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DORA DEANE
OR
THE EAST INDIA UNCLE
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES
_Author of "Tempest and Sunshine," "Meadow Brook," "Homestead on the
Hillside," "The English Orphans," "Maggie Miller," etc._
DORA DEANE,
OR,
THE EAST INDIA UNCLE
CHAPTER I.
DORA AND HER MOTHER.
Poor little Dora Deane! How utterly wretched and desolate she was, as
she crouched before the scanty fire, and tried to warm the little bit
of worn-out flannel, with which to wrap her mother's feet; and how hard
she tried to force back the tears which would burst forth afresh
whenever she looked upon that pale, sick mother, and thought how soon
she would be gone!
It was a small, low, scantily furnished room, high up in the third
story of a crazy old building, which Dora called her home, and its one
small window looked out on naught save the roofs and spires of the
great city whose dull, monotonous roar was almost the only sound to
which she had ever listened. Of the country, with its bright green
grass, its sweet wild flowers, its running brooks, and its shady trees,
she knew but little, for only once had she looked on all these things,
and then her heart was very sad, for the bright green grass was broken,
and the sweet wild flowers were trampled down, that a grave might be
made in the dark, moist earth for her father, who had died in early
manhood, leaving his wife and only child to battle with the selfish
world as best they could. Since that time, life had been long and
dreary to the poor widow, whose hours were well-nigh ended, for ere
to-morrow's sun was risen, _she_ would have a better home than that
dreary, cheerless room, while Dora, at the early age of twelve, would
be an orphan.
It was a cold December night, the last one of the year, and the wintry
wind, which swept howling past the curtainless window, seemed to take a
sadder tone, as if in pity for the little girl who knelt upon the
hearthstone, and with the dim firelight flickering over her
tear-stained face, prayed that she, too, might die, and not be left
alone.
"It will be so lonely--so cold without my mother!" she murmured. "Oh,
let me go with her; I _cannot_ live alone."
"Dora, my darling," came faintly from the rude couch, and in an instant
the child was at her mother's side.
Winding her arms fondly about the neck of her daughter, and pushing the
soft auburn hair from off her fair, open brow, Mrs. Deane gazed long
and earnestly upon her face.
"Yes, you are like me," she said at last, "and I am glad that it is so,
for it may be Sarah will love you better when she sees in you a look
like one who once called her sister. And should _he_ ever return----"
She paused, while her mind went back to the years long ago--to the old
yellow farmhouse among the New England hills--to the gray-haired man,
who had adopted her as his own when she was written _fatherless_--to
the dark-eyed girl, sometimes kind, and sometimes overbearing, whom she
had called her sister, though there was no tie of blood between them.
Then she thought of the red house just across the way, and of the three
brothers, Nathaniel, Richard, and John. Very softly she repeated the
name of the latter, seeming to see him again as he was on the day when,
with the wreath of white apple blossoms upon her brow, she sat on the
mossy bank and listened to his low spoken words of love. Again she was
out in the pale starlight, and heard the autumn wind go moaning through
the locust trees as _Nathaniel_, the strange, eccentric, woman-hating
Nathaniel, but just returned from the seas, told her how madly he had
loved her, and how the knowledge that she belonged to another would
drive him from his fatherland forever--that in the burning clime of
India he would make gold his idol, forgetting, if it were possible, the
mother who had borne him! Then she recalled the angry scorn with which
her adopted sister had received the news of her engagement with John,
and how the conviction was at last forced upon her that Sarah herself
had loved him in secret, and that in a fit of desperation she had given
her hand to the rather inefficient Richard, ever after treating her
rival with a cool reserve, which now came back to her with painful
distinctness.
"But she will love my little Dora for _John's_ sake, if not for mine,"
she thought, at last; and then, as if she had all the time been
speaking to her daughter, she continued, "And you must be very dutiful
to your aunt, and kind to your cousins, fulfilling their slightest
wishes."
Looking up quickly, Dora asked, "Have you written to Aunt Sarah? Does
she say I can come?"
"The letter is written, and Mrs. Gannis will send it as soon as I am
dead," answered Mrs. Deane. "I am sure she will give you a home. I told
her there was no alternative but the almshouse;" then, after a pause,
she added: "I wrote to your uncle Nathaniel some months ago, when I
knew that I must die. It is time for his reply, but I bade him direct
to Sarah, as I did not then think to see the winter snow."
"Did you tell him of me?" eagerly asked Dora, on whom the name of Uncle
Nathaniel, or "Uncle Nat," as he was more familiarly called, produced a
more pleasant impression than did that of her aunt Sarah.
"Yes", answered the mother, "it was of you that I wrote, commending you
to his care, should he return to America. And if you ever meet him,
Dora, tell him that on my dying bed I thought of him with
affection--that my mind wandered back to the years of long ago, when I
was young, and ask him, for the sake of one he called his brother, and
for her who grieves that ever she caused him a moment's pain, to care
for you, their orphan child."
Then followed many words of love, which were very precious to Dora in
the weary years which followed that sad night; and then, for a time,
there was silence in that little room, broken only by the sound of the
wailing tempest. The old year was going out on the wings of a fearful
storm, and as the driving sleet beat against the casement, while the
drifting snow found entrance through more than one wide crevice and
fell upon her pillow, the dying woman murmured, "Lie up closer to me,
Dora, I am growing very cold."
Alas! 'twas the chill of death; but Dora did not know it, and again on
the hearthstone before the fast dying coals she knelt, trying to warm
the bit of flannel, on which her burning tears fell like rain, when
through the empty wood-box she sought in vain for chip or bark with
which to increase the scanty fire.
"But I will not tell _her_," she softly whispered, when satisfied that
her search was vain, and wrapping the flannel around the icy feet, she
untied the long-sleeved apron which covered her own naked arms, and
laying it over her mother's shoulders, tucked in the thin bedclothes;
and then, herself all shivering and benumbed, she sat down to wait and
watch, singing softly a familiar hymn, which had sometimes lulled her
mother into a quiet sleep.
At last, as her little round white arms grew purple with the cold, she
moved nearer to the bedside, and winding them lovingly around her
mother's neck, laid her head upon the pillow and fell asleep. And to
the angels, who were hovering near, waiting to bear their sister spirit
home, there was given charge concerning the little girl, so that she
did not freeze, though she sat there the livelong night, calmly
sleeping the sweet sleep of childhood, while the mother at her side
slept the long, eternal sleep of death!
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