Mildred Arkell. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Lewis senior was stealthily regarding him over the corner of a desk, with as much inward curiosity as though he had risen from the dead. Lewis was in a perplexed state of mystification yet. There Arkell was, sure enough; alive, and apparently well. He had not become an idiot; that, Lewis could see; he had not parted with his arms and legs. How had he got out? But the relief, to find him thus, was so great to Lewis's mind, that his spirits rose to a reckless height; and he was insolent to Jocelyn when the latter spoke to him about coming in after the roll was called.

At breakfast time Henry went in search of George Prattleton, but could not see him; the probability was that Mr. George had gone to bed again, and was taking out his night's rest by daylight. He sought him again at dinner-time, and then he had gone out; the two Prattleton boys thought to the billiard rooms. In the afternoon, however, as Henry was passing through the cloisters to the school, after service in the cathedral, he met him.

George Prattleton listened with an air of apparent incredulity to the tale; Henry had got locked up in the church, and seen him and a stranger go into the church at midnight, or thereabouts!—him, George Prattleton! Mr. George denied it in toto; and expressed his belief that Henry must have been dreaming.

"It's of no use talking like that, George Prattleton," said Henry, in a vexed tone. "You know quite well you were there. I saw the same man with you in the Grounds, the previous night, when I was going home after the audit-dinner."

"You must have seen double, then! I don't know whom you are talking of. Had you been drinking?"

"It won't do, George Prattleton. I was in full possession of both my sight and senses. You know whom I mean. His name's Rolls."

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No; but you did. I heard you call him by his name two or three times in the church last night. I want to know what I am to do about it."

"I don't know any Rolls; and I was not in the church last night; and my full persuasion is—if you really were locked in, as you say—that you fell asleep and dreamt this story."

"Now look you here, George Prattleton; if you persist in this line of denial, I shall be obliged to tell Mr. Wilberforce. I don't like to do it; your family and mine are intimate, and we have received many kindnesses from them, and I assure you I'd almost rather cut my tongue out than speak. But I can't let things go on at this uncertainty. Do you know what that Rolls did?"

"What did he do?" was the mocking rejoinder.

"He cut a leaf out of the register book."

"No?" shouted George Prattleton, the words scaring him to seriousness.

"I declare he did. When the candle went out, you thought it went out of itself, didn't you; well, he blew it out. I saw him blow it, and he called out, 'What a beast of a candle,' and said it was the damp put it out, and he got you to go for the matches. Was it not so?"

"Well?" said George Prattleton, too much alarmed to heed the half admission.

"Well, you had no sooner gone than he somehow got the candle alight again; I didn't see how, I suppose he had matches; and he took out a penknife, and put what looked like a thin board behind the leaf he was looking at, and cut it out. I say I'm not sure! but it's transportation for life to rob a church register."

George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.

"You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?"

"Because I was bewildered—frightened, if you will; and it all passed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can't do always the right thing at the right time."

"He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I–"

"Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry.

"Yes; to some old tithe cause—a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause, he said."

"Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?"

"Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing—whether I could not get him a sight of the register."

"What's to be done about it?" asked Henry.

"I don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.

"It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!"

"Be still, for heaven's sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part."

"I don't wish to betray it; I'd do anything rather than bring trouble upon you. But it ought to be told."

"Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise."

Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back, and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He put his hand into George's.

"You have my promise," he said; "but on one condition. I will never speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you to release me from my promise; and if you decline, I shall consider myself no longer bound by it."

"Very well; a bargain," said George Prattleton, after a pause. "And now I'm after that scoundrel Rolls. I'll tell you a secret before I go—tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?"

"I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there."

"Not I. It was Lewis."

"Lewis!"

"Lewis senior. For a lark, he said, but I expect he owed you some grudge. By the way, though, I promised him I'd not speak of this; he told it me in confidence. I forgot that."

"I'll not speak of it. I can't, if I am to keep the other a secret. It was only the difficulty of accounting for my getting out of the church, that kept me from asking Hunt how I got locked in."

They parted. Mr. George Prattleton went in search of his friend Rolls, and Henry tore along the cloisters with all his might, anticipating he knew not what of reprimand from the head master for lingering on his way from college. It was close upon four o'clock, and his desk had some Greek to do yet; but the afternoon lessons were less regularly performed in winter than in summer.

CHAPTER XVII.

A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE

On the second of December, Peter Arkell and his family came home, looking blooming. Eva Prattleton, who had stayed with them all the time, was blooming; as was Lucy; as was, for her, Mrs. Arkell. Even Peter himself looked quite a different man from the one who had gone away in July. Ah, my friends, there's nothing like running away from home to restore health and looks, if you can only leave care behind.

