Dorcas Hobday

Chapter I. Dorcas

Hobday could always recall vividly one circumstance out of the many shadowy memories that seemed as much to obscure as to reveal her childhood; and she could always distinctly remember one figure that had flitted through her earliest years and had since disappeared. This figure was that of her Uncle Jerry, whom she had fondly loved. Dimly she recollected her mother— or fancied she did — lying on her couch so pale and quiet, and passing her thin fingers over the sunny heads of her children ; and a little playmate at the Rectory, who had alternately kissed and scolded her ; and a cook who used to give her bread spread with delicious dripping treacle ; and an old man on horseback, who bade her put out her tongue, and then bent down to look at it, and laughed as he rode away, kissing his hand.

All these personages, and many more, were jumbled up in Dorcas' mind, and she could not have told where she had seen them, or when, or how often. But Uncle Jerry stood out clearly from amongst all the rest, and although she had not seen him since she was seven, and she was now twenty, his image was as well defined to her as that of her father, with whom she had lived all her life. She was aware that in those distant days Uncle Jerry had lived at Sea Court. He had had his own rooms there, and he had been there always, like her father. They two had done all the business of the place, and had sat at meals, one at the head and the other at the foot ofthe table. Dorcas' mother never left her luxurious boudoir, and the old grandfather, whom Dorcas would have forgotten absolutely but that he was part of the one circumstance that she could never forget, remained always in his own chamber.

Dorcas had loved her father, but she loved Uncle Jerry yet more. She thought he was kinder and nicer than any one else in the world, and Tom had mostly agreed with her, though, as he was his father's favourite, he sometimes had occasion to think other wise. The father was now and again hasty and imperative, but the uncle was invariably gentle, and the little girl, who was as good as motherless, ap preciated this. She hardly knew what he was to her till he had vanished out of her life — gone from Sea Court to return no more. Wandering about in her black frock — for her grandfather had just died — little Dorcas mourned sincerely for her uncle, and watched and hoped for his return, until she was no longer a child, and realised that watching and hoping were useless. " Father, where is Uncle Jerry ?

" she asked one day, when she was about fifteen. She had not meant to speak ; the words had burst forth, so it seemed, of themselves, and she blushed crimson immediately. Tom was away at Rugby. Colonel Hobday was busy reading his letters as he sat at breakfast. He looked up surprised. " Your Uncle Jerry ? What do you know about your Uncle Jerry ? " he said. " O, I remember him so well," replied the girl. " I wish he would come back ! " " That is a very foolish wish, Dorcas," said her father, gravely. " Girls of your age shouldn't talk off book, as you are so fond of doing. Your uncle lives in London. He is a great man. He would not care to live at Sea Court now. He is much happier where he is." " But he might come and see us now and then," persisted Dorcas. " Well, my dear, he doesn't come," said her father.

" Isn't that significant enough even for your intelli gence ? " Dorcas was used to her father's snubbings, and although they hurt her feelings, they did not crush her. She was silent for two or three minutes. Then she returned to the charge. " Father, when next I go to London, can I go and see Uncle Jerry ? " she inquired. " O, bother you ! " cried the Colonel, testily. " Why, I don't even see him myself when I go to town. I tell you he's a great man now. Quite in his own line, of course. Nothing to do with county people like ourselves. He'd not be in sympathy with us now. He's a literary man. He sends me his books always. There's a pretty good row of 'em in the library. You can read them if you like. They're not beastly and indecent, like half the books of the day," muttered the Colonel, who knew very well how to look after his daughter.

After this permission, Dorcas flew to the library at her earliest leisure. But she searched high and low, and all in vain, for the works of Jerry Hobday. Heated with her labours, she rushed away to the old nursery and flung herself down on the wide window seat, at one end of which sat Nurse Mary, placidly darning. To this old woman, who had been her father's nurse as well as her own and Tom's, Dorcas poured out her troubles. " And if I can't find them, I shall never be happy again. Never!" she concluded, with the despera tion of her age. " My dear, I wouldn't lose heart yet, if I was you," observed Nurse Mary. "Your uncle don't write with his own name. Wait a bit, and I'll tell you. He gave me his first book, written years and years ago, when he was quite a young man and your poor grandpapa was alive.

