Mildred Arkell. Vol. 1 (of 3)

That one was her sister. Mrs. Arkell had kept the secret well; and not until the evening of the arrival—but an hour, in fact, before the coach was expected in—was Charlotte told of it.

"Tring, or somebody, has been putting two pillows upon my bed," remarked Charlotte, who had run up to her bedroom to get a book. "I wonder what that's for."

"You are going to have a bedfellow to-night, my dear," said Mrs. Arkell.

"A bedfellow!" echoed Charlotte, in wonder. "Who is it?"

"Your sister."

"Who?" cried out Charlotte; and the sharp, passionate, uncontrolled tone struck on their ears unpleasantly.

"I told you I should have your sister down to the wedding," quietly returned Mrs. Arkell. "In my opinion it would have been unseemly and unkind not to do so. She is on her road now. Mildred has come in to help me welcome her. Betsey is Mrs. Dan's godchild, you know."

"And Mildred knew she was coming?" retorted Charlotte, as if that were a further grievance; and she spoke as fiercely as she dared, compatible with her present amiability as bride-elect.

"Mildred knew it from the first."

Of course there was no help for it now. Betsey was on her road down, as Mrs. Arkell expressed it, and it was too late to stop her, or to send her back again. Charlotte made the best of it that she could make, but never had her temper been nearer an explosion; and when Betsey arrived she took care to let her see that she had better not have come.

"And now, my dear, that you are warmed and refreshed a little, tell me if you were not glad to come," said Mrs. Arkell, kindly, as Betsey Travice put the empty cup on the table, and stretched out one small, thin hand to the blazing warmth.

"I was very glad, ma'am," was the reply, delivered in the humble, gentle, deprecatory tone which characterized Betsey Travice, no matter to whom she spoke. "I was glad to have the opportunity of seeing Charlotte, she had been gone away so long; and I shall like to see a wedding, for I have never seen one; and I was very glad to come also for another thing."

"What is that?" asked Mrs. Arkell, yearning to the pleasant, single-minded tone—to the truthful, earnest eyes.

"Well, ma'am, I'm afraid I was getting over-worked. Though it would have seemed ungrateful to kind Mrs. Dundyke to say so, and I never did say it. The children were heavy to carry about the kitchen, and up and down stairs; and the waiting on the lodgers was worse than usual. I used to have such a pain in my side and back towards night, that I did not know how to keep on."

Charlotte Travice was in an agony. It was precisely these revelations that she had dreaded in a visit from Betsey. That Betsey had to work like a horse at Mrs. Dundyke's, Charlotte thought extremely probable; but she had no mind that this state of things should become known at Mrs. Arkell's. In her embarrassment, she was unwise enough to attempt to deny the fact.

"Where's the use of your talking like this, Betsey?" she indignantly asked. "If you did attend a little to the children—as nursery governess—you need not have carried them about, making a slave of yourself."

"But you know how young they are, Charlotte! You know that they need to be carried. I would not have cared had it been only the children. There was all the house work and the waiting."

"But what had you to do with this, my dear?" asked Mrs. Arkell, a little puzzled, while Charlotte sat with an inflamed face.

Betsey Travice entered on the explanation in detail. Mrs. Dundyke cooked for her lodgers herself—and she generally had two sets of lodgers in the house—and kept a servant to wait upon them. Six weeks ago the servant had left—she said the place was too hard for her—and Mrs. Dundyke had not found one to her mind since. She got a charwoman in two or three times a week, and Betsey Travice had put herself forward to help with the work and the waiting. She had made beds and swept rooms, and laid cloths for dinner, and carried up dishes, and handed bread and beer at table, and answered the door; in short, had been, to all intents and purposes, a maid of all work.

To see her sitting there, and quietly telling this, was not the least curious portion of the tale. She looked a lady, she spoke as a lady—nay, there was something especially winning and refined in her voice; and she herself seemed altogether so incompatible with the work she confessed to have passed her later days in, that even Mildred Arkell gazed at her in fixed surprise.

"You are a fool!" burst forth Charlotte, between rage and crying. "If that horrible woman, that Mrs. Dundyke, thrust such degrading work upon you, you ought not to have done it."

