THE ARRIVAL OF THE BRIDAL PARTY.
Dorothy felt happier, for having opened her mind to Mr. Fitzmorris, she went early to her humble chamber and slept soundly.
The bridal party was expected a little before twelve, which was the usual dinner hour; but in order to prepare a more luxurious repast in honour of the strangers, and to give the ladies time to change their dresses, the dinner was postponed until one. Dorothy was busy all the morning making cakes and pies, and preparing fowls and other dainties for their especial benefit.
Polly was in high spirits, grinning approbation, and watching all her young mistress's operations with intense delight.
"I hope they will like the dinner," said Dorothy.
"Lauk, miss, how can they help it wi' all them bootiful junkets. I never seed sich loads of nice things a' cooking in all my life. My, I'm thinking how the old measter will tuck into that grand plum puddink."
"Now mind and keep the pots boiling, Polly, and a good clear fire to the roast beef."
"Eh, never you fear, Miss Dolly, I'll cook 'em prime."
Dolly proceeded to arrange the dinner table with exquisite neatness. She had just concluded her preparations and made her simple toilet, when a post chaise, the roof loaded with trunks, dashed up to the house.
Pincher, who had been restlessly following his young mistress from the kitchen to the big hall during the morning, as if he had a right to inspect all her operations, rushed out and greeted the arrival of the bridal party, with a torrent of angry barking. Mr. Rushmere, in his best Sunday suit, hurried to the carriage to receive his long absent son.
Mrs. Rushmere was not as well as usual, and was much agitated by the expected reunion. She was reclining in her easy chair, near the window, where she could get the first sight of the party without being seen. Dorothy was leaning over the back of the chair, dreading the effect of her first interview with Gilbert and the introduction to her daughter-in-law might have upon the weak nerves of the mother.
"Silence your confounded barking, you unmannerly cur," cried the farmer, kicking poor honest Pincher from between his feet, "and don't go and skear the women folk."
"Oh, my dog! my beautiful Jewel," screamed a shrill female voice, "that ugly brute will kill my pet! Here, Martha," calling to a coarse, vulgar dumpy-looking girl, who sat beside the driver on the box, "come down quick, and take care of my dog."
The girl left her lofty perch, in her descent showing a pair of legs that would have beat the world-renowned Mullengar heifer hollow, and taking a white curly little poodle from the arms of her mistress, sulkily waddled with him into the house.
"What, Pincher! The good old dog," cried a well remembered voice. "Come here, sir, and speak to your master."
The dog fairly leaped up into Gilbert's arms, and said, "How do you do," as plain as a dog could do.
"Father, how are you?" holding out his left hand. "As hale and hearty, I see, as ever. Will you help out the ladies, while I go and speak to mother?"
"That's my Gilly," said Mrs. Rushmere, half rising from her chair. "God bless him." The next moment she was sobbing on his shoulder.
"Good God, what's the matter with mother? Dear mother, how ill you look; speak to me, mother."
"Leave her to me, Mr. Rushmere. She has been ill for some weeks. The joy of seeing you again, is too much for her," said Dorothy, bathing the hands and temples of the invalid with sal volatile.
"Dorothy Chance, can that be you?" cried Gilbert, gazing in astonishment at the beautiful young woman before him. "Well, wonders will never cease. I left you a buxom country girl, I return after a few months and find you a lady. Have you no word for an old friend?"
"Gilbert, I am glad to see you back, for your mother's sake. I wish you much joy of your marriage."
Gilbert felt hurt and humbled.
At that moment, old Rushmere striving to do the amiable, ushered the two ladies into the room, just as Mrs. Rushmere regained her self-possession.
"My dear," said her husband, leading Mrs. Gilbert up to his wife, "let me have the pleasure of introducing you to your daughter." Mrs. Rushmere held out her hand, and the younger female bent down and kissed her.
"I'm a very sick woman, my dear. You must excuse my not rising, but I am very glad to see you. I hope you will make yersel at home; we be but simple country folk."
"So I perceive, ma'am. I dare say we shall soon be friends."
"This is Mrs. Rowly, wife," said the farmer, introducing Mrs. Gilbert's mother, an ordinary looking woman of fifty; vulgar and gaudily dressed. "I hope we shall all get better acquainted soon."
This ceremony was scarcely over, when Mrs. Gilbert asked, with a supercilious air, to be shown to their apartments, as she was tired with her long journey, and wished to lie down for an hour or two before dinner.
