Mildred Arkell. Vol. 1 (of 3)

"I am half afraid to encounter your wife," Mildred had said, as she walked home with Peter from the station—for there was a railway from London now, and the old coaching days had vanished for ever. "She is one of the Dewsbury family—of Mrs. Dewsbury's, at any rate—and I am but a dependent in it."

"Oh, Mildred! you little know my dear wife; but she is one in a thousand. She is very poorly this evening, and is so vexed at it; she says you will not think she welcomes you as she ought."

"What is it that is really the matter with her? Is it the spine? You did not tell me all this in your letters."

"It is the spine. She was never strong, you may be aware; and I believe there occurred some slight injury to it when the boy was born. The doctors think she will get stronger again; but I don't know."

"Is she in pain? Does she walk out?"

"She is not in pain when she lies, but it comes on if she exerts herself. Sometimes she walks out, but not often. She is so patient—so anxious to make the best of things; lying there, as she is often obliged to do, for hours, and going without any little thing she may want, because she will not disturb the servant from her work to get it. I don't think anyone was ever blessed with so patient and sweet a temper."

And when Mildred entered and saw the bright expectancy of the well-remembered face, the eager hands held out to welcome her, she knew that they were true sisters from that hour. The invalid drew down her face to her own flushed one.

"I am so grieved," she whispered, the tears rising in her earnest eyes; "this is one of my worst days, and I am unable to rise to welcome you."

"Do not think of it," answered Mildred; "I am glad to be here to wait upon you, I am used to nursing; I think it is my specialité," she added, with one of her old sunny smiles. "I will try and nurse you into health before I go back again."

"You shall make the tea, and do all those things, now you are here, Mildred," interposed Peter. "I am as awkward as an owl when I have to attempt anything, and Lucy lies and laughs at me."

"Which is to be my room?" asked Mildred. "I will go and take my things off, and come down to hear all the news of the old place."

"The blue room," said Mrs. Peter. "You will find little Lucy–"

"Your own old room, Mildred," interposed Peter. "Lucy, my dear, when Mildred left home the room was not blue, but a sort of dirty yellow."

Mildred went and came down again, bringing the children with her, little orderly things; steady Lucy quite like a mother to her baby brother. Mildred made acquaintance with them, and she and Peter gossiped away to their hearts' content; the one telling the news of the "old place," and its changes, the other listening.

"We think Lucy so much like you," Peter observed in the course of the evening, alluding to his little daughter.

"Like me!" repeated Mildred.

"It strikes us all. William never sees her but he thinks of you. He says we ought to have named her 'Mildred.'"

"His daughters are not named Mildred, either of them," she answered, hastily—an old sore sensation, that she had been striving so long to bury, becoming very rife within her.

"His wife chose their names—not he. She has a will of her own, and likes to exercise it."

"How do you get on with William's wife?"

"Not very well. She and Lucy did not take to each other at first, and I suppose never will. She is quite a fine lady now; and, indeed, always was, to my thinking; and William's wealth enables them to live in a style very different from what we can do. So Mrs. Arkell looks down upon us. We are invited to a grand, formal dinner there once a year, and that is about all our intercourse."

"A grand, formal dinner!" echoed Mildred. "For you!"

Peter nodded. "She makes it so on purpose, no doubt; a hint that we are not to be every-day visitors. She invites little Lucy there sometimes to play with Charlotte and Sophy; but I am sure the two girls despise the child just as their mother despises us."

"And does William despise you?" inquired Mildred, a touch of resentment in her usually gentle tone.

"How can you ask it, Mildred?" returned Peter, warmly. "I thought you knew William Arkell better than that. He grows so like his father—good, kindly, honourable. There's not a man in all Westerbury liked and respected as he is. He comes in sometimes in an evening; glad, I fancy, of a little peace and quietness. Between ourselves, Mildred, I fancy that in marrying Charlotte Travice, William found he had caught a Tartar."

"And so they are grand!" observed Mildred, waking out of a fit of musing, and perhaps hardly conscious of what she said.

"Terribly grand. She is. They keep their close carriage now. It strikes me—I may be wrong—but it strikes me that he lives up to every farthing of his income."

"My Uncle George did not."

"No, indeed! Or there'd not have been the fortune that there was to leave to William."

"But, Peter, I gather a good deal now and then from the local papers of the distress that exists in Westerbury, of the depressed state that the trade is falling into; more depressed even than it was when I left, and that need not be. Does not this state of things affect William Arkell?"

