MARRIAGES IN UNFASHIONABLE LIFE.
The next twelvemonth brought little of event, if we except the birth of
a boy to William Arkell and his wife. In the month of March, nearly a
year after their marriage, the child was born; and its mother was so
ill, so very near, as was believed, unto death, that Mrs. Arkell sent a
despatch to bring down her sister, Betsey Travice. Had Charlotte been
able to have a voice in the affair, rely upon it Betsey had never come.
But Charlotte was not, and Betsey arrived; the same meek Betsey as of
yore. William liked the young girl excessively, and welcomed her with a
warm heart and open arms. His wife was better then, could be spoken to,
and did not feel in the least obliged to them for having summoned
Betsey.
"I am glad to see you, Betsey," William whispered, "and so would
Charlotte be, poor girl, if she were a little less ill. You shall stand
to the baby, Betsey; he is but a sickly little fellow, it seems, and
they are talking of christening him at once. If it were a girl, we would
name it after you; we'll call it--can't we call it Travice? That will be
after you, all the same, and it's a very pretty name."
Betsey shook her head dubiously. She had an innate fondness for
children, and she kissed the little red face nestled in her arms.
"Charlotte would not like _me_ to stand to it," she whispered.
"Not like it!" echoed William, who did not know his wife yet, and had no
suspicion of the state of things. "Of course she would like it. Who has
so great a right to stand to the child as you, her sister. Would you
like it yourself?"
"Oh, very much; I should think it was my own little boy all through
life."
"Until you have little boys of your own," laughed William, and Betsey
felt her face glow. "All right, his name shall be Travice."
And so it was; the child was christened Travice George; and Betsey had
become his godmother before Charlotte knew the treason that was agate.
She was bitterly unkind over it afterwards to Betsey, reproaching her
with "thrusting herself forward unwarrantably."
A very, very short stay with them, only until Charlotte was quite out
of danger, and Betsey went back to London. "Do not, if you can help it,
ever ask me down again, dear Mrs. Arkell," she said, with tears. "You
must see how it is--how unwelcome I am; Charlotte, of course, is a lady,
always was one, and I am but a poor working girl. It is natural she
should wish us not to keep up too much intimacy."
"I call it very unnatural," indignantly remonstrated Mrs. Arkell.
Perhaps Betsey Travice yearned to this little baby all the more, from
the fact that the youngest of the two children she had taken care of at
Mrs. Dundyke's, had died a few months before. Fractious, sickly,
troublesome as it had been, Betsey's fondness for it was great, and her
sorrow heavy. There had been nobody to mourn it but herself; Mrs.
Dundyke was too much absorbed in her household cares to spare time for
grief, and everybody else, saving Betsey, thought the house was better
without the crying baby than with it. These children were almost
orphans; the mother, David's only sister, died when the last was born;
the father, a merchant captain, given to spend his money instead of
bringing it home, was always away at sea.
Death was to be more busy yet with the house of Mrs. Dundyke. A few
months after Betsey's return from the short visit to Westerbury, when
the hot weather set in for the summer, the other baby died. Close upon
that, Mrs. Dundyke died--in a fit.
The attack was so sudden, the shock so great, that for a short time
those left--David and Betsey--were stunned. David had to go to
Fenchurch-street all the same; and Betsey quietly took Mrs. Dundyke's
place in the house, and saw that things went on right. Duty was ever
first with Betsey Travice; what her hand found to do, that she did with
all her might; and the whole care devolved on her now. A clergyman and
his wife were occupying the drawing-rooms, and they took great interest
in the poor girl, and were very kind to her; but they never supposed but
that she was some near relative of the Dundykes. David, who did not want
for plain sense--no, nor for self-respect either--saw, of course, that
the present state of things could not continue.
"Look here, Betsey," he said to her, one evening that they sat together
in silence; he busy with his account books, and Betsey absorbed in
trying to make out and remember the various items charged in the last
week's butcher's bill; "we must make a change, I suppose."
She looked up, marking the place she had come to with her pencil. "What
did you please to say, David?--make a change?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so, or we shall have the world about our ears. I
mean to get rid of the house as soon as I can; either get somebody to
come in and buy the good-will and the furniture; or else, if nobody
won't do that, give up the house, and sell off the old things by
auction, just keeping enough to furnish a room or two."
"It would be better to sell the good-will and the furniture, would it
not?"
"Don't I say so? But I'm not sure of doing it, for houses is going down
in Stamford-street: people that pay well for apartments, like to be
fashionable, and get up to the new buildings westward. Any way, I'm
afraid there won't be no more realized than will serve to pay what
mother owed."
David stopped here and looked down on his accounts again. Betsey, who
sat at the opposite side of the table, with the strong light of the
summer evening lighting up its old red cloth, returned to hers. Before
she had accomplished another item, David resumed--
"And all this will take time; three or four months, perhaps. And so,
Betsey--if you don't mind being hurried into it--I think we had better
be married."
