Mildred Arkell Volume Iii Part 30

He broke off abruptly. Lucy, suppressing the emotion that had arisen, glanced up at him, as she waited for the conclusion. But the conclusion did not come.

"You see now, Lucy, why I cannot be serious. Perhaps you have seen why before. In the uncertain state that our business is, not knowing but the end of it may be bankruptcy----"

"Oh, Travice!" she involuntarily exclaimed, in the shock that the word brought to her.

"I do a.s.sure you it has crossed my mind now and then, that such may be the final ending. It would break my father's heart, I know, and it would half break mine for his sake; but others in the town have succ.u.mbed, who were once nearly as rich as we were, and the fate may overtake us. I wish I could be serious; serious to a purpose; but I cannot."

"I wanted to show you a prospectus, Travice, that was left here to-day,"

interrupted Peter Arkell, coming back to the room. "I wonder what next they'll be getting up a company over? I put it into my desk, but I can't find it. Lucy, look about for it, will you?"

She got up to obey, and Travice caught a sight of the raised face, whose blushes had been hidden from him; blushes called forth by his words and their implied meaning. She had understood it.

But she had not understood the sentence at whose conclusion Travice Arkell had broken down. "That the ties of wife and children must be denied to him for good and all, unless----"

Unless what? Unless he let them sacrifice him, would be the real answer.

Unless he sacrificed himself, his dearest hopes, every better feeling that his heart possessed, at a golden shrine. But Travice Arkell would have a desperate fight first.

The Miss Fauntleroys, co-heiresses of the wealthy old lawyer--who might have died worth more but for his own entanglements in early life--had become intimate and more intimate at the house of William Arkell. Ten thousand pounds were settled on each, and there was other money to divide between them, which was not settled. How Lawyer Fauntleroy had sc.r.a.ped together so much, Westerbury could not imagine, considering he had been so hampered with old claims. Strapping, vulgar, good-humoured damsels, these two, as you have before heard; with as little refinement in looks, words, and manner as their father had possessed before them.

Their intimacy had grown, I say, with the Arkell family. Mrs. Arkell courted them to her house; the young ladies were quite eager to frequent it without courting; and it had come to be whispered all over the gossiping town, that Mr. Arkell's son and heir might have either of them for the asking.

Perhaps not quite true this, as to the "either," perhaps yes. It was indisputable that both liked him very much; but any hope the younger might have felt disposed to cherish had long been merged in the more recognised claim to him of the elder; recognised by the young ladies only, mind you, in the right, it may be, of her seniors.h.i.+p. Nothing in the world could have been more satisfactory to Mrs. Arkell than this union. She overlooked their want of refinement, and their many other wants of a similar nature--of refinement, indeed, she may have deemed that Travice possessed enough for himself and for a wife too--she thought of the golden h.o.a.rd in the bank, the firm securities in the three per cent consols, and she pertinaciously cherished the hope and the resolve that Barbara Fauntleroy should become Barbara Arkell.

It is well to say "pertinaciously." That Travice had set his resolve against it, she tacitly understood; and once when she went so far as to put her project before him in a cautious hint, Travice had broken out with the ungallant a.s.sertion that he would "as soon marry the deuce."

But he might have to give in at last. The constant dropping of water on a stone will wear it away; and the constant, unceasing tongue of a woman has been known to break the iron walls of man's will.

Another suitor had recently sprung up for Miss Lizzie Fauntleroy. No less a personage than Benjamin Carr. The reappearance of Mr. Dund.y.k.e upon the scene of the living world had considerably astonished many people; possibly, amidst others, Ben Carr himself. In the great relief it brought to the mind of Mr. Arkell, distorted, you may remember, with a certain unpleasant doubt, he almost forgot to suspect him at all; and he buried the past in silence, and in a measure, took luckless Ben into favour again; that is, he did not forbid him his house.

Ben, in fact, had come out apparently nouris.h.i.+ng from all past escapades suspected and unsuspected, and was residing with his father, and dressing like a gentleman. No more was heard of his wish to go abroad.

Squire Carr had made him a half promise to put him into a farm; and while Ben waited for this, he paid court to Lizzie Fauntleroy. At first she laughed in his face for an old fool, next she began to giggle at his soft speeches, and now she listened to him. Ben Carr had some attraction yet, in spite of his four-and-forty years.

In the course of the following morning, Peter Arkell suddenly announced his intention of going out, to the great surprise of Lucy. It was a most unfit day, rainy, and bleak for the season; and he had not stepped over the threshold for weeks and weeks.

"Papa! You cannot go out to-day. It is not fit for you."

"Yes, I shall go. I want particularly to speak to my cousin William: you can help me thither with your arm, Lucy. Get my old cloak down, and air it at the fire; I can wrap myself in that."

Lucy ventured no further remonstrance. When her papa took a thing into his head, there was no turning him.

They started together through the bad weather to the house of William Arkell. The dear old house! where Peter had spent so many pleasant evenings in his youthful days. He crossed the yard at once to the manufactory, telling Lucy to go indoors and wait for him. William Arkell was alone in his private room, and was not a little surprised at the visit.

"Why Peter!" he exclaimed, rising from his desk, and placing an arm-chair by the fire, "What has brought you out such a day as this? Sit down."

Before Peter did so, he closed the door, so that they should be quite alone. He then turned and clasped his cousin by the hand.

