Mildred Arkell. Vol. 1 (of 3)

CHAPTER VII.

A HEART SEARED

Mildred Arkell, in the midst of her agony, had the good sense to see that some extraordinary misapprehension had occurred, either on her mother's part or on Mrs. Arkell's; that William had not announced his wish of marrying her, but Charlotte Travice. From that time forward, Mildred would have a difficult part to play in the way of concealment. Her dearest feelings, her bitter mortification, her sighs of pain must be hidden from the world; and she prayed God to give her strength to go through her task, making no sign. The most embarrassing part would be to undeceive her mother; but she must do it, and contrive to do it without suspicion that she was anything but indifferent to the turn affairs had taken. Commonplace and insignificant as that little episode was—the partaking of a rich cream tart at Mrs. Arkell's supper-table—Mildred was thankful for it. Her mother, remarkably single-minded by nature, unsuspicious as the day, would never think of attributing the fainting fit to any other cause.

It may at once be mentioned that the singular misapprehension was on the part of Mrs. Arkell. She was so thoroughly imbued with the hope—it may be said with the notion—that her son would espouse Mildred, that when William broached the subject in a hasty and indistinct manner, she somehow fell into the mistake. The fault was probably William's. He did not say much, and his own fear of his mother's displeasure caused him to be anything but clear and distinct. Mrs. George Arkell caught at the communication with delight, believing it to refer to Mildred. She mentioned a word herself, in her hasty looking forward, about a bridesmaid. The names of Mildred and Charlotte, not either of them mentioned above once, got confused together, and altogether the mistake took place, William himself being unconscious of it.

William ran home that night, startling them with the news of the indisposition of Mildred. She had fainted in the street as they were going home. Mr. and Mrs. Arkell, loving Mildred as a daughter, were inexpressibly concerned; Charlotte Travice sat listening to the tale with wondering ears and eyes. "My aunt said it must be the effect of the cream tart at supper," he observed, "but I think that must be all rubbish. As if cream tart would make people faint! And Mildred has eaten it before."

"It was the agitation, my dear. It was nothing else," whispered Mrs. Arkell to her guest, confidentially, as she bid her good night in the hall. "A communication like that must cause agitation to the mind, you know."

"What communication?" asked Charlotte, in surprise. For Mrs. Arkell spoke as if her words must necessarily be understood.

"Don't you know? I thought William had most likely told you. It's about her marriage. But there, we'll talk of it to-morrow, I won't keep you now, Miss Charlotte, and I have to speak to Mr. Arkell."

Charlotte continued her way upstairs, wondering excessively; not able, as she herself expressed it, to make head or tail of what Mrs. Arkell meant. Mrs. Arkell returned to the dining-room, asked her husband to sit down again for a few minutes, for he was standing with his bed-candle in his hand, and she made the communication.

Elucidation was, however, near at hand, as it of necessity must be. On the following morning nothing was said at the breakfast-table; but on their going into the manufactory, Mr. Arkell took his son into his private room. Mr. Arkell sat down before his desk, and opened a letter that waited on it before he spoke. William stood by the fire, rather nervous.

"So, young sir! you are wanting, I hear, to encumber yourself with a wife! Don't you think you had better have taken one in your leading-strings?"

"I am twenty-five, sir," returned William, drawing himself up in all the dignity of the age. "And you have often said you hoped to see me settled before–"

"Before I died. Very true, you graceless boy. But you don't want me to die yet, I suppose?"

"Heaven forbid it!" fervently answered William.

"Well," continued the good man—and William had known from the first, by the tone of the voice, the twinkle in the eye, that he was pleased instead of vexed—"I cannot but say you have chosen worthily. I suppose I must look over her being portionless."

"Our business is an excellent one, and you have saved money besides, sir," observed William. "To look out for money with my wife would be superfluous."

"Not exactly that," returned Mr. Arkell, in his keen, emphatic tone. "But I suppose you can't have everything. Few of us can. She has been a good and affectionate daughter, William, and she will make you a good wife. I should have been better pleased though, had there been no relationship between you."

"Relationship!" repeated William.

"For I share in the popular prejudice that exists against cousins marrying. But I am not going to make it an objection now, as you may believe, when I tell you that I foresaw long ago what your intimacy would probably end in. Your mother says it has been her cherished plan for years."

William listened in bewilderment. "She is no cousin of mine," he said.

"No what?" asked Mr. Arkell, pushing his glasses to the top of his forehead, the better to stare at his son—for those glasses served only for near objects, print and writing—"is the thought of this marriage turning your head, my boy?"

"I don't understand what you are speaking of," returned William, perfectly mystified; "I only said she was not my cousin."

