Chapter VI: News of Gilbert

The elder Mrs. Barford, the real mistress of the house, for the farm belonged to her, and she shared the profits with her son; had quite recovered from the ague, which she attributed to the good nursing and care of Dorothy. She and her son's wife were not on very good terms.

Mrs. Barford, as a country heiress, had received a boarding-school education, and was very superior to Letty in every respect. Her mother died when she was very young. After her father's death, which happened before she was out of her teens, she had married the bailiff, who farmed the estate for her benefit. A good looking, but totally uneducated man.

He despised what he called book-larning, and suffered his only son to grow up as ignorant and clownish as himself. This had been a deep mortification to Mrs. Barford, but as it had originated in her own imprudence, and she had no one to blame but herself, she wisely held her tongue about it. It was not until after Joe brought home his vulgar wife, that she was practically taught to feel the degradation that her mésalliance had brought upon her once respectable family.

While Dorothy was alone with her that morning, she informed Mrs. Barford of the conversation she had overheard between her son and his wife, and asked her if she knew what it meant?

The old lady was as ignorant of the matter as herself. She was very fond of Dorothy, who, she said, was the only person in the house she could talk to, and was very angry with Letty for having indulged in such base suspicions.

"It is just like her," she said. "Nobody knows the trial I have had with her, since Joe brought her here to be the plague of my life. Don't heed her, Dorothy. She is a cantankerous creature, who never has a good word to say about any one. I am mistress here, and you shall stay as long as I please, without asking her leave. She did not bear the best of characters when my poor boy was fool enough to marry her. Dick was born five months after, which brought a scandal upon the house; and it is allers those sort o' folks that are the first to find fault with others who are better and prettier than themselves. She is a poor shiftless thing, and indifferent to every thing but her own comfort."

Much as Dorothy disliked Letty, she thought that little comfort could be extracted from continuous hard work, and the care of five children, the youngest a baby; her very want of method made her labours less effective and more fatiguing.

Without, perhaps, being aware of it, the elder Mrs. Barford was very selfish and exacting; she added a good deal to Letty's domestic drudgery, and never did the least thing herself, beyond continual fault-finding and scolding the children.

Dorothy had tried her best to relieve Letty of half her burthen, and in return had been made a bone of contention between them. Mrs. Barford wanted her to wait entirely upon herself, and was jealous of her doing so much for Letty; and Joe, who endorsed all that his mother did and said, had widened the breach, by admiring Dolly's pretty face, and extolling her superior management.

It was hard to keep the peace between them all.

Dorothy had been so much engrossed by her own troubles, that she had taken little notice of their occasional bickerings; it was only since yesterday that she had imagined that she was in any way the cause of their quarrels,--hitherto she had gone about her work little heeding them. This day in particular, the old lady was cross and hard to please. The baby cried, wanting its mother, and refused to be fed. The younger boys were troublesome, and the day oppressively hot. Dolly was sadly put about, to attend to them all and cook the dinner. It was a relief when Joe and the men came in from work.

"The beef an' cabbage," Joe said, "wor cooked prime." He wished "the missus wud go out every day, an' leave lass to cook the dinner." The ploom dumplings, however, were not so much to his taste.

"Doll," he said, "do you call e'es suetty things ploom dumplins? I see no plooms in 'em. It dew put me in mind o' a story feather used to tell, o' a stingy missus, who made a pudden for the men in harvest, an' put one ploom in ter middle on't; an' while men wor quareling aboot who shu'd ha' the ploom, a wasp flew away wi' it."

A chorus of haw haws, showed how delighted his fellow-clowns were with farmer Joe's story.

Dorothy felt annoyed, though she laughed with the rest.

"I should have made the dumplings with more fruit in them, master, only Letty cautioned me not to be extravagant with the plums."

"I thought as much," returned Mrs. Barford, rather spitefully. "Letty is fond of saving in a small way. Stopping the cask at the spigot, and letting out at the bunghole, as my father used to say. Take it as a general rule, Dorothy, when men work hard to feed them well."

"The old missus for ever," shouted Nat Green, one of the farm servants. "She wor a prime hand at a pudden anyhow."

"Ah, ha," said Joe, who happened to be in a very jocular mood, "that reminds me o' a terrible thrashing I once got from mother. I was a youngster about the size of Jack there; we wor in the thick o' the harvest, it wor carting day, an' all hands on the farm mortal busy, mother wanted plooms for the pudden an' ther wor none to send to shop but I, so she calls me to her, an' gees me a shilling.