"Oh! Charlotte, don't call her that! She is a kind woman; you know she is. If you please, ma'am, she's as kind as she can be," added Betsey, turning to Mrs. Arkell, in her anxiety for justice to be done to Mrs. Dundyke. "And for the work, I did not mind it. It's not as if I had never done any. I had to do all sorts of work in poor mamma's time, and I am naturally handy at it. I am sorry you should be angry with me, Charlotte."

"I don't think it was exactly the sort of work your friend Mrs. Dundyke should have put upon you," remarked Mrs. Arkell.

"But there was no help for it, ma'am," represented Betsey. "The work was there, and had to be done by somebody. That servant left us at a pinch. She had a quarrel with her mistress about some dripping that was missing, and she went off that same hour. I began to do what I could of myself, without being asked. Mrs. Dundyke did not like my doing it, any more than Charlotte does, but there was nobody else, and I could not bear to seem ungrateful. When Charlotte came here I had but sixpence left in my purse, and Mrs. Dundyke has bought me shoes and things that I have wanted since, from her own pocket."

A dead silence. Charlotte Travice felt as if she were going to have brain fever. Could the earth have opened then, and swallowed up Betsey, it had been the greatest blessing, in Charlotte's estimation, ever accorded her.

"What are your prospects for the future, Betsey?" quietly asked Mrs. Arkell.

"Prospects, ma'am? I have not any. At least"—and a sudden blush overspread the fair face—"not at present."

"But you cannot go on waiting on Mrs. Dundyke's lodgers. It is not a desirable position for yourself, nor a suitable one for your father's daughter."

"I shall not have to do that again. Mrs. Dundyke has engaged a good servant now; indeed, I could not else have come away; when I return, I shall only attend to the two children, and do the sewing."

"I think we must try and find you something better, Betsey."

"Oh, ma'am, you are very kind to interest yourself for me," was the reply; "but I have promised myself to Mrs. Dundyke for twelve months to come. I am very happy there; and when the work's over at night, we sit in her little parlour; she goes to sleep, and David does his accounts, and I darn the socks and stockings. You cannot think how comfortable and quiet it is."

"Who is David?" inquired Mrs. Arkell.

"Mrs. Dundyke's son. He is clerk in a house in Fenchurch-street, in the day; and he keeps books and that, for anybody who will employ him at night. Sometimes he has to bring them home to do. He is very industrious."

"What did you mean by saying you had promised yourself to Mrs. Dundyke for a twelvemonth?"

"It was when I was coming away. She cried at parting, and said she supposed she should never see me again, now I was coming to be with Charlotte and her grand acquaintances. I told her I should be sure to come back to her very soon, and I would stop a whole year with her, if she liked. She said, was it a promise; and I told her it was. Oh! ma'am, I would not be ungrateful to Mrs. Dundyke for the world! I should have had no home to go to when Charlotte came here, but for her. All our money was gone, and Mrs. Dundyke had been letting us stop on then, ever so long, without any pay. Besides, I shall like to be with her."

If Charlotte could have cut her sister's tongue out, she would most decidedly have done it. To own such a sister at all, was bad enough; but to be compelled to sit by while these revelations were made to her future mother-in-law, to her rival Mildred, was dreadful. If Charlotte had disliked Mildred before, she hated her now. The implied superiority of position which it had been her pleasure from the first to assume over Mildred, would now be taken for what it was worth. She flung her arms up with a gesture of passionate pain, and approached Mrs. Arkell. Had Betsey confessed to having passed her recent months in housebreaking, it had sounded less despicable to Charlotte's pretentious mind than this; and a dread had rushed over her, whether Mrs. Arkell might not, even at that eleventh hour, break off the union with her son.

"Mrs. Arkell, I pray you, do not notice this!" she said, her voice a wail of passion and despair. "It has, I am sure, not been as bad as Betsey makes it out; she could not have degraded herself to so great an extent. But you see how it is. She is but half-witted at best, and anyone might impose upon her."

Half-witted! Mrs. Arkell smiled at the look of surprise rising to Betsey's eyes at the charge. Charlotte's colour was going and coming.

"On the contrary, Charlotte, I should give your sister credit for a full portion of good plain sense. Why should you be angry with her? The sort of work was not suitable for her; but it seems she could not help herself."

"I'd rather hear that she had gone out and swept the crossings in the streets! I knew how it would be if you had her down! I knew she would disgrace me!"

