DOROTHY'S DEPARTURE.
The sun had just risen when Dorothy unclosed her eyes. Everything looked
bright on earth, and in the heavens, in the early flush of that lovely
June morning. The perfume of the honeysuckle and briar rose, that
clasped the old porch in their fragrant embrace, and climbed to the very
roof of the house, mingled deliciously with the scent of the new mown
hay. Who, looking abroad into the sweet face of nature, at that pure
still hour, which an old poet has felicitously named "the bridal of the
earth and sky," could believe in the wickedness and depravity of the
human portion of her children.
In great cities, enveloped in the miasma of moral depravity, this
depressing conviction comes home to the heart of the thinking and
religious inhabitants, where not an hour in the diurnal circle is
unmarked by crime,--it is only in the solitude of the country that
nature puts on a virgin grace, and man forgets in her august presence
the stern reality and withering blight of sin.
In spite of the great sorrow that lay at her heart, the earth had not
lost the freshness of Eden for Dorothy, and she had still faith in the
goodness of her fellow-creatures. She sprung lightly from her bed, sorry
that the birds had not roused her an hour sooner, for she had a great
amount of work to do that morning.
She had forgotten all the anguish of the previous night, until it was
brought back to her remembrance, by the dull aching sense of weariness
that pressed upon her heart and brain.
Slowly and painfully she realized it all.
The reflection of her pale face in the glass startled her. The sunken
eyes, the tangled masses of raven hair, the look of exhaustion and
hopeless woe.
Can that be Dorothy--that wan image of despair? The laughing happy
country girl--what havoc a few hours has made in that gay warm heart!
A new life had dawned upon her; the bright and beautiful had vanished,
and clouds and storms had gathered over the glad morning of her
existence. She must now strengthen her heart for the great moral
conflict between good and evil, and fight vigorously with the cares and
temptations of an evil world.
"God help me!" she cried, "I feel a poor, weak, miserable creature, I
that thought myself so strong. May He give me courage to bear up against
this great trial, and teach me to lead an honest, virtuous life."
Brief as the prayer was, it gave her strength, and she set about her
usual morning work with energetic earnestness of purpose, anxious to do
all in her power for Mrs. Rushmere, before she left her.
The cows were milked, the poultry fed, a large cheese made and in the
press, and the week's butter churned and dressed for market before the
family met at the breakfast table.
Dorothy cast a hurried glance round the room. Her heart sank within her.
Gilbert's place was vacant, and the fear that had distressed her so much
on the previous night returned with redoubled force. Then, again, hope
whispered, "He is in the stable preparing the horses for the field.
Maybe he has gone to the meadow, to see if the hay is dry enough for
carting. He would come, at any rate, to bid her good bye."
"How we shall miss our good, industrious Dorothy," said Mrs. Rushmere,
to the farmer, as he took his seat at the table. "She has been hard at
work for me since daybreak. I shall never find another to supply her
place."
"Aye, wife, but Gilly would never be settled as long as she bides here.
When the plough has been put into the field, it is of no use drawing
back from the furrow."
"As a man sows, so shall he reap," replied Mrs. Rushmere. "The crop of
trouble you have been sowing for yourself and me, Lawrence Rushmere, is
likely to produce a plentiful harvest. You have made two young happy
creatures, very miserable. May God forgive you, but I can't say amen to
your doings. I have spoken my mind, however, upon the subject, and now
we will say no more about it. Dolly, it is time that you were upon the
road: the day is hot and the path dusty, and you have a long lonely walk
before you."
Dorothy cleared off the table, and went to her own room to pack up her
clothes, and prepare for her journey. There was no finery in her
wardrobe, a few neat cotton gowns for summer wear, and homespun for the
winter--that was all.
She felt very sorrowful as she smoothed the homely garments, and placed
them in a small leathern trunk. "Oh," she thought, "shall I ever be
happy again?" and she wished, though she felt it to be a sin, that she
had died with her poor forlorn mother on the heath. Before her little
preparations were completed, she was joined by Mrs. Rushmere.
"Don't cumber yourself, Dolly, with that big trunk. You look tired
now--that heavy luggage will break you down altogether. Put a few
necessaries into a bundle, just for present use. You will not be away
long, take my word for it. I will send the cow-boy over with the trunk,
should I prove a false prophet. Father is coming round. He seems
restless and uneasy like. He feels that he has been too hasty, but like
most of the men folk, is too proud to own it. I should not wonder,
before the end of the week, that he goes to fetch you back himself."
"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 God 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."
"Passion 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 lass. 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. God 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 God 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 class. They were no
favourites with Gilbert, who had pronounced 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 gratitude 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 assure 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 shaggy 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.