A PAINFUL RECOGNITION.
Immediate steps were now taken by the Earl to establish Dorothy's claims, and while the suit was pending, he yielded to her earnest request to remain at Heath Farm with her old protector, Lawrence Rushmere, who was still ignorant of the great future anticipated for his adopted daughter.
The old yeoman had grown so fond of her since the desertion of his son, that he could hardly bear her out of his sight. The responsibilities of a lofty station weighed heavily on her mind, and there were moments when she sincerely wished her lot might be cast midway between poverty and riches, and she might avoid the humiliation of the one, and great temptations incidental to the other.
There never was a period in her life when pride exerted so little influence over her, or she thought more humbly of herself. She became pensive and silent, and, being now entirely exempt from domestic drudgery, passed much of her time in reading and serious reflection.
Gerard remarked the change that had passed over Dorothy, but attributed it to the extreme conscientiousness of her character, which made her consider herself unfitted by previous habits and education to fill a lofty station. Once, when she had opened her mind to him on the subject, and not without tears, lamented her ignorance of the usages of fashionable society, and wished that she could have remained with him always in the country, the happy and useful wife of a village pastor. He gently chid her for her want of faith.
"You possess qualities, Dorothy, that are truly noble, that would do honour to any station. Human nature is the same in every class, and those who have prized you when only a country girl, working in the fields, will not hold you in less estimation when transported to a higher sphere. Only retain the same natural unaffected manners, that charmed my heart in simple Dorothy Chance, and I know enough of the society you so much dread, to assure you that you need not feel the least alarm for the result."
But Dorothy still doubted and feared, and shrunk from the public expressions of interest and curiosity, which could not fail to be exerted in her case.
When Lord Wilton determined to do what was right, he became happy and contented, and never let a day pass without paying her a visit to inform her how the suit was progressing. Lawrence Rushmere marvelled at the Earl's condescension, and was so won over by his kindness, that he no longer regarded him as his hereditary enemy. One day the portrait of the soldier of the Covenant caught the Earl's eye. He started up to examine it, then turned to Rushmere, and spoke with animation.
"I have often heard of that picture, and feel as proud of my descent from that glorious old fellow as you do, who are his lineal representative, and bear his name."
"How do you make that out, my lord?" said the yeoman. "It is the first time I ever heard that the blood of a Rushmere ran in the veins of a Fitzmorris."
"You don't seem greatly honoured by the relationship," returned the Earl, laughing. "But whether or no, what I say is strictly true. My grandfather, Sir Lawrence Fitzmorris, was grandson to that famous roundhead, by his eldest daughter Alena, and bore his Christian name. You and I, my worthy old friend, are cousins in the third degree; will you acknowledge me as a kinsman?"
"Aye, that a' wull wi' my heart in my hand," cried Rushmere, grasping the nobleman's outstretched hand, who could have dispensed with at least one half of the energetic pressure that compressed his thin white fingers within the strong grip of the honest tiller of the soil.
"Dear, dear!" he continued, "if a' had only known that afore, I should ha' thought a deal more o' your Lordship."
"I have something to tell you which will surprise you much more, Lawrence. This little girl, Dorothy, whom you adopted as your own, is descended from him too."
"Now, my lord, you be surely making fun o' me; for nobody in the world knows who Dolly's mother was, still less her father. I ha' been puzzling my brain about that secret for the last sixteen years, without finding it out. It was the want of knowing who she was, that has ruined both me and my son."
"She is my daughter, Lawrence. The poor woman that you found dead on Hadstone Heath, was Alice Knight, a beautiful girl, whom you may remember was adopted by my mother, Lady Dorothy. She was my wife, and the mother of our Dorothy."
"The Lord a' mercy!" cried Rushmere, starting to his feet. "An' you let the poor lass die for want, an' her child work for her bread, in the house of a stranger. You may call yourself noble, an' all that, Lord Wilton, but I should feel prouder of the relationship of a poor, honest man."
"I do not blame you, Rushmere. My conduct, from the view you take of it, must appear atrocious indeed. But I was as ignorant of the facts as you were."