The Story of a Village Maid it was called, and it made me laugh and cry too. I haven't set eyes on it very lately, and just at the minute I can't recollect how he styled him self. But it was a downright heavenly book, that I do know, and one that you may read, Miss Dorcas, and never be a bit the worse for." " As if I could be the worse for anything Uncle Jerry wrote ! " exclaimed Dorcas, with indignation. " O, do hurry up, Mary, or let me go and rummage for the book in your room ! " " Now, Miss Dorcas, just you be patient," said Mary. " There's no good your going rummaging, for you'd only make an upset of everything, and p'raps I've lent the book, and you wouldn't find it nohow. Dear, dear ! To think how time flies ! It must be thirty years ago, and he about six-and twenty, and as sweet-mannered a gentleman as ever I see.

And he says, ' Mary,' says he, ' I haven't got much of a name to boast of, but I'll make my nutn de plum famous, mind you,' says he. A num de plum, Miss Dorcas, is the name a gentleman what writes calls hisself. As a screen, I s'pose, in case of not being took up by the public." " O, yes, Mary, I know all about a nom de plume" cried Dorcas, impatiently. " But what is Uncle Jerry's ? Do, do remember ! " Thus adjured, Nurse Mary took off her spectacles and gazed into space. " It was John something — I'm pretty sure it was John something," she said, slowly. "The initials was to correspond with his own initials. That I'm certain of, for he passed the remark himself. John — John — " said the old woman, meditatively. "Hamilton, was it?" interrupted Dorcas. "Or Henderson, or Hughes, or Hathaway, or Herrick?"

" No, no, Miss Dorcas," replied Mary. " It was none of those. I mind it now. It was Dawnay — John Dawnay." " Dawnay ! But I thought you said the initials were to correspond with his real ones ? " "So they do, my dear." " Mary, you must be losing your senses. Doesn't Hobday begin with an H ? " " Yes, Miss Dorcas. But— well, never mind ! Go along and read the books. Them's enough for you." Dorcas went then, and for weeks she spent all her spare time in reading the novels, which she quickly found in a long line in the library, by John Dawnay. But she did not forget the strange things that old Mary had said, and one day she came back again and demanded an explanation. " I've read all Uncle Jerry's books," she announced. " They're delightful. They're better than any books I've ever read before, and I can't believe he'd be out of sympathy with us, as father said.

I do hope I shall see him again soon. But that isn't what I came to talk about, Mary. It's about his initials. Isn't he my father's brother ? " " Yes, Miss Dorcas," assented the old nurse, not very willingly. " Well, does Hobday begin with a D ? ' " No, Miss Dorcas." " O Mary, don't keep on saying, ' Yes, Miss Dorcas,' and 'No, Miss Dorcas'. You'll drive me wild. Don't you see, I want to understand ? Every thing is so puzzling. That book, The Story of a Village Maid, Uncle Jerry wrote in '60, and father was twenty in '60, and you particularly said Uncle Jerry was twenty-six. How comes that ? " " How comes what, Miss Dorcas ? I don't understand you, my dear." " How dense you are ! I beg your pardon, dear Mary," cried the instantly penitent girl. " I didn't mean to be rude. Please forgive me.

But I'm so confused. Don't you see, if Uncle Jerry was born in '34, and father not till '40, Uncle Jerry was grand papa's elder son ? Then why has father got Sea Court?" Old Mary's face was full of distress. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She leaned back in her chair and sat forward again. She folded her hands for a moment, in the next she laid each on one knee. She was evidently uneasy. " Well, Mary ? " said Dorcas. " Well, Miss Dorcas," replied Mary, " if you must know, the Colonel and Mr. Jerry are half brothers." "Half-brothers?" said Dorcas. "Do you mean that grandpapa married a widow ? It doesn't say so on the tombstone. It says : ' Dorcas, the only daughter of Thomas Oliver, Esq., of Norton Park '. Whose widow was grandmama ? " " O my dear, you shouldn't worry me with so many questions.

Your poor grandmama was no widow, but as sweet a young bride as I ever saw, and that good to Mr. Jerry, it might have rejoiced the angels. No, no, Miss Dorcas ; don't you go thinking small of your own grandmama as you'recalled after, and as wouldn't have had two husbands for all the wealth in the world. She was as good a lady as ever crossed this threshold," said Mary, emphatically. " Mary dear, I don't want to be troublesome," said Dorcas, plaintively, " but I do want to know things. If grandmama wasn't a widow, how did Uncle Jerry come ? Because grandpapa didn't marry twice, and even if he did his own son's name must be Hobday." " That's precisely where it comes in, Miss Dorcas. Mr. Jerry was called after his mother's name." " But people never are, Mary." " Then this is the exception, Miss Dorcas, for Mr. Jerry is."