"Martha," she said, addressing the girl, who had been staring about her with the white poodle in her fat arms. "Give Jewel a bath, his coat is quite dusty, and when he is dry bring him up to me. I am afraid that horrid, vulgar-looking cur will hurt him."
"Dinner will be on the table in half-an-hour, Mrs. Gilbert Rushmere," said Dorothy, hardly able to keep her gravity.
"Gracious! at what hour do you country people dine?" and she pulled out a gold watch. "It is just half-past twelve. I could not eat a morsel so early in the day. We always have been accustomed to get dinner at six o'clock."
"That may do for fashionable Lunnon folks," muttered old Rushmere, "but it won't do here. If you can't yeat a good dinner when 'tis ready, I will."
"My wife will soon accommodate herself to country hours," said Gilbert, laughing. "The fine, fresh air has made me very hungry. So, when you have changed your dress, Sophy, I shall be glad to eat my dinner."
"The dinner can be put back for an hour," said Dorothy, "if it would suit Mrs. Gilbert better."
"She must learn to take things as she finds them," said Gilbert, casting a significant look at his wife. "I know of old, that father never will wait for his dinner."
"Not for King George!" cried Rushmere, slapping his knee with vigour. "A' never could see any sense in spoiling good food."
"But you know, Mr. Rushmere," said the young lady, in a soft dulcet voice, and sheathing her claws, as a cat does, in velvet, "it requires time for town-bred people to accommodate themselves to fashions so totally unlike what they have been used to. You must have patience with me, and I shall soon get into your ways."
"All right," returned Lawrence, rather doggedly. "I be too old to learn new tricks—an' what's more, a' don't mean to try."
"Nobody wants you, father," said Mrs. Gilbert, giving him a very small white hand.
"Let's kiss an' be friends then," quoth Rushmere, pulling her face down to him, at the risk of demolishing all the flowers in her gipsy hat, and imprinting on her cheek a salute, that sounded through the room like the crack of a pistol.
The young lady drew back and laughed, but she cast a side-long glance at her mother, which seemed to say, "the vulgar fellow, how can I tolerate him?"
Happily unconscious of his newly-found daughter's private sentiments, Mr. Rushmere rubbed his hands together in great glee, exclaiming, in a jocular manner,
"That's your sort. I like to be free an' easy wi' friends. It's no use, my dear, putting on grand airs with folks that don't understand 'em."
"I believe you are perfectly right," replied Mrs. Gilbert, with another peculiar glance at her mother. "The Bible says, I think, 'that it is no use casting pearls before swine.'"
Then turning to Dorothy, upon whose rosy mouth an expression rested very like contempt, she said, "Will you show us the way upstairs? I suppose that even in the country you change your dresses before dinner?"
Happily for Gilbert his father had not heard the latter part of his wife's speech, and the insult it implied. The old man's good sense and judgment had been laid to sleep by that Judas-like kiss.
"Your wife, Gilly," he said, as she disappeared up the old staircase, "is a fine woman, an' a lady, if ever I saw one. Not very young, though—eh, Gilly? Atween twenty-five and thirty," poking his son in the ribs. "Just the proper age to make a man a good, prudent wife. Well, my boy, I wish you much joy with her, long life, health, prosperity, an' plenty o' fine, stalwart sons to carry his name down to posterity," pointing to the soldier of the covenant. "Come, let us take a glass o' fine old ale on the strength 'ont!"
"And what does mother say?" and the soldier went across, and sat down beside the poor pale invalid.
"I wish you may be happy, my dear Gilbert. The sight of that empty sleeve sadly takes from the joy of seeing you."
"Yes, it is a cruel loss, and yet I am rather proud of it, mother. It was lost fighting for my country. It happened just in the moment of victory, when the shouts of my comrades resounded on all sides. I hardly knew what had happened till the excitement was over, for I believe I shouted as loud as the rest."
"Come here, Gilly, and tell me all about it," cried Rushmere, getting a little elevated with that long draught of old ale.
"Hurrah, my boy! My brave boy! You be a true Briton an' no mistake. I honour the empty sleeve. It is the badge o' a hero. Lord Nelson wore it afore you."
While the parents were asking of their son a thousand interesting questions about the war and his future prospects, Dorothy had conducted the two ladies to their sleeping-rooms.
Mrs. Gilbert looked round the humble adornments of the chamber, with a very dissatisfied air. The place appeared less attractive for being cluttered up with trunks and band boxes, which always give an air of discomfort to a chamber of small dimensions.
"What miserable cribs," she observed, shugging her shoulders. "Does the house afford no better accommodation?"
"This is the best and largest sleeping room. It was always occupied by your husband till he went abroad."