"But how could your lawful wife come to such a state o' destitution? Did a' play you false?"
"I will tell you how it all happened," returned Lord Wilton, "and you will be more ready to forgive me, as the unfortunate worship of the golden calf, which I find is an hereditary sin, brought about this unhappy affair."
Drawing his seat beside the old yeoman, he told him the story the reader has just learned from the preceding chapter, patiently submitting to his blunt cross-questioning on many points, that could not fail to be very distressing to his feelings.
"Well, my lord," he said, when he had listened with intense interest to the said history, "I am sartain sure I should ha' done exactly as you did. Such a fortin as that very few men could ha' resisted. It was a sore temptation, there's no doubt. I allers thought that yon poor creature had been summat above her condition. She had bonny hair, an' the smallest foot an' hand in the world. People that work hard, allers show it most in the extremities. Labour calls out the muscles and sinews, makes the limbs large, an' gives breadth more than height to the figure, tans the complexion, an' makes it ruddy an' coarse. To such as I this be real beauty, but you lords of the creation prefer a white skinned, die away, half dead an' alive sort o' a cretur, to a well grown healthy buxom lass like our Dorothy, who ha' grown up just as God made her, whom all the delicate women folk envy, an' all the young men are mad arter. She be just what I call a beauty."
Dorothy laughed at her foster-father's ideas of real beauty, and told him that she was not at all flattered by his description, as she was very much afraid the gentle folks would consider it "barn-yard beauty."
"Don't you mind what they call it, my Lady Dorothy. I 'spose I must call you so now. You need not be ashamed to show your face anywhere; all I be afeared on is this, that when you go home to live in the grand old Hall, that belonged to him," pointing up to the picture, "you'll forget the cross old man who was father to you, when you had none. An' you might ha' been my own darter too," he added, with a sigh, "but for my greed. An' your children an' Gilbert's might have inherited the home of my ancestors. I was nigh cursing Gilbert 'tother day, but Gilly has more cause to curse me. Alack, alack, what poor miserable blind creatures we be! It is well for us, that God's providence is at work behind it all."
"Father, you need never fear my forgetting you," said Dorothy; "I have known this change in my fortunes a long time; and have you found any alteration in my regard?"
"An' did a' wait upon the old man for the last three months, an' knew a' was a titled lady all the time?"
"I'm not a titled lady to you, dear father, but always your own little Dorothy. Where I am—you must go too, and when I leave Heath Farm, you will have to go to Heath Hall, for I cannot live without you; and kind Mrs. Brand has prepared a nice room for you; and we will try and make you forget all the past troubles," and she put her arm round his neck and kissed him.
"Rushmere, I shall grow jealous of you," said Lord Wilton, "if my daughter bestows on you more kisses than she gives me. What Dorothy says is perfectly true; she considers you too old to trouble about the farm, that it is high time you should rest from labour. You must allow her to have her own way in this matter. I have no doubt that she will contrive to make you happy."
A week later, and Dorothy's claims were established on a legal basis, and all the country rang with the romantic tale.
Mrs. Lane put on her best bonnet and hurried up to Nancy Watling, with the newspaper in her hand. She had run every step of the way, a good half mile, for fear Miss Watling should hear the news from any one else, and when she burst into the parlour, she was too much out of breath to speak.
Miss Watling ran upstairs for her smelling bottle, thinking that the good woman was going to faint. By the time, however, that she reached the parlour, the vendor of small wares had recovered the use of her tongue.
"Well, Miss Watling," she cried, still panting, "the mystery's all out at last. Dorothy Chance is Lord Wilton's own daughter! and that poor beggar woman, as you was used to call her, was no other than Alice Knight, rich old Mrs. Knight's daughter, whom the Earl's good mother adopted, and he married unbeknown to her."
"I'll not believe a word of it!" said Nancy, resolutely.