"'Joe,' she says, 'run down to the village and buy two pund o' plooms o' Mr. Carter; be quick, for I be in a mighty hurry, and I'll gi' you a ha'penny when you come back.' I wor right glad o' the chance. 'Twor aboot a mile, an' I run'd the whole way, an' bought the plooms.

"Says Mr. Carter, says he, 'doan't eat them by the way.'

"I shu'd never have thought o' that, foreby he had held his tongue. As I coomed whome a hole broke in the paper, an' plooms coomed tomblin out, one arter another; an' I kept yeating an' yeating till thar wor half gone. Dang it, I wor sceared. What shu'd a' do? Mother wor awful in them days aboot stealing, so I sat doon on bank by road side, an' thought it well over, an' by gosh, I hit on a plan I thought wud get me oot o' scrape."

"Well, feather," called out Master Dick, opening wide his round blue eyes, "what did a' do? Did granny find it oot?"

"That she did, boy. I opened the parcel, an' bit ev'ry ploom in two."

"You were about as wise then, Joe, as you be now," suggested Mrs. Barford, who, like the children and Dolly, was listening intensely to the story.

"But what did granny say?" again demanded the boy.

"She asked how they coomed in that state? I pretended I did not know. That was just the way I got e'm from Mr. Carter.

"'You lie,' quoth she, 'an' are a big fule into the bargain. Come here an' I wull teach you how to tell the truth.'

"An' she took an ashen stick, an' she loomped I, an' thrashed I, till a' went off limping to bed.

"'Lie thar, Joe, till the morn,' says she, 'an' take your time to find out how many two halves make put together.'

"Lauck, a lauck, how my bones ached! It wor all right, howsomever; I never put my haund to stealing again."

The boys regarded their grandmother with a look of awe. The men returned to the field, and Dorothy busied herself with household matters till the sun went down. She was in a fever of impatience for Letty's return from the town, and worked as hard as she could to keep down her heart and drown thought.

"What keeps Letty," said Mrs. Barford, putting aside her knitting, and going to the door, "she is later than usual. Now she has some one to do her work she will stay gossiping about the town till dark night. When you have milked, Dolly, run to the avenue gate, and see if she be coming."

The round red moon was slowly rising behind the trees, and Joe and his men had finished their supper, and brought the last load of hay into the yard, before Dolly had cleared away and finished milking.

Without staying to take a cup of tea with Mrs. Barford, she tied on her bonnet and ran down to the avenue gate, just as old Captain came lumbering up to it.

"Dolly," cried his mistress, "be that you?"

Dorothy threw open the gate.

"I 'spose you all thought I wor lost. I ha' strange news for you, Dorothy."

"Bad or good?" asked Dolly, in a voice scarcely above her breath.

"Bad enough. This be what I heard in the market. That you, Dorothy Chance, had played the fule wi' Gilbert Rushmere. That the old folk turned you off for your bad conduct. That Gilly run'd away, to get rid on ye, an' went an' listed for a soger, an' be gone to forin parts. An' the old woman be quite crazed, an' well nigh dead wi' grief, an' has not been out o' bed for a fortnite. That Rushmere goes cursing and swearing about the house, an' wishing you in the bad place, an' that he had never seen your black face. That's the news I heard, and for sartin it be bad enough an' no mistake."

Dorothy's colour went and came as she clung to the gate for support. "You cannot believe that of me, Mrs. Letty. You cannot have the heart to believe it," she gasped out, in a tone of entreaty, appealing to the heart and conscience of her accuser. "It is false! cruelly false! I never did aught amiss with Gilbert in my life."

"Folks say it's true, at any rate," retorted the little souled creature, with a malignant glance of triumph at her pale trembling victim. "I tould you I never did 'blieve that cock an' bull story wi' which you gulled mother an' Joe. It didn't sound probable like--it didn't."

Joe's wife rode slowly up the avenue, to communicate what she had heard to the assembled household, leaving Dorothy at the gate crying as if her heart would burst.

The cruel and unjustifiable conduct of her lover, the distress of his parents, and her own desolation, was almost more than she could bear; and when to all this suffering was added the abominable slander just uttered by her unfeeling mistress, the weight of undeserved injury that pressed upon her brain was maddening. It changed all the benevolence of her nature into wrathful bitterness and unmitigated contempt.