"By Lieutenant Rushmere," said Mrs. Gilbert, correcting her. "Stow those trunks away into the dressing-room, and that will give us more space to move about."
"There is no dressing-room."
"No dressing-room!" exclaimed both the women in a breath. Dorothy shook her head.
"They can be placed in the passage, Mrs. Gilbert, if you wish it. Shall I call up your servant to remove them?"
"Certainly not. She has my dog to feed and attend to. Cannot you do it yourself?"
"Certainly not," said Dorothy, repeating her words, "I am not a hireling but an adopted daughter of Mrs. Rushmere's, with whom I have resided since my infancy."
"Oh, indeed. I thought there were no fine ladies in the country," sneered the spurious aristocrat.
"Not without they are imported from London," said Dorothy, with an air of nonchalance, as she left the room.
"Mamma! mamma!" cried Mrs. Gilbert, raising her hands. "Did you ever hear such impertinence? I'll soon get that jade out of the house. I wonder Gilbert never told us a word about this creature, and he was brought up with her."
"I think Gilbert Rushmere has behaved very ill in bringing us down to this outlandish place," said Mrs. Rowly, turning from the glass. "After all his bragging and boasting, you would have imagined it a baronial castle at least, and his mother a titled lady."
"If I had known what sort of people they were, I never would have married him," said Mrs. Gilbert. "I thought him handsome and rich, and there he is—a useless cripple, with nothing for us to depend upon but his paltry pension."
"Now you are here, Sophy, you must make the best of it. You know how we are situated. You cannot live elsewhere."
"And to have that stuck-up girl always in the house—a spy upon all one's actions. It's not to be thought of or tolerated for a moment. I wonder what sort of people there are in the neighbourhood. I shall positively die of dulness, shut up with these illiterate low-bred creatures." And the bride continued grumbling and complaining, until Polly announced that dinner was on the table.
Polly had had her troubles in the kitchen with Mrs. Gilbert's maid, who was about as common a specimen of humanity as could well be imagined, rendered doubly ridiculous by a servile apeing of the fine manners of her mistress.
She was a most singular looking creature; her height not exceeding five feet, if that, and as broad as she was long. Neck she had none. Her huge misshapen head was stuck between her shoulders, and so out of proportion to the rest of the body, that at the first glance she appeared strangely deformed.
She had a flat, broad, audacious face, with a short pert nose in the centre of it, which was hardly elevated enough to give her a profile at all. Her eyes were small, wide apart, and perfectly round, and she had a fashion of fixing them on any one's face, with a stare of such unblushing effrontery, that she literally looked them down. Insolent to the poor and unfortunate, she was the most submissive sneak to those whom she found it her interest to flatter and cajole.
She had in this manner got the length of her young mistress's foot, as the common saying has it, and by worming herself into her confidence, had been the recipient of so many important secrets, that Mrs. Gilbert, afraid that she might betray her, let her have her own way, and do as she pleased; consequently, she had to put up with her insolence and contradiction, in a manner that would have been perfectly humiliating to a person more sensitive.
This creature was made up of vanity and self-conceit. She would talk to others of her splendid head—her beautiful high forehead—her pretty hands and feet. It was hardly possible to think her in earnest; and for a long while Dorothy imagined this self-adulation arose out of the intense contradiction in her character, her mind being as ill-assorted as her body. But no, it was a sober fact. Her audacity gave her an appearance of frankness and candour she did not possess, but which often imposed upon others; for a more cunning, mischief-loving, malicious creature never entered a house to sow dissension and hatred among its inhabitants.
Clever she was—but it was in the ways of evil—and those who, from the insignificance of her person, looked upon her as perfectly harmless, often awoke too late to escape the effects of her malignity. She had watched with keen attention the meeting between the Rushmeres, while she stood apparently as indifferent as a block to the whole scene, with the white poodle hanging over her arms.
She guessed, by the sad expression that passed over the sick mother's face, when introduced to her mistress, that she read that lady's character, and was disappointed in her son's wife. The girl was perfectly aware how weak and arrogant her mistress was, and she laughed in her sleeve at the quarrels she saw looming in the future.
For Dorothy, she felt hatred at the first glance. Young, good and beautiful—that was enough to make her wish to do her any ill turn that lay in her power. How easy it would be to make her vain proud mistress jealous of this handsome girl. What fun to set them by the ears together. Had she only known that Gilbert had recently been the lover of the girl, whose noble appearance created such envy in her breast, the breach between him and his wife would sooner have been accomplished than even her cunning anticipated.
