The World Before Them Volume Ii Part 22

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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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."

"n.o.body 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 demolis.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage, 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 gla.s.s. "After all his bragging and boasting, you would have imagined it a baronial castle at least, and his mother a t.i.tled 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 fas.h.i.+on of fixing them on any one's face, with a stare of such unblus.h.i.+ng 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-a.s.sorted 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.