Quite a small crowd had assembled to meet them at the station. Nearly all the Prattleton family, including Mr. George, who was dreadfully in want just now of some distraction for his long hours. The two young Prattletons and Henry Arkell had rushed up, books in hand, just as they came out of school; and Travice Arkell, he was there. Handsome Travice! the best-looking young man in Westerbury when Frederick St. John was out of it.

"How have you been, Lucy?" he whispered, quietly coming near her, when he had done greeting the rest.

She shyly looked up at him as he took her hand. Scarcely a word was spoken. His head was bent for a moment over her blushing cheeks, and Travice looked as if he would very much have liked to take a kiss from the red ripe lips. It was impossible there; perhaps impossible elsewhere. Peter came up.

"Travice, I wish you'd see to the luggage, and that; and put my wife in a fly. There's enough of you here without me. I shall walk quietly on."

Just the same shy, awkward, incapable Peter Arkell as of yore. In usefulness his daughter Lucy was worth ten of him. He slipped out of the station by the least-frequented way, and walked on towards home. As he was going along, he met Kenneth, Mr. Fauntleroy's confidential clerk; and the latter stopped.

"I'm glad I met you," said Kenneth; "it will save me a journey to your house to-day, for we heard you'd be at home. How is it you have never sent us any money, Mr. Arkell?"

"Because I couldn't send it," returned Peter. "I wrote to Mr. Fauntleroy, telling him how impossible it was. I suppose he has managed it. He could if he liked, you know; it all lies in his hands."

"Ah, but he couldn't," answered Kenneth. "He had been too easy in one or two matters (I don't allude to your affairs), and had got involved in a good deal of expense through it; and the consequence is, he has been obliged to adopt a stricter policy in general."

"Mr. Fauntleroy knows how I was situated. In a strange place, you have to pay for everything as it comes in. I got a little teaching down there, and that helped; but it was not much."

"Well, Mr. Fauntleroy thought you ought to have sent him some money," persisted Kenneth. "And I'm not sure but he would have enforced it, had he not got it elsewhere."

"Got it elsewhere! On my account? What do you mean, Kenneth?"

"Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds."

"Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds!" almost shouted Peter. "How did that come about? Who said anything to Mr. Arkell?"

"I believe Mr. Fauntleroy happened to mention it accidentally. Or whether it was that he asked him for your exact address at the place, and said he was going to worry you for money, I'm not sure. I know Mr. Arkell said, better let you be quiet while you were there, and advanced the ten pounds."

"Mr. Fauntleroy had no right to speak to my cousin about it at all, Mr. Kenneth. I regard it as a breach of good faith. I wrote and asked Mr. Fauntleroy to wait, and he might have done so. As to the address, he knew that, for I gave it him."

"I'm in a hurry," said Mr. Kenneth. "I thought I'd speak to you, because I know Mr. Fauntleroy intended to send to you as soon as you came home. Here's another instalment due, now December's come in."

He went on his way. Peter Arkell looked after him for a minute, and then went on his. "Home to care! home to care!" he murmured with a sigh of pain.

Over and over again had Peter Arkell—not cursed, he was too good a man for that—but repented the day that placed him in the power of Mr. Fauntleroy. Some years previous to this, in a moment of great embarrassment, Peter Arkell had gone to Mr. Fauntleroy with his tale of woes. "Won't you help me?" he asked; "I once helped you." And Mr. Fauntleroy, entirely indifferent to his fellow-creature's woes though he was at heart, had not the face to refuse, with the recollection of that past obligation upon him. He helped him in this way. He advanced Peter Arkell two or three hundred pounds at a heavy rate of interest. It was not his own money, he said—he really had none to spare—it was the money of a client who had left it in his hands to make some profitable use of. Of course Peter Arkell understood it: at least he believed he did—that the money was Mr. Fauntleroy's own, and the plea of the client only put forth that the interest might be exacted—and his simple, honourable nature blushed for Mr. Fauntleroy. But he accepted it—he was too much in need of the assistance not to do it—and as the months and years went on he found himself unable to pay the interest. Things went on with some discomfort for a long time, and then Mr. Fauntleroy insisted on what he called some final arrangement being come to—that is, he said his client insisted upon it. The result was that Peter Arkell undertook to pay ten pounds every three months off the debt, interest, and costs, without the smallest notion how he could accomplish it. He had some learned book coming out, and if that turned up a trump card, he might be able to do it and more. But, when the book did come out it did not turn out a trump. The first ten pounds was due on the first of June last, and Peter had managed to pay it. The second ten was due on the first of September, and he wrote to Mr. Fauntleroy for grace. He now heard it had been paid by his cousin William Arkell. The third ten had been due the previous day, for this was the second of December. He would be able to pay this, for he had some money coming to him yet from the people who had rented his house, and, so far, that would be got rid of.

Peter might have paid it in another way. The first thing he saw on entering his home was a letter from his sister Mildred, and on opening it he found it contained a ten-pound note. These windfalls would come from Mildred now and then; and without them Peter had not an idea how he should have got along.