She was rather afraid of old Rushmere, whom she perceived was as obstinate and contradictory as herself. But he could be flattered. She had proved that the hardest and coldest natures are more vulnerable to this powerful weapon than others.
Martha Wood, the damsel whose portrait we have attempted to draw, stepped down into the kitchen to perform a task she abhorred, and wash the pampered pet, whose neck she longed to wring, and some day, when a favourable opportunity occurred, she had determined to do it.
"Are you the kitchen girl?" she said to Polly, who she saw was an easy going, good-natured creature.
"That's what I'se be."
"What queer English you speak," said Martha, dropping her fat bulk into a chair. "It's the fashion here. Your master and mistress speak the same."
"I do'ant know what a' means," said Polly, pouring the water off the potatoes. "My master an' mistress are moighty kind folk, I can tell yer."
"Oh, I dare say, but London is the place for girls to live well, and get well paid."
"I do'ant care for the pay, so I be well fed an' comfortable," responded Polly. Then happening to cast her eyes upon Jewel, she exclaimed. "La! what be that?"
"A lap dog."
"What sort o' a dawg? a' looks for a' the world loike a bundle o' wool. A fooney dawg," and she ventured to touch its head with her forefinger; "wu'll a' bite?"
"Bite, no he has not spunk in him to do that. I want you to give him a bath."
"Put him in a tub of warm water, and wash him with soap and a flannel."
"Wash a dawg wi' warm water. I'll see him drownded in it, fust," said Polly retreating to her potatoes. "I never washed a dawg in a' my life."
"Do it for me this once, there's a dear kind creature," cried Martha, coaxingly, who wanted to establish a precedent and get the brute by degrees off her own hands. "I am so tired with my long journey."
"Tired wi' riding all night in a grand coach," laughed Polly, "a' only wish a' had sich a chance."
"Will you wash Jewel for me, there's a good girl?"
"No, a' won't," cried Polly, standing on her dignity. "Sich jobs belong to Lunnon servants. Us country folk be above stooping to sich dirty work. A' wud put soap inter's eyes, 'an choak um', by letting the water get down un's throat."
"Get me some warm water then, an' a piece of soap," said Martha sulkily.
"Yer must get it yersel, for a' must hurry up with the taters."
The crafty Martha found for once, the simple country girl had got the master of her.
"Never mind," thought she; "I will make her wash him yet."
When Polly returned to the kitchen, she found her London friend on her knees beside the keeler, in which she generally washed her dishes, cleansing the dust from Jewel's woolly coat. The dog looked a pitiful spectacle shivering in the water, his hair out of curl and clinging to his pink skin.
"What an objeckt he do look," said Polly. "A' never seed any think so ridiculus. Why do'ant yer let the poor beast alone?"
"He's a pest, I hate and detest him," said Martha giving the poodle a vicious shake, "but the job has to be done. Give me a cloth to rub him dry, and hand me that basket to put him in."
"Why do you put 'um in the basket?" asked the wondering Polly.
"Till he gets dry by the fire, or else he would crawl among the ashes and make himself as dirty as ever."
"Well, I hope our Pincher won't find him out. He'd toomble ow'r the basket, an' chaw him up in a minit."
"I should like to see him do it," said Martha, more in earnest than joke. "He would get what would keep him quiet, I think. Who's that plain dark girl, Polly," she said, looking up from the dog, "that your old mistress calls Dorothy?"
"A plain dark gal. Miss Dolly plain. All the gentlemen calls her a booty. A's a great sight handsomer than yer mistrus, wi' her low forehead that ha' scarce room for her eyebrows. Sich small cunning looking eyes, an' a nose as long as the pump handel, an' thin sich a big bony cross looking mouth. I 'spose yer think she be handsomer than our dear Miss Dorothy."
"Well, I did not say that; two blacks don't make a white," and Martha laughed heartily. "I never said she was a beauty, and I only wish she heard you describe her. She has a very low mean forehead, not like mine that the gentleman who visited our Institution said was magnificent."
"Doth that mean bold an' imperdent?" said Polly.
"Do you think I look bold and impudent?" Martha was on her feet in a moment, her eyes flashing, and her fists half clenched.
"I thought that wor what yer meant by magnificent, I do'ant understan yer fine Lunnon words," and Polly looked at her companion's angry face, with the utmost innocence.
"You are a poor ignorant creature," returned Martha. "My parents gave me a good education, and nature a fine intellect. I need not care for what you think of me."
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
Transcriber's Note: Although most printer's errors have been retained, some have been silently corrected.
This mobile cover is placed in the public domain.