Mrs. Arkell took Betsey's hand in hers. The young face was distressed; the blue eyes shone with tears. "I do not think you have disgraced anyone, Betsey; I think you have been a good girl. Charlotte," Mrs. Arkell added, very pointedly, "I would rather see your sister what she is, than a fine lady, stuck up and pretentious."

Did Charlotte understand the rebuke? She made no sign. Tring came in with lights; it caused some little interruption, and while they were calming down again from the past excitement, Betsey Travice took the opportunity to approach Mrs. Arkell with a whisper.

"I don't know how to thank you for your kindness to me, ma'am, not only in inviting me here, but in sending me the money in the letter. If ever I have it in my power to repay it, you will not find me ungrateful. I do not mean the money; I mean the kindness."

"Hush, child!" said Mrs. Arkell, and patted her smooth fair hair.

"There was always something deficient in Betsey's mind," Charlotte was condescending to say to Mildred Arkell. "It is a great misfortune. Papa used to say times and again that Betsey was not a lady; never would be one. Will you believe me, that once, when she was about ten I think, she fell into a habit of curtseying to gentlepeople when she met them in the street, and we could hardly break her of it! Papa would have been quite justified, in my opinion, had he then put her into an asylum or a reformatory, or something of the kind."

"She does not strike me—as my aunt has just remarked—as being deficient in sense."

"In plain, rough, every-day sense perhaps she is not. But there's something wanting in her, for all that. Her notions are not those of a lady, if you can understand. You hear her speak of the work that horrid landlady has made her do—well, she feels no shame in it."

Before Mildred could answer, Mr. Arkell and William entered, big with some local news. They kindly welcomed the meek-looking young stranger, and then spoke it out.

Edward Hughes, the brother of the sisters so frequently mentioned, had bid adieu to Westerbury for ever. Whether he had at length become sick of the condemnatory comments the town had not yet forgotten to pass on Martha Ann, certain it was, that he had suddenly sold off his stock in trade, and gone away, en route for Australia. For some little time past he had said it was his intention to go; the two sisters also had spoken of it with a kind of dread; but it was looked upon by most people as idle talk. However, an opportunity arose for the disposing advantageously of his business and stock; he embraced it without an hour's delay and was already on his road to Liverpool to take ship. The town could hardly believe it, and concluded he was gone to escape the reflections on Martha Ann—although he had shown sufficient equanimity over them in general. People needn't bother him about it, he had been wont to say. They should talk to the one who had been the cause of the mischief, Mr. Carr's fine gentleman of a son.

"What a blow for the two sisters!" exclaimed Mildred. "What will they do?"

"Nay, my dear, they have their business," said Mr. Arkell. "I don't suppose their brother contributed at all to their support. On the contrary, people say he had been saving all he could to emigrate with."

"I don't know that I altogether alluded to money, Uncle George. It seems very sad for them to be left alone."

"It is sad for them," said Mrs. Arkell, agreeing with Mildred. "First Martha Ann, and now Edward!—it is a cruel bereavement. Tring says—and I have noticed it myself—that Mary Hughes has not been the same since that day's misfortune, three or four months ago."

"Ah," said Mr. Arkell, drawing a long breath, "I wish I had had the handling of Mr. Robert Carr that day!" The subject was a sore one with him, and ever would be. William believed, in his heart, that he had never been forgiven for having given the permission for the carriage that unlucky morning.

They continued to speak of the Hughes's and their affairs, and the interest of Betsey Travice appeared to be awakened. She had risen to go upstairs, but halted near the door, listening still.

"And now tell me," began Charlotte, when they were alone together in the chamber, "how you dared so to disgrace me!"

"Oh, Charlotte, how have I disgraced you? Do not be unkind to me. I wish I had not come."

"I wish it too with all my heart! Why did you come? How on earth could you think of coming? What possessed you to do it?"

"Mrs. Arkell wrote for me. She wrote to Mrs. Dundyke, asking her to see me off. I should, never else have thought of coming."

"Did I write for you, pray? Could you not have known that if you were wanted I should have written, and, failing that, you were not to come? You wicked girl!"

Betsey burst into tears. She had been domineered over in this manner, by Charlotte, all her life; and she took it with appropriate humility and repentance.

"Charlotte, you know I'd lay down my life to do you any good; why are you so angry with me?"