But not to his necessities did he appropriate this. The most prominent feeling swaying him then, was vexation that William Arkell should have been troubled about the matter—William, who had ever been so good to him—who had helped him out of more difficulties than the world knew of. In the impulse of the moment, without stopping to sit down, he went out again, carrying the note. He could not remember the day when he had been able to pay anything to his cousin, but at least he could do this.

Things were not prospering with the city, or with William Arkell. That the trade was going gradually down to ruin, to all but total extermination, he felt sure of now; and he bitterly regretted that Travice had cast in his lot with it. He had designed to send Travice to Oxford, to cause him to embrace one of the learned professions; but Travice had elected to follow his father, and Mr. Arkell had yielded—all just as it had been with himself in his own youth. None, save William Arkell himself, knew the care that was upon him, or how his property was dwindling down. Ever and anon there would come flashing a gleam of improvement in the trade, and rather large orders would come in, whispering hope for the future; but the orders and the hope soon faded again.

Peter entered the iron gates, and was turning to the left to the manufactory, when he saw Mr. Arkell at the dining-room window; so he went across to the house.

"No need to look for me abroad to-day, Peter," said his cousin, opening the dining-room door and meeting him in the hall. "I am not well enough to go out."

"What's the matter?" asked Peter.

"I don't know; I have had shivering fits all the morning—can do nothing but sit over this hot fire. Charlotte thinks it must be some sort of illness coming on; but I suppose it's only a cold. So you have got back at last?"

"Now, just," answered Peter, sitting down on the other side of the fire; "Travice said nothing about your illness; he was at the station."

"Was he? I did not know he had gone out. Oh, he thinks it's nothing, I dare say; I hope it will be nothing. What's this?"

Peter had handed him the ten-pound note. "It is what you paid to Mr. Fauntleroy while I was away; and bitterly vexed I am, to think he should have applied to you. I met Kenneth in leaving the station, and heard of it from him. But, William, I want to know why you paid it. Did Fauntleroy hold out any threats to you?"

"Something to that effect. He spoke of putting an execution into your house: it would not have done at all, you know, while strangers were in it. I never knew that he had got judgment."

"Oh yes, he did," said Peter, bitterly; "he took care of that. I am at his mercy any day, both in goods and person. He forgets, William, the service I rendered him, and my having to pay it: it is nothing but that that has kept me down in life. Put an execution in my house! I wonder where he expects to go to? Not to heaven, I should think?"

"He said his client pressed for the money—would not, in fact, wait."

"I dare say he did; it's just like him to say it. His client is himself."

"No?" exclaimed William Arkell, lifting his head.

"I firmly believe it to be so. He is pressing for another ten pounds now; it was due yesterday."

"Have you got it for him? If not, why do you give me this?"

"I have got it," said Peter; "I have to receive money to-day. Thank you a thousand times, William, for this and all else. How is business?"

"Don't ask. I feel too ill to fret over it just now. I'd give it up to-morrow but for Travice."

Certain words all but escaped Peter Arkell's lips, but they were suppressed again. He wondered—he had wondered long—why William Arkell continued to live at an expensive rate. That it was his wife's doings, not his, Peter knew; but he could not help thinking that, had he been a firm, clever man, as William was, he should not have yielded to her.

He met her in the hall as he went out. She wore a rich, trailing silk, and bracelets of gold. Peter stopped to shake hands with her; but she was never too civil to him, or to his daughter Lucy. In point of fact, Lucy had for some time haunted Mrs. Arkell's dreams in a very unpleasant manner, entailing a frequent nightmare, hideous to contemplate.

"What did Peter Arkell want here?" she asked of her husband, before she was well in the room; and her tone was by no means a gracious one.

"Not much," carelessly answered Mr. Arkell, who had drawn over the fire in another fit of shivering.

She took her seat in the chair Peter had vacated, and slightly lifted her rich dress, lest the scorching fire should mar its beauty.

"I suppose he came to borrow money," she said, no pleasant look upon her countenance.

"On the contrary, he came to pay me some."

"To pay you some! What for?"

"To repay me some, I should have said. I paid something for him during his absence—ten pounds—and he has now returned it."

For one single moment she felt inclined to doubt the words, and to say so. The next, she remembered how simply truthful was her husband.

"I want Travice," she said, presently. "I sent to the manufactory for him, but he was out. Will he be long, do you know?"

"I dare say not. Peter told me he was at the railway station. He went, I suppose, to meet them."

Mrs. Arkell lifted her head with a sort of start.

"Did you know he had gone?" she asked, sharply.

"I knew nothing at all of it. What are you so cross about?"

Mrs. Arkell bit her lips—her habit when put out.