"William," he began, emotion mingling with his utterance, "I have come to you, a poor unhappy man. Conscious of my want of power to do what I ought--fearing that there is less chance of my doing it, day by day."

"What do you mean?" inquired Mr. Arkell.

"Amidst the ruin that has almost universally fallen on the city, you have not escaped, I fear your property is being seriously drawn upon?"

"And, unless things mend, it will soon be drawn to an end, Peter."

"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Peter. "And to know that I am in your debt, and cannot liquidate it! It is to speak of this, that I am come out to-day."

"Nay, now you are foolis.h.!.+" exclaimed Mr. Arkell. "What matters a hundred pounds or two, more or less, to me? The sum would cut but a poor figure by the side of what I am now habituated to losing. Never think of it, Peter: _I_ never shall. Besides, you had it from me in driblets, so that I did not miss it."

"When I had used to come to you for a.s.sistance in my illnesses, for I was ashamed to draw too much upon Mildred," proceeded the poor man, "I never thought but that I should, in time, regain permanent strength, and be able to return it. I never meant to cheat you, William."

"Don't talk like that, Peter!" interrupted Mr. Arkell. "If the money were returned to me now, it would only go the way that the rest is going. I have always felt glad that it was in my power to render you a.s.sistance in your necessities: and if I stood this moment without a s.h.i.+lling to turn to, I should not regret it any more than I do now."

They continued in converse, but we need not follow it. Lucy meanwhile had entered the house, and went about, looking for some signs of its inhabitants. The general sitting-room was empty, and she crossed the hall and opened the door of the drawing-room. A bouncing lady in fine attire was coming forth from it, talking and laughing loudly with Mr.

Arkell; it was Barbara Fauntleroy.

Shaking hands with Lucy in her good-humoured manner as she pa.s.sed her, she talked and laughed her way out of the house. Lucy was in black silk and c.r.a.pe still; Miss Fauntleroy was in the gayest of colours; and Mrs.

Peter Arkell had been dead longer than Mr. Fauntleroy. They had worn their black a twelvemonth and then quitted it. It was not fas.h.i.+onable to wear mourning long now, said the Miss Fauntleroys.

Charlotte Arkell, with scant ceremony, sat down to the piano, giving Lucy only a nod. Nothing could exceed the slighting contempt in which she and her sister held Lucy. They had been trained in it. And they were highly accomplished young ladies besides, had learnt everything there was to be taught, from the harp and oriental tinting, down to Spanish, German, and chenille embroidery. Lucy's education had been solid, rather than ornamental: she spoke French well, and played a little; and she was more skilled in plain sewing than in fancy. _They_ never allowed their guarded fingers to come into contact with plain work, and had just as much idea of how anything useful was done, as of how the moon was made.

So these two fine young ladies despised Lucy Arkell, after the fas.h.i.+on of the fine young ladies of the present day. Charlotte also was great in the consciousness of other self-importance, for she was soon to be a wife. That Captain Anderson whom you once saw at a concert, had paid a more recent visit to Westerbury; and he left it, engaged to Charlotte Arkell.

Charlotte played a few bars, and then remembered to become curious on the subject of Lucy's visit. She whirled herself round on the music stool: it had been a favourite motion of her mother's in the old days.

"What have you come for, Lucy?"

"Papa wanted to see Mr. Arkell, and I walked with him. He is gone into the manufactory."

"I thought your papa was too ill to go out."

"He is very ailing. I think he ought not to have come out on a day like this. Do not let me interrupt your practising, Charlotte."

"Practising! I have no heart to practise!" exclaimed Charlotte. "Papa is always talking in so gloomy a way. He was in here just now: I was deep in this sonata of Beethoven's, and did not hear him enter, and he began saying it would be better if I and Sophy were to accustom ourselves to spend some of our time _usefully_, for that he did not know how soon we might be obliged to do it. He has laid down the carriage; he has made fearful retrenchments in the household: I wonder what he would have! And as to our buying anything new, or subscribing to a concert, or anything of that sort, mamma says she cannot get the money from him. I wish I was married, and gone from Westerbury! I am thankful my future home is to be far away from it!"

"Things may brighten here," was all the consolation that Lucy could offer.

"I don't believe they ever will," returned Charlotte. "I see no hope of it. Papa looks sometimes as if his heart were breaking."

"How soon the Miss Fauntleroys have gone out of mourning!" observed Lucy.

"Oh, I don't know. They wore it twelve months; that's long enough for anything. Let me give you a caution, Lucy," added Charlotte, laughing: "don't hint at such a thing as that Barbara Fauntleroy's not immaculate perfection: it would not do in this house."

"Why?" exclaimed Lucy, wondering at her words and manner.

"She is intended for its future head, you know, when the present generation of heads shall--shall have pa.s.sed away. I'm afraid that's being poetical; I didn't mean to be."

Lucy sat as one in a maze, wondering WHAT she might understand by the words. And Charlotte whirled round on her stool again to the sonata, with as little ceremony as she had whirled from it.

While Miss Fauntleroy was there, Mrs. Arkell had sent a private message to Travice that she wanted him; but Travice did not obey the summons until the young lady was gone. He came then: and Mrs. Arkell attacked him for not coming before; she was attacking him now, while Charlotte and Lucy were talking.

"Why did you not come in at once?" asked Mrs. Arkell, in the cross tone which had latterly become habitual; "Barbara Fauntleroy was here."