" I don't understand in the least, Mary." "No, my dear. There are a great many things that young ladies of fifteen aren't expected to under stand, nor wished to, neither." Dorcas sat silent for a little while. She felt that there was a secret about her uncle, a mystery that she might shudder at if it were revealed to her, yet which she eagerly desired to know. She was over whelmed by the incompetency of her youth, weighed down by those fifteen years, whose insufficiency people were so fond of casting in her teeth. One last ques tion trembled on her tongue, and at last she put it. "What is Uncle Jerry's name?" she asked, humbly. " Durdan," returned Mary. " Now, Miss Dorcas, don't trouble your head about it any more. The Colonel has every right to Sea Court, and you'll see it all when you're old enough to understand how life goes this way and that.

Don't you worry. Just forget all about it." It was easy enough for old Mary to give this advice, but it would have been difficult for any one to follow it, and for the eager Dorcas it was impossible. She could not but ponder the things that she had heard in her heart, and her cheeks burnt as she began to realise what was her uncle's piteous position. True, she was as pure and innocent of guile as the first snowdrop, but she knew instinctively that sometimes shameful and unspeakable deeds were done in this old world, and she began to perceive that it was one of these sorry deeds that had deprived her uncle of his birthright and his father's name. A mile from Sea Court and the sea, in a sheltered gully, stood the old grey church where Tom and Dorcas had been christened ; where their grand parents and their mother lay buried beneath a splendid tomb; where Dorcas knelt Sunday after Sunday in the principal pew by her father's side.

In a far corner of the churchyard, where the grass grew rankest and the hedge was thinnest, lay a little row of graves, where no one ever went to lay a blossom. For many years Dorcas had known that in these graves lay the girls ofthe parish who had sinned and had died miserably, mothers though unwed. Dorcas did not know how she had acquired this knowledge, but she knew it as she knew the scandal of Fair Rosamond, and she had often stolen softly to that neglected spot, wondering if in any other parish there could be found six or eight such dishonoured graves. How should she know that not all who bore a babe in shame had turned their faces to the wall and died, and that many a happy and respected wife whom she knew well had slipped in early youth and had brought her first-born into the world in as dire tribulation as these disgraced maids who lay here, pitifully and apart ?

These censured hillocks were overgrown with grass and weeds, as if they would consent to the unsightliest covering rather than be visible to the stern eye of man ; and Dorcas felt a sympathy for them, knowing that, when she was in disgrace, she would willingly hide herself behind any wall however dirty and dilapidated, and she had said once to the man who cut the churchyard grass : " Don't touch those little graves where the hedge is thin. They'd rather not, I think," which made the man stare, not being able to divine the subtile fancies of so young a lady. He obeyed her, however, and the row of sad graves seemed to sink away out of sight ; and even the single one over which a simple stone had been erected was left untended, so that the grass grew tall around the slab, and the stone was blotched and yellow, and the inscription, though still decipherable, was not to be read by one who ran.

To this stone Dorcas made her way secretly as soon as she could after her last conversation with Nurse Mary. Pushing the coarse grass and horrid nettles aside, she read the inscription, although, indeed, she knew each letter of it already : — In Memory of Martha Durdan, who died March 15, 1834, aged 19. She looked at it for a long time, and then stole away, with her head hanging, sorrowful and ashamed. For, though one born in 1870 could in nowise be responsible for things done thirty or forty years previously, it was Dorcas' nature to take the shame and the evil of others into her own heart, and to suffer vicariously far more than either the sinner or his victims had ever endured. This, then, was the grave of her uncle's poor little mother. Martha Durdan was the name that should have followed her grandfather's on the splendid tombstone, in lieu of, or at least before, that of Dorcas, the only daughter of Thomas Oliver, Esq., of Norton Park.

Why had her grandfather done this wickedness? she cried in her heart. She was very loyal to her own family ; but she felt a horror now of the old man who had sinned so awfully, who had caused the death of a young girl of nineteen (Dorcas had no notion but that all unhappy girls similarly placed died similarly of humiliation and remorse), and had defrauded his own son of an honest name. Certainly old Mr. Hobday had not shrunk from marking Martha Durdan's grave. Dorcas was glad of this, and her heart softened a little. Still, he had committed a tremendous crime, and she did not consider that the erection of the little gravestone had been sufficient reparation. Surely he should have done something for the son whom he had so deeply wronged. Dorcas had an exaggerated idea of the powers of the law, and she thought that the law should have been called in and required to set every thing straight for her uncle, to give him at least a right to his father's name and to rid him of the slur which, she knew vaguely, rested upon him.