"Why, bless my heart, what do you mean?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell. "She has been your cousin ever since she was born; she is the daughter of my poor brother Dan; do you want to disown the relationship now?"

"Are you talking of Mildred Arkell?" exclaimed the astonished young man. "I don't want to marry her. Mildred is a very nice girl as a cousin, but I never thought of her as a wife. I want Charlotte Travice!"

"Charlotte Travice!"

The change in the tone, the deep pain it betrayed, struck a chill on William's heart. Mr. Arkell gazed at him before he again broke the silence.

"How came you to tell your mother yesterday that you wanted to marry Mildred?"

"I never did tell her so, sir; I told her I wished to marry Charlotte."

Mr. Arkell took another contemplative stare at his son. He then turned short away, quitted the manufactory by his own private entrance, walked across the yard, past the coach-house and stable, and went straight into the presence of his wife.

"A pretty ambassador you would make at a foreign court!" he began; "to mistake your credentials in this manner!"

Mrs. Arkell was seated alone, puzzling herself with a lap-fall of patchwork, and wishing Mildred was there to get it into order. Every now and then she would be taken with a sewing fit, and do about two stitches in a morning. She looked up at the strange address, the mortified tone.

"You told me William wanted to marry Mildred!"

"So he does."

"So he does not," was Mr. Arkell's answer. "He wants to marry your fine lady visitor, Miss Charlotte Travice."

Mrs. Arkell rose up in consternation, disregardful of the work, which fell to the ground. "You must be mistaken," she exclaimed.

"No; it is you who have been mistaken. William says he did not speak to you of Mildred; never thought of her as a wife at all; he spoke to you of Charlotte Travice."

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Arkell, a feeling very like unto faintness coming over her spirit; "I hope it is not so! I hope still there may be some better elucidation."

"There can be no other elucidation, so far, than this," returned Mr. Arkell, his tone one of sharp negation. "The extraordinary part of the affair is, how you could have misinterpreted his meaning, and construed Charlotte Travice into Mildred Arkell! I said we kept the girl here too long."

He turned away again with the last sentence on his tongue. He was not sufficiently himself to stay and talk then. Mrs. Arkell, in those first few minutes, was as one who has just received a blow. Presently she despatched a message for her son; she was terribly vexed with him; and, like we all do, felt it might be a relief to throw off some of her annoyance upon him.

"How came you to tell me yesterday you wanted to marry Mildred?" she began when he appeared, her tone quite as sharp as ever was Mr. Arkell's.

"I did not tell you so. My father has been saying something of the same sort, but it is a mistake."

"You must have told me so," persisted Mrs. Arkell; "how else could I have imagined it? Charlotte's name was never mentioned at all. Except—yes—I believe I said that she could be the bridesmaid."

"I understood you to say that Mildred could be the bridesmaid," returned William. "Mother, indeed the mistake was yours."

"We have made a fine mess of it between us," retorted Mrs. Arkell, in her vexation, as she arrived at length at the conclusion that the mistake was hers; "you should have been more explicit. What a simpleton they will think me! Worse than that! Do you know what I did yesterday?"

"No."

"I went straight to Mrs. Dan Arkell's as soon as you had spoken to me, and asked for Mildred to marry you."

"Mother!"

"I did. It is the most unpleasant piece of business I was ever mixed up in."

"Mildred will only treat it as a joke, of course?"

"Mildred treated it in earnest. Why should she not? When she came here last evening, she came expecting that she would shortly be your wife."

They stood looking at each other, the mother and son, their thoughts travelling back to the past night, and its events. What had appeared so strange in William's eyes was becoming clear; the cross-purposes, as Mildred had expressed it, in their conversation with each other, and Mildred's fainting-fit, when the elucidation came. He very much feared, now that he knew the cause of that fainting-fit—he feared that Mildred's love was his.

Mrs. Arkell's thoughts were taking the same course, and she spoke them:—"William, that fainting-fit must in some way have been connected with this. Mildred is not in the habit of fainting."

He made no reply at first. Loving Mildred excessively as a cousin, he would not have hurt her feelings willingly for the whole world. A half-wish stole over him that it was the fashion for gentlemen to cut themselves in half when two ladies were in the case, and so gallantly bestow themselves on both. Mrs. Arkell noted the mortification in his expressive face.

"What is to be done, William? Mrs. Dan told me she felt sure Mildred had been secretly attached to you for years."

Mrs. Arkell might not have spoken thus openly to her son, but for a hope, now beginning to dawn within her—that his choice might yet fall upon Mildred. William made no reply. He smoothed his hand over his troubled brow; he recalled more and more of the previous evening's scene; he felt deeply perplexed and concerned, for the happiness of Mildred was dear to him as a sister's. But the more he reflected on the case, the less chance he saw of mending it.

