Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 27

Peter had been getting his books, and was preparing to become lost in their pages, fragrant as ever to him. Mildred happened to look to him and scarcely saved herself from a scream. He had put on a pair of spectacles.

"Peter! surely you have not taken to spectacles!"

"Yes, I have."

"But why?"

Peter stared at her. "Why does anybody take to them, Mildred? From failing sight."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Mildred. "We seem to have gone away altogether from youth--to be gliding into old age without any interregnum."

"But we are not middle-aged yet, Mildred," said Mrs. Peter.

A sudden opening of the door--a well-known form, tall, upright, n.o.ble, but from which a portion of the youthful elasticity was gone--and Mildred found herself face to face with her cousin William. How loved still, the wild beating of her heart told her! His simply friendly greeting, warm though it was, recalled her to her senses.

"What a stranger you have been to us, Mildred!" he exclaimed. "Never to come near Westerbury all these years! When my father was dying, he wished so much to see you."

"I would have come then had I been able, but Lady Dewsbury was very ill, and I could not leave her. Indeed, I wish I could have seen both my aunt and uncle once more."

"They felt it, I can tell you, Mildred."

"Not more than I did; not indeed so much. They could not: they had others with them nearer than I."

"Perhaps none dearer," he quietly answered. "My father's death was almost sudden at the last. The shock to me was great: I did not think to lose him so early."

"A little sooner or a little later!" murmured Mildred. "What does it matter, provided the departure be a hopeful one. As his must have been."

"As his _was_," said William. "Mildred, you are not greatly changed."

"Not changed!"

"I said, not greatly changed. It is still the same face."

"Ah, you will see it by daylight. My hair is turning grey."

"Mildred, which day will you spend with us?" he asked, when leaving.

"To-morrow?"

Mildred evaded a direct reply. Even yet, though years had pa.s.sed, she was scarcely equal to seeing the old home and its installed mistress; certainly not without great emotion. But she knew it must be overcome, and when Mr. Arkell pressed the question, she named, not the morrow, but the day following.

William Arkell went home, and had the nearest approach to a battle with his wife that he ever had had. Mrs. Arkell was alone in their handsome drawing-room; she did not keep it laid up in lavender, as the old people had done. She was as pretty as ever; and of genial manners, when not put out. But unfortunately she got put out at trifles, and the unpleasantness engendered by it was frequent.

"Charlotte, I have seen Mildred," he began as he entered. "She will spend the day with us on Friday, but I suppose you will call upon her to-morrow."

"No, I shan't," returned Mrs. Arkell. "She's nothing but a lady's-maid."

William answered sharply. Something to the effect that Mildred was a lady born and bred, a lady formerly, a lady still, and that he respected her beyond anyone on earth: in his pa.s.sion, he hardly knew what he said.

Mrs. Arkell was even with him.

"I know," she said--"I know you would have been silly enough to make her your wife, but for your better stars interposing and sending me to frustrate it. I don't suppose she has overcome the disappointment yet.

Now, William, that's the truth, and you need not look as if you were going to beat me for saying it. And you need not think that I shall pay court to her, for I shall not. Whether as Mildred Arkell, your disappointed cousin, or as Mildred Arkell, Lady Dewsbury's maid, I am not called upon to do it."

William Arkell felt that he really could beat her. He did not answer temperately.

Mrs. Arkell could be aggravating when she chose; ay, and obstinate. She would not call on Mildred the following day, but three separate times did her handsome close carriage parade before the modest house of Mr.

Peter Arkell, and never once, of all the three times, did she condescend to turn her eyes towards it, as she sat inside. Late that evening there arrived a formal note requesting the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Arkell's accompanying Miss Arkell to dinner on the following day.

"She's going to do it grand, Peter," said Lucy to her husband with a laugh, in the privacy of their chamber at night. "She's killing two birds with one stone, impressing Mildred with her pomp, and showing her at the same time that she must not expect to be admitted to unceremonious intimacy."