"And you do do me good, don't you!" retorted Charlotte. "Look at the awful disgrace you have this very evening brought upon me!"

"What disgrace?" asked Betsey, her blue eyes bespeaking compassion from the midst of her tears.

"Good heavens! what an idiot!" uttered the exasperated Charlotte. "She asks what disgrace! Did you not proclaim yourself before them a servant of all work—a scourer of rooms, a blacker of grates, a–"

"Stop, Charlotte; I have not done either of those things—Mrs. Dundyke would not let me. I made beds and waited on the drawing-room, and such-like light duties. I did this, but I did not black grates."

"And if you did do it, was there any necessity for your proclaiming it? Had you not the sense to know that for my sister to avow these things was to me the very bitterest humiliation? Not for your doing them," tauntingly added Charlotte, in her passion, "for you are worth nothing better; but because you are a sister of mine."

Betsey's sobs were choking her.

"Where did you get the money to come down?" resumed Charlotte.

"Mrs. Arkell sent it me, Charlotte. There was a five-pound note in her letter."

It seemed to be getting worse and worse. Charlotte sat down and poked the fire fiercely, Tring having lighted one in compassion to the young visitor's evident chilly state. Betsey checked her sobs, and bent down to kiss her sister's neck.

"Somehow I always offend you, Charlotte; but I never do it intentionally, as you know, and I hope you will forgive me. I so try to do what I can for everybody. I always hope that God will help me to do right. There was the work to be done at Mrs. Dundyke's, and it seemed to fall to me to do it."

Charlotte was not all bad, and the tone of the words could but conciliate her. Her anger was subsiding into fretfulness.

"The annoying thing is this, Betsey—that you feel no disgrace in doing these things."

"I should not do them by choice, Charlotte. But the work was there, as I say; the servant was gone, and there was nobody but me to do it."

"Well, well, it can never be mended now," returned Charlotte, impatiently. "Why don't you let it drop?"

Betsey sighed meekly. She would have been too glad to let it drop at first. Charlotte pointed imperiously to a chair near her.

"Sit down there. You have tried me dreadfully this evening. Don't you know that in a few days I shall be Mrs. William Arkell? His father is one of the largest manufacturers in Westerbury, and they are rolling in money. It was not pleasant, I can tell you, for my sister to show herself out in such a light. What do you think of him?"

"Oh, Charlotte! I think you must be so happy! I am so thankful, dear! Working, and all that, does not matter for me; but it would not have done for you. I never saw anyone so nice-looking."

"As I?"

"As Mr. William Arkell. How pleasant his manner is! And, Charlotte, who is that young lady down there? I did not quite understand. What a sweet face she has!"

"You never do understand. It is the cousin: Mildred. She thought to be Mrs. William Arkell," continued Charlotte, triumphantly. "The very first night I came here I saw it as plain as glass, and I took my resolution—to disappoint her. She has been loving William all her life, and fully meant him to marry her. I said I'd supplant her, and I've done it; and I know our marriage is just breaking her heart."

Betsey Travice—than whom one more generous-hearted, more unselfishly forgetful of self-interest, more earnestly single-minded, did not exist—felt frightened at the avowal. Had it been possible for her to recoil from her imperious sister, she had recoiled then.

"Oh, Charlotte!" was all she uttered.

"Why, you don't think I should allow so good a match to escape me, if I could help it! And, besides, I love him," added Charlotte, in a deeper voice.

"But if–oh, Charlotte! pardon me for speaking—I cannot help it—if that sweet young lady loved him before you came? had loved him for years?"

"Well?" said Charlotte, equably.

"It cannot be right of you to take him from her."

"Right or not right, I have done it," said Charlotte, with a passing laugh. "But it is right, for he loves me, and not her."

"What will she do?" cried Betsey, after a pause of concern; and it seemed that she asked the question of her own heart, not of Charlotte.

"Dwindle down into an old maid," was the careless answer: spoken, it is to be hoped, more in carelessness than heartlessness. "There, that's enough. Have you seen anything of Mrs. Nicholson?" resumed Charlotte.

"We have seen her a great many times, Charlotte; she has been very troublesome to Mrs. Dundyke. She wanted your address here: but for me, Mrs. Dundyke would have given it to her. She said—but, perhaps, I had better not tell it you."