"Why, woman, it's all here in the paper," and Mrs. Lane tapped the important document significantly, "and as true as gospel. Do you suppose the Earl would allow the newspapers to meddle with his private affairs? Don't you hear the bells ringing; and if you come down to the village with me, you'll see all the flags a flying, and them who has no flags, puts out o' their windows quilts and hankerchers. Oh, it's true, true, and I be right glad on it. I allers did think Dorothy Chance a fine girl."
"I wonder how her ladyship bears her new dignity?" said Miss Watling, waspishly.
"As meek as a lamb," returned Mrs. Lane.
"How the old man will fret and fume that Gilbert did not marry her. It serves him right, at any rate."
"How money do make people turn about," continued Mrs. Lane. "It was only this time last year that I heard you praise old Rushmere for turning Dorothy out o' doors. Before another week is over, you will be boasting of her acquaintance.
"Good morning, Nancy, I can't stay longer. The butcher has promised to give me a cast in his cart, as far as Barfords. I know Jane Barford will be glad of any good that happens to Dorothy."
And off went the little bustling woman to spread the glad tidings in every house she passed.
Miss Watling's envy of Dorothy was greatly diminished by her exaltation to rank and fortune. She was now too far above her to provoke competition, and she began to praise what she could not pull down.
Mrs. Lane was right, when she anticipated the hearty congratulations of Mrs. Barford; even Letty stopped her churn, and, clapping her hands, said:
"Who wud ha' thought that we shud ever have a titled lady for a dairy maid, or that a countess wud nurse my boy, Tommy. It do seem jist like a fairy tale."
"Yes," returned old Mrs. Barford, "and Dorothy may be considered as the queen of the fairies. If Gilbert's in England, I wonder what he will say to all this? As to Dorothy, she had a good miss of him. They do say that he made that other woman a wretched husband."
"I'm thinking," said Letty, sententiously, "that it wor the wretch o' a woman that made him a bad wife. What he could see in that dirty, impudent wench, Martha Wood, to run off wi' un, 'stonishes I more than's marrying yon stuck up Gallimaufry from Lunnon."
"Nothing need astonish you, Letty, that is done by a drunken man. But in this matter of Dorothy Chance, Lawrence Rushmere was more to blame than his son, and a fine mess he has made of it. Howsomever, I don't believe that people can marry just whom they like. God mates them, and not man, or we should not see such strange folk come together."
"If that be true, mother," cried Letty, with unusual vivacity, "how can yer go on from day to day, fretting an' nagging, an' blaming Joe for marrying I? If I had to be his wife, he wor forced to take I, whether or no."
This was rather a poser to Mrs. Barford's favourite theory, on which much might be said for and against, and which still remains an unsolved enigma. The old lady was wont to excuse her own imprudent marriage on the score of its being her fate. She took up her knitting and began rattling her pins vigorously, as if perfectly unconscious of her daughter-in-law's sensible remark.
There was one, however, to whom the change in Dorothy's social position brought no joy, producing the most bitter disappointment, and giving rise to vindictive and resentful feelings. This was Gilbert Rushmere.
Before leaving Heath Farm with Martha Wood, he had secured a tolerably large sum of money by the sale of the farm horses, which had been accomplished without the knowledge of his father. With this sum, it was his intention of taking his passage to America; but meeting in London some of his gambling associates, they had prevailed upon him to stay, until fleeced in his turn of all his ill-gotten store, he was reduced to the necessity of acting as a decoy duck, in a low tavern, which was the common resort of men even yet more fallen and degraded than himself.
He was sitting maudling over a strong potation of gin and water, after a night of riot and debauchery, in an underground kitchen in this den of infamy, striving to drown the recollection of former respectability in the maddening glass. His red bloated face, unshaven chin and matted hair, contrasted painfully with the faded uniform that seemed to claim for its wearer the title of a gentleman.
It is not the murderer alone who bears upon his brow the stamp of Cain. Vice marks all her degraded victims with an unerring sign, which reveals to the spectator the depths of their debasement. This sign is so distinctly traceable in the countenance of a wicked man, that a little child—nay even a dog—alike unconscious of the cause of this physical degradation, sees that something is wrong, and shrinks instinctively from his companionship. If a good man feels it difficult to maintain the straight onward path of prescribed duty, the downward career of the wicked man has no stumbling blocks in the way. Every step accelerates his speed, till he gains, by a final plunge in deeper guilt, the dreadful goal.