A word had never before been breathed against her character. She had always been spoken of as a modest good girl, and pointed out as a model for imitation to all the young women in the parish,--and the base calumny just spoken by Letty Barford, and her evident satisfaction in repeating it, filled her with more grief, than even the sad news of Gilbert's enlistment.

"What shall I do!" she cried. "I cannot stay here. I cannot hold up my head among these people with all this shame cast upon me."

In a few minutes her resolution was taken. "I will go home," she sobbed, "and hear the truth from their own lips,--they must need help in their present distress. Who can feel for them like me, whose heart is bleeding from the same wound. Mother knows my innocence--she will pay no heed to these wicked stories. Yes, I will return to her this very night."

She drew herself up proudly, wiped away her tears, and walked with a firm step back to the house, tied up her few things in the bundle, and entered the kitchen with the courage that conscious integrity can alone give.

Men, women, and children, were gathered together in the middle of the room, all talking at once.

"Hush!" said Letty, glancing towards the door, as Dorothy came in. "Here's my lady herself."

"Dolly," cried the yeoman, "Dolly, lass, I do'ant 'blieve one word o'nt. It's all a malicious invention of Nance Watling's. Face it out, Dolly. I'll stand by you at ony rate."

"I want no one to take my part, Mr. Barford," returned Dorothy, her spirit rising as she spoke. "I don't care who invented or who believes such a vile story. It is false. I can live it down."

"That's right, my girl, take it with a high hand," retorted Letty, who concluded that Dorothy's speech was levelled at her. "It makes a body laugh, when a beggar's brat gi'es hersel' sich airs."

"For shame, Letty," said the old lady, whose faith in Dorothy's goodness had been a little upset by her daughter-in-law's relation, but who still regarded her with affection. "What harm has poor Dolly ever done to you? Those who have glass windows of their own," she added, in an aside, "should be the last to throw stones."

"To show you all that I am innocent," continued Dorothy, taking no notice of Letty's insulting speech, which she considered infinitely beneath answering, or Mrs. Barford's doubtful sympathy, "that I am not afraid of meeting my dear foster parents, I shall go home this very night." Her black eyes flashed, the colour deepened in her cheeks, and the hitherto quiet girl looked sublime in the intensity of her disdain.

"I think you are right, Dorothy," said Mrs. Barford, who foresaw that there would be no peace with Letty if she remained. "If the old people will receive you again, home is the best place for you. I would not stay here to be insulted by Mrs. Letty, let the story be true or false."

"Who wants her?" shrieked Mrs. Joe. "The sooner she goes the better."

"She be'ant a' going alone ow'r that lonesome heath," said the compassionate Joe, who could not bear to see a pretty girl in distress, and who could not look in Dorothy's indignant face and believe her guilty, "if I drive her whome mysel."

"You'll do no sich thing, Mr. Joe Barford," cried Letty, putting her arms akimbo, and stepping between her husband and Dorothy. "I 'spose you want to run off wi' the brazen-faced minx?"

"Thank you, Mr. Barford," said Dorothy sternly. "I am able to take care of myself. There is nothing to fear."

"Nothing to fear," repeated Joe, lifting his hand with a gesture of astonishment. "Why, lass, the place is haunted. Did'st never hear that?"

"Yes, wi' her precious mother's ghost," sneered Letty. "Like mother, like child."

Dorothy started. She cast upon the speaker a look of ineffable contempt, and left the house without a word of parting to its inhabitants, never stopping for a moment till she gained the high road. "Good heavens!" she cried, when once more alone, and beneath the wide canopy of the night, "are these people fiends, that they rejoice in the supposition of my guilt, and condemn me on mere hearsay, without the least proof that I have committed this great sin?

"Is this human nature, of the wickedness of which I have heard so much, and which I found so hard to believe. I will never trust to kind looks and flattering words again. I tried to serve these people to the best of my ability; they all seemed pleased with me and spoke me fair, yet the first breath of evil that assails my character has turned them into bitter enemies. If this be life, how much better to--!" The rest of the unspoken sentence her better reason silenced.

This was only one of the many hard lessons people learn in the world. Dorothy was as yet a novice to the world and its crooked paths, and she felt indignant at the sorry treatment she had received from it during the past few weeks.