"I have always objected to Travice's excessive intimacy with the Peter Arkells," she slowly said. "You know I have. But I might just as well have objected to the wind's blowing, for all the effect it has had. I hope it will not prove that I had cause."

"Cause! What cause? What do you mean, Charlotte?"

"Well, I think they are a mean, deceitful set. I think they are scheming to entrap Travice into an engagement with Lucy Arkell."

Ill as Mr. Arkell felt, he yet burst into a laugh. The notion of Peter's scheming to entrap anyone, or anything, was so ludicrous: simple, single-minded Peter, who had probably never given a thought to Lucy's marrying at all since she was in existence! and his wife was utterly above meanness of any sort—the very soul of openness and honour.

"Where did you pick up that notion?" he asked, when his laugh was over.

"I picked it up from observation and common sense," answered Mrs. Arkell, resentful of the laugh. "Travice used always to be there; and now that they are back, I suppose he will be again. He has lost no time in beginning, it seems."

"And if he is there, it does not follow that he goes for the sake of Lucy."

"It looks wonderfully like it, though."

"Nonsense, Charlotte! In the old days, when I was a young man, as Travice is, and Mildred was a girl like Lucy, quite as attractive–"

"Quite as what?" shrieked Mrs. Arkell. "I hope your taste does not put forward Lucy Arkell as attractive—or as Mildred's having been so before her. They are as like as two peas. A couple of uneducated, old-fashioned, old-maidish things, possessing not a single attraction."

"Opinions differ," said Mr. Arkell, quietly. "But if it be as you intimate, there's the less danger for Travice. What I was about to say was this—that in the old days I was in the habit of going to that house more than Travice goes to it now, and busy people, even my own mother, never believed but that I went for the sake of Mildred. I did not; neither did I marry her."

"The cases are different. You had no companion at home; Travice has his sisters. And it might have ended in your marrying Mildred, had I not come down on that long visit here, and saved you."

"Yes, it might." He was looking dreamily into the fire, his thoughts buried in the past; utterly oblivious to the present, and to the effect his remark might make. Mrs. Arkell felt particularly savage when she heard it.

"And a nice wife you'd have had! She is only fit for what she is—a lady's maid. Lucy will follow her example, perhaps, when old Peter's poverty has sent him into the grave. I always hated Lucy Arkell—it may be a strong term to use—but it's the truth. From the time that she was only as high as the elbow of that chair, and her mother, with the fine Cheveley notions, used to deck her out as a little court doll, I hated her!"

"And I have always thought her one of the sweetest and most loveable of children," quietly returned Mr. Arkell. "Opinions differ, I say, Charlotte. But why should you have hated her?"

"Because—I think it must have been" (and Mrs. Arkell looked into the fire also in reflection, and for once spoke her true sentiments)—"I think it must have been because you and Travice made so much of her. I only know it has been."

"I'd not cherish it, Charlotte."

"You would not, I know. Tell me," she added, with quite a gust of passion in voice and eye, "would you like to see your fine, attractive, noble son, thrown away upon Lucy Arkell?"

"My head is as bad as it can be, Charlotte; I wish you'd not worry me. I think I must be going to have some fever."

"He might marry half Westerbury. With his good looks, his education, his fine prospects–"

"Yes, do put in them," interrupted Mr. Arkell. "Very fine they are, in the present aspect of affairs."

"Affairs will get good again. I don't believe the half that's said about the badness of trade. You have made a good thing of it," she added significantly.

"Pretty well; I and my father before me. But those times have gone by for ever."

"I don't believe it; I believe the trade will revive again and be as lucrative as before; and Travice will be able to maintain a home such as we have maintained. It is a fine prospect, I don't care how you may deny it in your gloom; and I say that Travice, enjoying it, might marry half the desirable girls in Westerbury."

"He'd be taken up for bigamy if he did."

"Can't you be serious?" she angrily asked. "Whereas, if he got enthralled by that bane, Lucy Arkell, and–Good patience, here she is!" broke off Mrs. Arkell, as her eyes fell on the courtyard. "The impudence of that! Not half an hour in the town, and to come here!"

Lucy, in her grey travelling cloak, and fresh straw bonnet, came staggering in under a load: a flower-pot, with a great plant in bloom. She looked well. In moments of excitement, there was something of her mother's loveliness in her face; in the lustre of the soft and sweet dark eyes, in the rose bloom of the delicate cheeks, and at those times she was less like Mildred. Lucy put her load on the table, and turned to offer her hand to Mrs. Arkell. Mrs. Arkell touched the tips of the fingers, but Mr. Arkell took her in his arms and kissed her twice; and then recollected himself and fell into proper repentance.

"I ought not to have done it, Lucy; I forgot myself. But, my dear, in the joy of seeing you, and seeing you so pretty, I quite lost sight of precaution. I am shivering with cold and illness, Lucy, and may be going to have I don't know what."