That miserable man, in his half conscious state, with his unwashed face and soiled garments, and brutalized expression, is a sad illustration of such a frightful career.
Scarcely a year has expired, when, a brave, honest soldier, he was respected by his comrades, the pride of his parents, and the beloved of a virtuous woman, and held an honourable and independent position. He then gave a fair promise of becoming a useful member of society. Look at him now leaning on that dirty table, drivelling over the accursed liquor, for which he has bartered body and soul, and to obtain which he has to herd with ruffians yet more fallen and degraded than himself.
His shameless companion deserted him when he was no longer able to gratify her vanity, by the purchase of fine clothes and bogus jewellery. Of his wife and her mother he neither knows nor cares, and never names them without a curse, as the author of his misery.
His glass is out, and he is just going to fling himself upon the dirty floor, to sleep off the headache due to last night's shameless orgies. "Hullo! Rush! You're not going to sleep?" cries one of the gang, entering in his shirt sleeves, with a newspaper in his hand. "In less than an hour you'll have plenty of work to do. If you are in your senses rouse up and read this, to keep your eyes open till the governor wants you."
Rubbing his eyes with a dreadful oath, and wishing his companion in the place to which he is himself fast hastening, Gilbert staggered up, and sat down once more by the greasy table.
"It's hard that you won't leave me alone, Boxer. This life's killing me. My head aches confoundedly. I want to go sleep, 'to forget my misery,' as that jolly old dog, Solomon, has it, 'and remember my poverty no more.'"
"This paper will wake you up. It's the history of your old sweetheart, Dolly, that you are always boring me about. Not that I believe a word of all that now. Not a very likely tale that such a girl as that would have anything to say to such a chap as you. A nice fellow, an't you, for a lady of rank to break her heart about."
"Don't bother me!" yawned Gilbert. "If there's anything worth hearing, can't you tell me without my having the trouble to read it."
"There—see for yourself," cries the other, flinging the paper at his head. "My eyes! but you lost a fine chance, if ever it was in your power to win it."
Gilbert mechanically picked up the paper, and went to a dresser under the only window in the room to find out what his companion meant.
The columns were filled with the termination of the famous suit that had pronounced Dorothy Chance the legitimate daughter of Lord Wilton, and secured to her the accumulated wealth left by her grandmother, Mrs. Knight.
Whether it was the liquor that had maddened him, the sense of his own degradation, or the full consciousness of all that he had lost, by his cruel desertion of Dorothy, the news contained in that paper rendered him furious. He raved and swore—cursing his own folly and his father's avarice, that had hindered him from being the fortunate possessor of all this wealth. For Dorothy herself he no longer cared. He had sunk too low in the mire of iniquity to love a pure and virtuous woman; but the idea of another possessing her, filled him with rage and envy, and he swore with a terrible oath that Dorothy Chance should never be the wife of Gerard Fitzmorris; that he would have his revenge or die in the attempt.
His vicious comrades laughed at him, and made fun of his awful imprecations, but the gloomy determination in his eyes proved that he at least was not in joke.
What a mercy it is that people are generally unconscious of the evils plotting against them, that the sorrows of the coming hour are hid beneath the folded wings of the future.
While her quondam lover was plotting all sorts of mischief against her, to disturb her peace, Dorothy had taken her first journey to London, in company with her father. Her presence was necessary to sign important papers, and to prepare a suitable outfit for her marriage, which was to take place the first of May.
A noble suite of apartments had been prepared at Heath Hall for the reception of the bride and bridegroom on their return to Hadstone, after their bridal tour, which, owing to Gerard's strict notions of the sacred obligations of his profession, and the little time that a faithful pastor can afford to devote to his own gratification, was to be of short duration,—embracing a brief visit to the Highlands of Scotland, and a glance at the English lakes on their homeward route.