Full of these melancholy thoughts, she returned to the nursery. " Why, what's the matter? Who has been vexing you, my pretty?" cried old Mary. "Why, you've been crying, Miss Dorcas ! " Dorcas' mind had been so engrossed that she did not know that she had been shedding plentiful tears. At Mary's kind words, her grief burst out afresh. "O Mary, I'm very unhappy," she sobbed. "I've been to that poor, poor girl's grave, and it makes me miserable. Was poor Martha Durdan poor Uncle Jerry's mother?" " Yes, she was, Miss Dorcas. But there's no occasion for you to know anything about it," said the old nurse, tartly. " You didn't ought to think of such things, let alone talk of them, and if the Colonel knew he'd be as cross as cross. You leave Martha Durdan alone. Mr. Jerry can take care of himself.

As for you wearing out your spirit over such things, it's indecent. That's what it is. A young lady not sixteen ! I never did ! " " O Mary, don't scold me ! I'm as wretched as I can possibly be," said poor Dorcas, interpolating her sentences with little groans of anguish. " I don't want not to be nice-minded — I don't indeed. I don't know these things because I want to know them or take a pleasure in knowing them. I hate them. I wish every one was good. But I can't help knowing them," cried the excited girl. " There's Shakespeare ! There's history ! Lots of kings had children whose poor mothers were like Martha Durdan. But they made them into dukes. They didn't act like grandpapa. There was the Duke of Monmouth. How can I help knowing about the Duke of Monmouth ? He was Charles the Second's son, but the queen wasn't his mother.

I don't wish to know bad things, Mary, but I can't help it." " Well, I never did hold with education, and this proves it," observed old Mary. " It's all very well for men and boys, but it's not delicate for a young lady, I say ; and I'm very sorry, Miss Dorcas, that you've seen life through Charles the Second. Don't tell me anything more about him. I thought he was a good young king, hiding in an oak tree from his enemies, and now you tell me he was a regular Turk! I'm ashamed of you, Miss Dorcas, that I am. If you see anything disagreeable in your road you should walk away fast and turn your eyes ; and if you read anything disgusting in your history, you should shut up your mind and forget it. I've no patience with you, gloating over Martha Durdan's grave ! " " Indeed, I don't gloat — — " began Dorcas.

But the old nurse stopped her peremptorily. " If you don't gloat, prove it by letting it alone," she said, as severely as she could contrive to speak. " There's a time for everything, and fifteen years old isn't the time to take on about Martha Durdans. Leave such as her to God, Miss Dorcas. It isn't for you to try and get into His place." This last remark was very irrelevant, but Dorcas was too young, and at the moment too tired, to perceive it, and she took the reproof meekly. " I'm sure I didn't mean to do that," she said. Then she kissed Mary, and went away to the rocks outside the garden wall and thought dejectedly of her uncle and the wrongs that had been dealt him, and loved him all the more, and hoped ardently that she should see him again. She remembered him as if he had been here but yesterday ; his handsome face — as handsome as her father's, only in a different way — his dear smile, his delightful ways, his uniform goodness.

Here, on these rocks, she had often sat by his side, clinging to him if the wind blew hard and the waves dashed high, learning to love the sea and the sunset and the great sky. There, in the fields below the house, she had often walked, holding by his hand, flying from him to pluck a particularly tall buttercup or a daisy with specially red tips, returning breathless to find him always waiting for her at the next stile ; it was impossible to suppose that Uncle Jerry would go on without her. In the garden, behind the sea-wall, he had taught her to play at bowls ; he had shown her how to water the plants, how to peg down the verbenas, how to do this and that of dainty gardening. Up stairs, in the room with the oriel window, she had sat playing with her toys while he wrote, sometimes interrupting him with a foolish little petition, " Nina's sash is in a knot ; could you undo it, Uncle Jerry ?

" or, "the elephant won't stand, Uncle Jerry; could you put pins for his hind legs?" — it was inconceivable that Uncle Jerry should be teased by such interrup tions, or should refuse to respond to them. Looking back, it seemed to Dorcas that she had been always with him. " Why do you let those youngsters bore you so, Jerry? Send them off. They've got their proper place," she had heard her father say one day. " They don't bore me, George," her uncle had replied. " Bore me ! Bore me ! — the little ones ! Men and women may bore me, but never the babes and sucklings ! " This was the man whom Dorcas never forgot, whom she could recall distinctly out of the mists of her childhood, whose personality was absolutely un dimmed after the lapse of many years.

