BETSEY TRAVICE.
They were grouped together in Mrs. Arkell's sitting-room, their faces
half-indistinct in the growing twilight. Mrs. Arkell herself, doing
nothing as usual; Mildred by her side, sewing still, although Mrs.
Arkell had told her she was trying her eyes; Charlotte Travice, with a
flush upon her face and a nervous movement of the restless foot--signs
of anger suppressed, to those who knew her well; and a stranger, a young
lady, whom you have not seen before.
Had anyone told you this young lady and Charlotte were sisters, you had
disputed the assertion, so entirely dissimilar were they in all ways. A
quiet little lady, this, of twenty years, with a smooth, fair face,
somewhat insipid, for all its good sense; light blue eyes, truthful as
Charlotte's were false; small features, and light hair, worn plainly.
Perhaps what might have struck a beholder as the most prominent feature
in Betsey Travice was her excessive natural meekness; nay, humility
would be the better word. She was meek in mind, in temper, in look, in
manner, in speech; humble always. She sat there at the fire, her black
bonnet laid beside her, for the girl had felt cold after her journey,
and the fire was more welcome to her than the going upstairs to array
herself for attraction would have been to Charlotte. The weather was
very cold for the close of April, and the coach--it was a noted
circumstance in its usual punctuality--had been half an hour behind its
time. She sat there, sipping the hot cup of tea that Tring had brought
her, declining to eat, and feeling miserably uncomfortable, as she saw
that, to one at least, she was not welcome.
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."
"One moment, Charlotte," said Betsey, detaining her--"I want to say only
a word. They were speaking downstairs this evening of a family of the
name of Hughes--a Mr. Edward Hughes, and some sisters."
"Well?" cried Charlotte.
"I think they are related to Mrs. Dundyke. She has relatives in
Westerbury of that name; she has mentioned it several times since you
came down. One or two of the sisters are dressmakers."
"Pleasant!" ejaculated Charlotte. "Are they intimate?"
"Not at all. I don't think they have met for years, and I am sure they
never correspond. But when you were all speaking of the Hughes's
to-night, I thought it must be the same. I did not like to say so."
"And it's well you did not," was Charlotte's comment. "Those Hughes
people have not been in good odour in Westerbury since last December."
She went downstairs in a thoughtful mood, her brain at work upon the
question of whether Betsey _could_ be in her right mind. The revelation
regarding Mr. David Dundyke caused her really to doubt it. She,
Charlotte Travice, had a sufficiently correct taste--to give her her
due--and it would have been simply impossible to her to have associated
herself for life with anyone not possessing, outwardly at any rate, the
attributes of a gentleman.