To a young girl brought up in the seclusion of a very retired country life, who can catch but a faint echo from the great world to which she is an entire stranger, the metropolis, seen at a distance, through the dazzling medium of the imagination, is believed to be a wonderful place; a city full of enchantments, where beauty and wealth meet you at every turn, and cares and sorrows are forgotten in an endless round of dissipation and pleasure. The reality of those diversions and enjoyments soon makes them distasteful to a sensitive and reflective mind, who can discern the sharp thorns thickly studding the stem of the rose, and who will not sacrifice peace of mind and integrity to secure the fleeting flowers of popular applause.
Dorothy, whose tastes were all simple and natural, felt lonely and disappointed in the crowded streets of the great city. Their amusements and pursuits were so different to those to which she had been accustomed, that it required time and reflection to reconcile her to the change.
She cared very little for expensive jewels and magnificent attire, and did not feel at home in the splendid halls and saloons of the wealthy and high-born. When arrayed for the first time in a costume befitting her rank, to attend a great ball given by the beautiful Duchess of——, and led before the mirror to admire the charming image it reflected, the simple girl shocked her lady's maid—a very great lady indeed in her own estimation—by turning from the glass and bursting into tears.
Her romantic story had excited the greatest interest in the public mind. Crowds collected round the Earl's town residence to catch a glimpse of his beautiful daughter when she took a drive in the carriage, and men and women vied with each other in extolling the charms of her person and the unaffected grace of her deportment. Songs were made and sung in her praise, and wherever she appeared she was forced to submit to the flatteries and adulations of a crowd of admirers.
This was all very painful to Dorothy; it oppressed her, restrained her natural freedom, and rendered her a silent passive observer in the society in which she might have shone. She was not insensible to the admiration of the new friends, who had so graciously received her into their charmed circle, but she longed to get out of it, and find herself once more in the country.
She wrote daily to her lover an account of all she heard and saw, which helped to beguile the tedium of a separation. In answer to a paragraph in one of his letters, she said:—
"You are afraid, dear Gerard, that I may be induced to forget you, surrounded by so many admirers; that all this gaiety and ball-going may give me a taste for frivolous amusements, and spoil my heart. It cannot damage what it never touches—I hardly know I have a heart; it lies so still under this weight of jewels and brocade. It is only in the silence of my own chamber, when my thoughts flow back to you, that it awakes to life and happiness.
"Everything strikes me as hollow and false, in the life I am at present compelled to lead. People live for the world and its opinions, and not for each other, still less for God. They dare not be simple and natural, and love the truth for its own sake—the blessed truth that would set them free from all these conventional forms and ceremonies, that shackle the soul and deaden all its heavenward aspirations. You will laugh at me, Gerard, when I declare to you that I have experienced more real enjoyment in working among the new-mown hay, and inhaling its delicious perfume, when the skylark was warbling in the blue heaven above me, than I have ever known in these crowded palaces, following the dull routine of what my noble young friends term pleasure. You need not fear such gorgeous insipidities will ever wean me from the love of nature, or make me indifferent to the quiet happiness of a country life, the higher enjoyment of being useful and striving to benefit others."
On several occasions, when riding out with her father, Dorothy had been startled by observing a face in the crowd that bore a strong resemblance to Gilbert Rushmere, but haggard and degraded, regarding her with a fixed scowling stare of recognition, from which she shrunk with feelings of terror and disgust. Why did this person follow her whenever she appeared in public, glaring upon her with those wild bloodshot eyes, with unequivocal glances of hatred and ferocity.
It was impossible that it could be Gilbert, and yet the fear that the presence of this person never failed to inspire, convinced her, much as she repressed the ungenerous idea, that it was he, and no other. Once, when dismounting at her milliner's in Bond Street, she was so near to him, that they were almost face to face. He put his sole remaining hand hastily into the breast pocket of his coat, as if to deliver something to her, but was pushed back, and told to get out of the lady's way by the footman, and, with a glare of rage and disappointment, had shrunk back among the crowd.
This frightful apparition haunted her for several days, and disturbed her mind so much that she kept close in doors, pleading indisposition to avoid her usual drive.