"You must marry Mildred," Mrs. Arkell said to him in a low tone.

"Impossible!" he hastily rejoined; "I cannot do that."

"But I made the offer for her to her mother! Made it on your part."

"And I made one for myself to Charlotte."

An embarrassed, mortified silence. Mrs. Arkell, an exceedingly honourable woman, did not see a way out of the double dilemma any more than William did.

"Do you know that I do not like her?" resumed Mrs. Arkell, in a voice hoarse with emotion. "That I have grown to dislike her? And what will become of Mildred?"

"Mildred will get over it in no-time," he answered, already beginning to reason himself into a satisfactory state of composure and indifference, as people like to do. "She is a girl of excellent common sense, and will see the thing in its proper light."

Strange perhaps to say, Mrs. Arkell fell into the same train of reasoning when the first moments of mortification had cooled down. She saw Mrs. Dan, and intimated that she had been under an unfortunate mistake, which she could only apologise for. Mrs. Dan, a sober-minded, courteous old lady, who never made a fuss about anything, and had never quarrelled in her life, said she hoped she had been mistaken as to Mildred's feelings. And when Mrs. Arkell next saw Mildred, the latter's manner was so quiet, so unchanged, so almost indifferent, that Mrs. Arkell repeated with complacency William's words to herself: "Mildred will get over it in no-time."

What mattered the searing of one heart? How many are there daily blighted, and the world knows it not! The world went on its way in Westerbury without reference to the feelings of Mildred Arkell; and poor Mildred went on hers, and made no sign.

The marriage went on—that is, the preparations for it. When a beloved and indulged son announces that he has fixed his heart upon a lady, and intends to make her his wife, consent and approval generally follow, provided there exists no very grave objection against her. There existed none against Miss Travice; and she made herself so pleasant and delightful to Mr. and Mrs. Arkell, when once it was decided she was to marry William, that they nearly fell in love with her themselves, and became entirely reconciled to the loss of Mildred as a daughter-in-law. The "charming little house" spoken of by William, was taken and furnished; and the wedding was to take place the end of April, Charlotte being married from Mr. Arkell's.

One item in the original programme was not carried out: Mildred refused to act as bridesmaid. Mrs. Arkell was surprised. The intimacy of the two families had been continued as before; for Mildred, in all senses of the word, had condemned herself to suffer in silence; and she was so quiet, so undemonstrative, that Mrs. Arkell believed the blow was quite recovered—if blow it had been. Mildred placed her refusal on the plea of her mother's health, which was beginning seriously to decline. Mrs. Arkell did not press it, for a half-suspicion of the true cause arose in her mind.

"Your sister must come down now, whether or not," she said to Charlotte.

Charlotte looked up hastily, a flush of annoyance on her bright cheek. Miss Charlotte had persistently refused Mrs. Arkell's proposal to invite her sister to the wedding; had turned a deaf ear to Mrs. Arkell's remonstrance that it was not fit or seemly this only sister should be excluded. Charlotte had carried her point hitherto; but Mrs. Arkell intended to carry hers now.

"Betsey can't bear visiting," she said, with pouting lips; "she would be sure to refuse if you did ask her."

"She would surely not refuse to come to her sister's marriage! You must be mistaken, Charlotte."

"She has never visited anywhere in all her life; has not been out, so far as I can call to mind, for a single day—has never drank tea away from home," urged Charlotte, who seemed strangely annoyed. "I have said so before."

"All the more reason that she should do so now," returned Mrs. Arkell. "Charlotte, my dear, don't be foolish; I shall certainly send for her."

"Then I shall write and forbid her to come," returned Charlotte; and she bit her lip for saying it as soon as the words were out.

"My dear!"

"I did not mean that, dear Mrs. Arkell," she pleaded, with a winning expression of repentance and a merry laugh; "but indeed it will not do to invite poor Betsey here."

"Very well, my dear."

But in spite of the apparently acquiescent "very well," Mrs. Arkell remained firm. Whether it was that she detected something false in the laugh, or that she chose to let her future daughter-in-law see which was mistress, or that she deemed it would not be right to ignore Miss Betsey Travice on this coming occasion, certain it was that Mrs. Arkell wrote a pressing mandate to the younger lady, and enclosed a five-pound note in the letter. And she said nothing to Charlotte of what she had done.

It was about this time that some definite news arrived in Westerbury of Robert Carr. He, the idle, roving, spendthrift spirit, had become a clerk in Holland. He had obtained a situation, he best knew how, in a merchant's house in Rotterdam, and appeared, so far, to have really settled down to steadiness. It would seem that the remark to William Arkell, "If I do make a start in life, rely upon it, I succeed," was likely to be borne out. He had taken this clerkship, and was working as hard as any clerk ever worked yet. Whether the industry would last was another thing.