Only Mildred went. Lucy said she was not well enough, and Peter had lessons to give. The former unpretentious and, for Mr. Arkell, convenient dinner hour of one o'clock had been long changed for a late one. Mildred, fully determined _not_ to make a ceremony of the visit, went in about four o'clock, and found n.o.body to receive her. Mrs. Arkell was in her room, the maid said. She had seen Miss Arkell's approach, and hastened away to dress, not having expected her so early. Would Miss Arkell like to go to a dressing room and take her bonnet off? Miss Arkell replied that she would take it off there, and she handed it to the maid with her shawl.

The drawing-room had been newly furnished since old Mrs. Arkell's time, as Mildred saw at a glance. She was touching abstractedly some of its elegant trifles, musing on the changes that years bring, when the door flew open, and a tall, prepossessing, handsome boy entered, whistling a song at the top of his voice, and trailing a fis.h.i.+ng line behind him.

There was no need to ask who he was; the likeness was too great to the beloved face of her girlhood: it was the same manner, the same whistle; all as it used to be.

"You are Travice," she said, holding out her hand; "I should have known you anywhere."

"And you must be Mildred," returned the boy, impetuously taking the hand between both of his, and letting his cherished fis.h.i.+ng line drop anywhere. "May I call you Aunt Mildred, as Lucy does?"

"Call me anything," was Mildred's answer. "I am so glad to see you at last. And to see you what you are! How like you are to your father!"

"All the world says that," said the boy with a laugh. "But how is it that n.o.body's with you? Where are they all? Where's mamma?"

Springing to the door he called out in the hall that there was n.o.body with Miss Arkell, that she was waiting in the drawing-room alone. His voice echoed to the very depths of the house, and two slender, pretty girls came running downstairs in answer to its sound. There was a slight look of William in both of them, but the resemblance to their mother was great, and Mildred's heart did not go out yearning to them as it had to Travice. She kissed them, and found them pleasant, lady-like girls; but with a dash of coquetry in their manner already.

"I hope I see you well, Miss Arkell."

Mildred was bending over the girls, and started at the well-remembered tones, so superlatively polite, but freezing and heartless. Charlotte was radiant in beauty and a blue silk dinner-dress, with flowing blue ribbons in her bright hair. Mildred felt plain beside her. Her rich black silk was made high, and its collar and cuffs were muslin, worked with black. Nothing else, save a gold chain; the pretty chain of her girlhood that William had given her; nothing in her hair. She was in mourning for a relative of Lady Dewsbury.

"You have made acquaintance with the children, I see, Miss Arkell."

"Yes; I am so glad to do it. Peter has sometimes mentioned them in his letters; and I have heard much of Travice from Betsey--Mrs. Dund.y.k.e.

Your sister charged me to give you her best love, Mrs. Arkell. I saw her on Friday."

"She's very kind," coldly returned Mrs. Arkell; "but I don't quite understand how you can have heard much of my son from her; that is, how she can have had much to say. Mrs. Dund.y.k.e had not seen him since he was an infant, until we were in town last year."

"I think Travice has been in the habit of writing to her."

"In the habit of writing to Aunt Betsey,--of course I have been!"

interposed Travice. "And she writes to me, too. I like Aunt Betsey. And I can tell you what, mamma, for all you go on against him so, I like Mr.

Dund.y.k.e."

"Your likings are of very little consequence at present, Travice," was the languidly indifferent answer of his mother. "You will learn better as you grow older. My sister forfeited all claim on me when she married so low a man as Mr. Dund.y.k.e," continued Mrs. Arkell to Mildred; "and she knows that such is my opinion. I shall never change it. She married him deliberately, with her eyes open to the consequences, and of course she must take them. I said and did what I could to warn her, but she would not listen. And now look at the way in which they are obliged to live!"

"Mr. Dund.y.k.e earns an excellent income; in fact, I believe he is making money fast," observed Mildred. "Their living in the humble way they do is from choice, I think, not from necessity."

Mrs. Arkell shrugged her pretty shoulders with contempt.

"We will pa.s.s to another topic, Miss Arkell, that one does not interest me. What are the new fas.h.i.+ons for the season? You must get them at first hand, from your capacity in Lady Dewsbury's household."