"What who said? Mrs. Dundyke? Oh, you may tell anything she said. I know her delight was to abuse me."

"No, no, Charlotte; it never was. She only said it was not right of you to order so many new things when you were coming here, unless you could pay for them. I went to Mrs. Nicholson and paid her a sovereign off the account."

"How did you get the sovereign?"

"Mrs. Dundyke made me a present of it—as a little recompense for my work, she said. I did not so very much want anything for myself, for I had just had new shoes, and I had not worn my best clothes; so I took it to Mrs. Nicholson."

Did the young girl's generosity strike no chord of gratitude in Charlotte's heart? This money, owing to Mrs. Nicholson, a fashionable dressmaker, had been Charlotte's worry during her visit. She would soon have it in her power to pay now.

"I wonder what you'll do in future?" resumed Charlotte, looking at her sister. "You can't expect to find a home with me, you know. It would be entirely unreasonable. And you can't expect to marry, for I don't think you'd be likely to get anyone to have you. If–"

The exceedingly vivid blush that overspread the younger sister's cheek, the wondrous look of intelligence in the raised eyes, brought Charlotte's polite speech to a summary conclusion. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Charlotte, if you would let me tell you," was the whispered answer. "Papa is dead, and mamma is dead, and there is no one left but you; and I suppose I ought to tell you. I have promised to marry David."

"Promised–what?" repeated Charlotte, in an access of consternation.

"To marry David Dundyke. Not yet, of course; not for a long while, I dare say. When he shall be earning enough to keep a wife."

For once speech failed Charlotte Travice, and she sat gazing at her sister. Her equanimity had received several shocks that evening; but none had been like this. She had seen but little of this David Dundyke; but, a vision of remembrance rose before her of an inferior, common young man, carrying coal-scuttles upstairs in his shirt-sleeves, who could not speak a word grammatically.

"Are you really mad, Betsey?"

"I feared you would not like it, Charlotte; and I know I can't expect to be as you are. But we shall be more than a hundred miles apart, so that it need not annoy you."

Betsey had unconsciously put the matter in the right light. It was not because Mr. Dundyke was unfit to be Betsey's husband, but because he was unfit to be her brother-in-law, that the matter so grated on the ear of Charlotte.

"I cannot expect much better, Charlotte; I have not been educated as you have. Perhaps if I had been–"

"But the man is utterly beneath you!" burst forth Charlotte. "He is a common man. He used—if I am not mistaken—to black the boots and shoes for the house at night, and carry up the coal before he went out in the morning!"

"But not as a servant, Charlotte; only to save work for his mother. Just as I helped with the rooms and waited, you know. He does it all still. They were very respectable once; but Mr. Dundyke died, and she had to struggle on, and she took this house in Upper Stamford-street. You have heard her tell mamma of it many a time."

"You can't think of marrying him, Betsey? You are something of a lady, at any rate; and he–cannot so much as speak like a Christian."

"He is very steady and industrious; he will be sure to get on," murmured Betsey. "Some of the clerks in the house he is in get a great deal of money."

"What house is it?" snapped Charlotte, beginning to feel cross again. "A public-house?—an eating-house?"

"It is a tea-house," said Betsey, mildly. "They are large wholesale tea-dealers; whole shiploads of tea come consigned to them from China. He went into it first of all as errand-boy, and–"

"You need not have told that, I think."

"And has got on by attention and perseverance to be a clerk. He is twenty-two now."

"If he gets on to be a partner—if he gets on to be sole proprietor—you cannot separate him from himself!" shrieked Charlotte. "Look here, Betsey; sooner than you should marry that low man, I'll have you to live with me. You can make yourself useful."

"Thank you kindly, Charlotte, all the same; but I could not come to you. You see, you and I do not get on together. It is my fault, I know, being so inferior; but I can't help it. Besides, I have promised David Dundyke."

Charlotte looked at her. "You do not mean to tell me that you have any love for this David Dundyke?"

Another bright blush, and Betsey cast down her pretty blue eyes. "We have seen so much of each other, Charlotte," she said, in a tone of apology; "he brings the books home nearly every evening now, instead of doing them out."

"Well, I shan't stop with you," concluded Charlotte, moving to the door. "I'm afraid to stop, for I truly believe you are going on for Bedlam. And you'd better make haste, if you want to do anything to yourself. Supper will be ready directly."