"It must affect him; though not, I conclude, to any great extent. You see, Mildred, he has what so many of the other manufacturers want—plenty of money, independent of his business. William has not to force his goods into the market at unfavourable moments; be his stock ever so large, he can hold it until the demand quickens. It is the being obliged to send their goods into the market at low prices, that swamps the others."

"Will the prosperity of the town ever come back to it, think you?"

"Never. And I am not sure that the worst has come yet."

Mildred sighed. She called Lucy to her and held her before her, pushing the hair from her brow as she looked attentively into her face. It was not a beautiful or a handsome face; but it was fair and gentle, the features pale, the eyes dark brown, with a sweet, sad, earnest expression: just such a face as Mildred's.

"Do you like your cousins, Charlotte and Sophia, Lucy?" asked Mildred.

"I like Travice best," was the little lady's unblushing answer. "Charlotte and Sophy tease me; they are not kind; but Travice won't let them tease me when he is there. He is a big boy, but he plays with me; and he says he loves me better than he does them."

"I really believe he does," said Peter, amused at the answer. "Travice is just like his father, as this child is like you—the same open, generous, noble boy that William himself was. When I see Travice playing with Lucy, I could fancy it was you and William over again—as I used to see you play in the old days."

"Heaven grant that the ending of it may not be as mine was!" was the inward prayer that went up from Mildred's heart.

"Travice is in the college school, I suppose, Peter?"

"Oh, yes. With a private evening tutor at home. The girls have a resident governess. William spares no money on their education."

"Would it not be a nice thing for Lucy if she could go daily and share their lessons?"

"Hush, Mildred! Treason!" exclaimed Peter, while Mrs. Peter Arkell burst into a laugh, her husband's manner was so quaint. "I have reason to know that William was hardy enough to say something of the same sort to his wife, and he got his answer. I and my wife, between us, teach Lucy. It is better so; for the child could not be spared from her mother. You don't know the use she is of, already."

"I am of use to mamma too, I am!" broke in a bold baby voice at Mildred's side.

She caught the little fellow on her knee: he thought no doubt he had been too long neglected. Mildred began stroking the auburn curls from his face, as she had stroked Lucy's.

"And I am like mamma," added the young gentleman. "Everybody says so. Mamma says so."

Indeed "everybody" might well say it. As the mother's was, so was the child's, the loveliest possible type of face. The same, the exquisite features, the refined, delicate look, the lustrous brown eyes and hair, the rose-flush on the cheeks. "No, I never did see two faces so much alike, allowing for the difference in age," cried Mildred, looking from the mother on the sofa to the child on her knee. "Tell me again what your name is."

"It's Harry Cheveley Arkell."

"Do you know," exclaimed Mildred, looking up at Mrs. Peter, "it strikes me this child speaks remarkably plain for his age."

"He does," was the answer. "Lucy did not speak so well when she was double his age. He is unusually forward and sensible in all respects. I fear it sometimes," she added in a lower tone.

"By why do you fear it?" quickly asked Mildred.

"Oh—you know the old saying, or superstition," concluded Mrs. Arkell, unable further to allude to it, for the boy's earnest eyes were bent upon her with profound interest.

"Those whom the gods love, die young," muttered Peter. "But the saying is all nonsense, Mildred."

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, noble, 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 passed, 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 passion, 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 nobody 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 fishing 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 fishing 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 nobody's with you? Where are they all? Where's mamma?"

Springing to the door he called out in the hall that there was nobody 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. Dundyke. 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. Dundyke 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. Dundyke."

"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. Dundyke," 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. Dundyke 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 pass to another topic, Miss Arkell, that one does not interest me. What are the new fashions for the season? You must get them at first hand, from your capacity in Lady Dewsbury's household."

Mildred would not resent the hint.

"Indeed, Mrs. Arkell, if you only knew how little the fashions interest either Lady Dewsbury or me, you would perhaps laugh at us both," she answered. "Lady Dewsbury lives too much out of the world to need its fashions. She is a great invalid."

Peter's wife was right in her conjecture, for Mrs. Arkell had hastily summoned a dinner party. Mr. Arkell took his revenge, and faced his wife in a morning coat. Ten inclusive; and the governess and Travice were desired to sit down in the place of Mr. and Mrs. Peter. It may be concluded that Mildred was of the least consequence present, in social position; nevertheless, Mr. Arkell took her in to dinner, and placed her at his right hand. All were strangers to her, excepting old Marmaduke Carr. Squire Carr was dead, and his son John was the squire now.

