscious of its deadly paleness--of the tears that flowed down it? He certainly had never seen that joyous laughing face look so sad before, and redoubled his caresses, to a.s.sure her of his sympathy, whining and licking her hands.

In moments of utter bereavement who has not felt, to the heart's core, the tender attachment of a faithful dog? It is only when overwhelmed with sorrow and forsaken by the world, that we know how to value the humble love that abides with us till death.

"Poor brute," sighed Dorothy, patting his s.h.a.ggy head, "we have had many happy days together, old dog, and I meant to take care of you and cherish you as long as you lived, but it seems that we must part. Go home, Pincher. Go home, sir. It is not lucky for anything to love me."

Pincher had no idea of going home. For once the dear familiar voice commanded in vain. The old dog stuck to her like a burr, and she had not the heart to take up a stick to enforce obedience. So the twain walked on very lovingly together, Dorothy gazing sadly and fondly at every well-known object in her path.

The brook babbled to her like an old friend; the blue harebells nodded their heads in the breeze, and silently seemed to say good-bye. She gathered a bunch of the lovely flowers, and hid them away, on her bosom, to remind her, when far away, of all she had loved and lost.

Crossing the heath, her pathway lay near the spot where she had been found, clinging to the bosom of her dead mother. She turned off the road to look at it. The golden furze bushes glowed as brightly and smelt as sweetly in the morning air, as when Lawrence Rushmere first lifted her up from her cold bed of wet heather.

She had often visited the spot before. Now, it seemed invested with a peculiar interest. Like that unknown mother, she too had become a houseless wanderer, seeking for a home and shelter from a hard unfeeling world.

"Poor mother," she thought, "in my days of careless happiness, how little I thought of you,--still less could I comprehend the sorrow that crushed the life out of your heart. Now I feel--I understand it all.

Shall I never know your sad history, or who was my father? It hardly ever struck me before, that I must have had a father. Who? and what was he? Is he living or dead? Oh, shall I ever, ever solve the cruel mystery?"

A chill seemed to strike through her. She checked these useless inquiries; they gave rise to painful and humiliating conjectures. It was better, perhaps, that she should never be enlightened, and drying her tears, she regained the path across the heath and hurried on.

CHAPTER V.

DOROTHY'S NEW FRIENDS.

It was noon when Dorothy entered the gate that opened upon the gra.s.s-grown avenue, that led up to the farm-house. It was flanked on either side by a row of lofty elms, from which the rooks were cawing l.u.s.tily, as they tended their sable offspring, in the huge unsightly nests that swung on every bough.