Chapter II

The circumstance — the incident — -that sometimes repeated itself with startling vividness in Dorcas' con sciousness was a strange one, the meaning of which and its bearing upon other things she had no compre hension of for years. But that she recollected it — word for word, action for action — she knew well. Every phase of the scene would come back to her with unswerving regularity ; she could see again every inch of the room, with the things in it and the move ments of the persons there ; she could hear once more every tone of the voices that spoke ; she could even conjure back the very odours, the unpleasant smell of a sickroom not properly ventilated and where the invalid was not properly nursed. Dorcas knew afterwards that what happened hap pened in her grandfather's room. She had never been in it before, and how she came to be in it now she never quite knew ; but she concluded in later years that her grandfather, who lay at the point of death, had asked to see her before he died.

She remembered confusedly standing by the bedside of somebody who must have been as old as Methuselah, who stretched forth a lean cold hand to take hers, and said, in a voice that terrified her, " Little Dorcas ! Little Dorcas ! The other Dorcas ! " or at least so she thought ; but that part of her remembrance being dreamlike, she always supposed that he had really said something sensible, and she liked to imagine that he had bidden her be like the other Dorcas, her grand mother, who, as every one told her, had been good and gracious and a shining light to all the world. Dorcas did not know if the old man became more ill at that moment, but she was pushed aside and presently found herself sitting on a hassock behind a huge wardrobe, from which she could see the room clearly, herself unseen, and where she sat — for days, it seemed to her — till Tom came in, espied her, beckoned to her, and took her away with him.

And she had always concluded that, being an obedient child, she had simply stayed in the chamber of the dying because she had not been told to go out of it. She always conjectured that she must have fallen asleep, for she heard her uncle say that he would go and meet Tom, but she did not see him leave the room, though, when she was fully conscious again, no one was there but herself in her hidden corner, her grandfather lying grey and still in his immense bed, and her father standing with his arms crossed on the wooden bed-foot. Thick purple curtains hung loosely at the four bed-posts, and a great purple canopy was extended over the sick-bed. The coverlet was white, not very clean, tumbled, uncomfortable-looking. Old Mr. Hobday would have no woman near him, and his sons knew little of the art of nursing.

There were two waxcandles on the mantelshelf, and two more on a table littered with bottles, glasses and basins. The fire glowed red but did not blaze. Mr. Hobday's Indian dressing-gown hung on the door, and one of the sleeves seemed to be stretching forward as if it strove to reach its master. But the red slippers stood together under the dressing-table, the toes pointing demurely window-wards, as if they knew that the feet they had so long covered would need their aid no more. Within there was utter silence. Without the March wind howled dismally, as if the giants were moaning in pain or for sorrow. All this Dorcas remarked exactly. And she saw that her grandfather's eyes were shut and that her father's forehead frowned. And it seemed to her that she sat there watching during many days. At length Mr. Hobday opened his eyes, and spoke in that same strange voice, which made Dorcas clasp her hands tight and shake with fear.

" George ! " "Yes, father. " Come near. I don't see you very well." George Hobday moved to the side of the bed and sat upon it. " I wish to do what is right, George, but I haven't the old confidence in myself. You help me. I've left a will, leaving everything — even this house — one of you can buy the other's share — equally between you. And my elder boy to take the name. Is that just ? " " No, father. It is cruelly unjust to my mother's memory. It is a subversion of all right. It is a condonation of evil." " You say this to me, George ? " You asked me, father." There was another long silence. Then the strange voice began again. " There are two wills. There's the one I tell you of. I made another when you married and Lord Wenham asked me about your prospects. I couldn't say which I signed first.

I can't remember. But the one I wish to stand is tied with red tape. I charge you to remember that. It's a man's last wishes should be respected. It's the will tied with red tape to be observed. Do you take me, George?" " I take you fully, father. The dying man sighed profoundly, but no one ever heard his voice again. The tide came up, and the waves thundered against the wall, roaring fiercely to be attended to, the noise of the waves and the noise of the winds each clamouring to be heard above the other. The child Dorcas listened, trembling — for weeks, she believed — for an hour in reality. Then Tom was brought in by his uncle and stood at the bedside. But the grandfather was unconscious. And presently Tom perceived his little sister and signed to her to come to him, and took her hand and led her away to Nurse Mary.

And neither Jerry nor George seemed to notice the little girl at all. After that, Dorcas' memory was blurred again. She could hardly distinguish between her grand father's funeral and her mother's, and she could not tell when Uncle Jerry disappeared ; but Tom's goings and comings melted into each other and the seasons waxed and waned, until suddenly she discovered that she was a big girl, and that everything happened regularly, and that she could remember all that occurred from Christmas to Easter, and from Easter to the harvest, and from the harvest to another Christmas, and so on and so on. But that one circumstance, when she sat in her grandfather's death-chamber, stood out in bold relief from amidst the jumbled memories of childhood, and it was never forgotten, nor ever would or could be.