It was not the quiet evening Mildred had thought to spend with them. She slipped from the drawing-room at ten, Mrs. Peter's health being the excuse for leaving early. Mr. Arkell had his hat on at the hall door waiting for her, just as it used to be in the days gone by.

"But, William, I do not wish to take you out," she remonstrated. "You have your guests."

"They are not my guests to-night," was his quiet answer, as he gave his arm to Mildred.

Travice came running out. "Oh, papa, let me go with you!"

"Get your trencher, then."

He stuck the college cap on his head and went leaping on, through the gates and up the street, just in the manner that college boys like to leap. Mr. Arkell and Mildred followed more soberly, speaking of indifferent things. Mildred began talking of Mr. Carr.

"How well he wears!" she said. "Peter tells me he has retired from business."

"These three or four years past. He did wisely. Those who keep on manufacturing, only do it at a loss."

"You keep it on, William."

"I know. But serious thoughts occur to me now and then of the wisdom of retiring. There are reasons against it, though. Were I to give up business, we should have to live in a very different style from what we do now; for my income would be but a small one, and that would not suit Mrs. Arkell. Besides, I really could not bear to turn my workmen adrift. There are too many unemployed already in the town; and I am always hoping, against my conviction, that times will mend."

"But if you only make to lose, how would the retiring from business lessen your income?"

William laughed. "Well, Mildred, of course I do get something still by my business; but in speaking of the bad times, we are all apt to make the worst of it. I dare say I make about half what we spend; but that you know, compared to the profits of old days, is as nothing."

"If you do make that, William, why think at all of giving up?"

"Because the doubt is upon me whether worse times may not come, and bring ruin with them to all who have kept on manufacturing. Were I as Marmaduke Carr is, a lonely man, I should give up to-morrow; but I have my wife and children to provide for, and I really do not know what to do for the best."

"What has become of Robert Carr? Has he ever been home?"

"Never. He is in Holland still for all I know. I have not heard his name mentioned for years in the town. Old Marmaduke never speaks of him; and others, I suppose, have forgotten him. You know that the old squire's dead?"

"Yes; and that John has succeeded him. Did John's daughter—Emma, I mean—ever marry?"

"She married very well indeed; a Mr. Lewis. Valentine, the son and heir, is at home with his father; steady, selfish, mean as his father was before him; but I fancy John Carr has trouble with the second, Ben."

"Ben promised to be a spendthrift, I remember," remarked Mildred. "What is Travice gazing at?"

Travice had come to a stand-still, and was standing with his face turned upwards. Mr. Arkell laughed.

"Do you remember my propensity for star-gazing, Mildred? Travice has inherited it. But with him it is more developed than it was with me. I should not be surprised at his turning out an astronomer one of these days."

Did she remember it! Poor Mildred fell into a reverie that lasted until William said good night to her at her brother's door.

She was not sorry when her visit to Westerbury came to an end. The town seemed to look cold upon her. Of those she had left in it, some had died, some had married, some had quitted the place for ever. The old had vanished, the middle-aged were growing old, the children had become men and women. It did not seem the same native place to Mildred; it never would seem so again. Some of the inhabitants of her own standing had dwindled down to obscurity; others who had not been of her standing, had gone up and become very grand indeed. These turned up their noses at Mildred, just as did Mrs. William Arkell; and thought it excessive presumption in a lady's maid to come amongst them as an equal. She had persisted in going out to service in defiance of all her friends, and the least she could do was to keep her distance from them.

Mildred did not hear these gracious comments, and would not have cared very much if she had heard them. She returned to her post at Lady Dewsbury's, and a few more years passed on.

CHAPTER XV.

THE DEAN'S DAUGHTER

The tender green of early spring was on the new leaves of the cathedral elm trees. Not sufficient to afford a shade yet; but giving promise of its fulness ere the sultry days of summer should come.

The deanery of Westerbury was a queer old building to look at, especially in front. It had no lower windows. There were odd-looking patches in the wall where the windows ought to have been, and three or four doors. These doors had their separate uses. One of them was the private entrance of the dean and his family; one was used by the servants; one was allotted to official or state occasions, at the great audit time, for instance, when the dean and chapter held their succession of dinners for ever so many days running; and one (a little one in a corner) was popularly supposed to be a sham. But the windows above were unusually large, and so they compensated in some degree for the lack of them below.