Mr. John Carr, the squire's son, was the one to bring the news to Westerbury. Mr. John Carr appeared to be especially interested in his cousin's movements and doings: near as he was known to be in money matters, he had actually gone a journey to Rotterdam, to find out all about Robert. Mr. John Carr did not fail to remember, and hardly cared to conceal from the world that he remembered, that, failing Robert, who had been threatened times and again with disinheritance, he might surely look to be his uncle's heir. However it may have been, Mr. John Carr went to Rotterdam, saw Robert, stayed a few days in the place, and then came home again.

"Has he married the girl?" was Squire Carr's first question to his son.

"No," replied John, gloomily; for, of course it would have been to his interest if Robert had married her. Squire Carr and his son knew of Marmaduke's oath to disinherit Robert if he did marry Martha Ann Hughes; and they knew that he would keep his word.

"Is the girl with him still?"

"She's with him fast enough; I saw her twice."

"John, he may have married her in London."

"He did not, though. I said to Robert I supposed they had been married in London. He flew into one of his tempers at the supposition, and said he had never been inside a church in London in his life, or within fifty miles of it; and I am sure he was speaking the truth. He told me afterwards, when we were having a little confidential talk together, that he never should marry her, at any rate as long as his father lived; and she did not expect him to do it. He had no mind, he added, to be disinherited."

This news oozed out to Westerbury, and Mr. John was vexed, for he did not intend that it should ooze out. Amidst other ears, it reached that of Mr. Carr. "A cunning man in his own conceit," quoth he to a friend, alluding to his brother's son, "but not quite cunning enough to win over me. If Robert marries that girl, I'll keep my word, and not bequeath him a shilling of my money; but I'll not leave it to John Carr, or any of his brood."

Had this news touching Robert's life in Holland needed confirmation, such might have been supplied to it by a letter received from Martha Ann Hughes by her sister Mary. The shock to Mary Hughes had been, no doubt, very great, and she had written several letters since, begging and praying Martha Ann to urge Mr. Robert Carr to marry her, even now. For the first time Martha Ann sent an answer, just about the period that Mr. John Carr was in Holland. It was a long and very nicely-written letter; but to Mary Hughes's ear there was a vein of repentant sadness running throughout it. It was not likely Mr. Robert would marry her now, she said, and to urge it upon him would be worse than useless. She had chosen her own path and must abide by it; and she did not see that what she had done ought to cause people to reflect upon her sisters. Mary's saying that it did, must be all nonsense—or ought to be. Her sisters had done their part by her well; and if she had repaid them ill, that ought to be only the more reason for the world showing them additional kindness and respect: Mary would no doubt live to prove this. For herself she was not unhappy. Robert was quite steady, and had a good clerkship in a merchant's house. He was as kind to her as if they had been married twice over; and her position was not so unpleasant as Mary seemed to imagine, for nobody knew but what she was his wife—though, for the matter of that, they had made no acquaintances in the strange town.

Mary Hughes blinded her eyes with tears over this letter, and in her unhappiness lent it to anyone who cared to see it. And her strong-minded but more reticent sister, when she found out what she was doing, angrily called her a fool for her pains, and tore the letter to pieces before her face. But not before it had been heard of by Mr. Carr. For one, who happened to get hold of it, reported the contents to him.

CHAPTER VIII.

BETSEY TRAVICE

They were grouped together in Mrs. Arkell's sitting-room, their faces half-indistinct in the growing twilight. Mrs. Arkell herself, doing nothing as usual; Mildred by her side, sewing still, although Mrs. Arkell had told her she was trying her eyes; Charlotte Travice, with a flush upon her face and a nervous movement of the restless foot—signs of anger suppressed, to those who knew her well; and a stranger, a young lady, whom you have not seen before.

Had anyone told you this young lady and Charlotte were sisters, you had disputed the assertion, so entirely dissimilar were they in all ways. A quiet little lady, this, of twenty years, with a smooth, fair face, somewhat insipid, for all its good sense; light blue eyes, truthful as Charlotte's were false; small features, and light hair, worn plainly. Perhaps what might have struck a beholder as the most prominent feature in Betsey Travice was her excessive natural meekness; nay, humility would be the better word. She was meek in mind, in temper, in look, in manner, in speech; humble always. She sat there at the fire, her black bonnet laid beside her, for the girl had felt cold after her journey, and the fire was more welcome to her than the going upstairs to array herself for attraction would have been to Charlotte. The weather was very cold for the close of April, and the coach—it was a noted circumstance in its usual punctuality—had been half an hour behind its time. She sat there, sipping the hot cup of tea that Tring had brought her, declining to eat, and feeling miserably uncomfortable, as she saw that, to one at least, she was not welcome.