"Be married!" echoed Betsey, dropping her book and her pencil. "Whatever
do you mean?"
"I mean what I say," was David's sententious answer; "I don't mean
nothing else. You and me must be married."
Betsey stared at him aghast. "Oh, David! how can you think of such a
thing yet? It is not a month since your poor mother died."
"That's just it, her being dead," said David. "Don't you see, Betsey,
neither you nor me can go out of the house until somebody takes to it,
or till something's settled; and, in short, folks might get saying
things."
Not for a full minute did she in the least comprehend his meaning. Then
she burst into a passion of tears of anger; all her face aflame.
"Oh! David, how can you speak so? who would dare to be so cruel?"
"It's because I know the world better than you, and because I know how
cruel it is, that I say it," added David. "Look here, Betsey, there's
nobody left now to take care of you but me; and I _shall_ take care of
you, and I'm saying what's right. I shall buy a licence; it's a dreadful
deal of money, when asking in church does as well, but that takes
longer, and I'll spend the money cheerfully, for your sake. We'll go
quietly to church next Sunday morning, and nobody need know, till it's
all over, what we've been for. Unless you like to tell the servant, and
the parson and his wife in the drawing-room. Perhaps you'd better."
"But, David----"
"Now, where's the good of contending?" he interrupted; "you don't want
to give me up, do you?"
"You know I don't, David."
"Very well, then."
Betsey held out for some time longer, and it was only because she saw no
other opening out of the dilemma--for, as David said, neither of them
could leave the house if it was to go on--that she gave in at last.
David at once entered upon sundry admonitions as to future economy,
warning her that he intended they should live upon next to nothing for
years and years to come. He did not intend to spend all his income, and
be reduced to letting lodgings, or what not, when he should get old.
And a day or two after the marriage had really taken place, Betsey wrote
a very deprecatory note to Charlotte, and another to Mrs. Arkell, with
the news. But she did not give them an intimation of it beforehand. So
that even had Charlotte wished to make any attempt to prevent it, she
had not the opportunity. And from thenceforth she washed her hands of
Betsey Dundyke, even more completely than she had done of Betsey
Travice.
This first portion of my story is, I fear, rather inclined to be
fragmentary, for I have to speak of the history of several; but it is
necessary to do so, if you are to be quite at home with all our friends
in it, as I always like you to be. The next thing we have to notice, was
an astounding event in the life of Peter Arkell.
Peter Arkell was not a man of the world; he was a great deal too
simple-minded to be anything of the sort. In worldly cunning, Peter was
not a whit above Moses Primrose at the fair. Peter was getting on
famously; he had let his house furnished, and the family who took it
accommodated Peter with a room in it, and let him take his breakfast and
dinner with them, for a very moderate sum. He worked at the bank, as
usual, and he attended at Colonel Dewsbury's of an evening; that
gentleman's eldest son had gone to college, but he had others coming on.
Peter Arkell had also found time to write a small book, not _in_ Greek,
but touching Greek; it was excessively learned, and found so much favour
with the classical world, that Peter Arkell grew to be stared at in his
native city, as that very rare menagerie animal, a successful author;
besides which, Peter's London publishers had positively transmitted him
a sum of thirty pounds. I can tell you that the sum of thirty hundred
does not appear so much to some people as that appeared to Peter. Had
he gained thousands and thousands in his after life, they would have
been to him as nothing, compared to the enraptured satisfaction brought
to his heart by that early sum, the first fruits of his labours. Ask any
author that ever put pen to paper, if the first guinea he ever earned
was not more to him than all the golden profusion of the later harvest.
And so Peter, in his own estimation at any rate, was going on for a
prosperous man. He put by all he could; and at the end of three years
and a-half from Mildred's departure--for time is constantly on the wing,
remember--Peter had saved a very nice sum, nearly enough to take him to
Oxford, when he should find time to get there. For that, the getting
there, was more of a stumbling block now than the means, since Peter did
not yet see his way clear to resign his situation in the bank.
Meanwhile he waited, hoped, and worked. And during this season of
patience, he had an honour conferred upon him by young Fauntleroy the
lawyer: a gentleman considerably older than Peter, but called young
Fauntleroy, in distinction to his father, old Fauntleroy the lawyer.
Young Fauntleroy, who was as much given to spending as Peter was to
saving, and had a hundred debts, unknown to the world, got simple Peter
to be security for him in some dilemma. Peter hesitated at first. Four
hundred pounds was a large sum, and would swamp him utterly should he
ever be called upon to pay it; but upon young Fauntleroy's assuring him,
on his honour, that the bank could not be more safe to pay its quarterly
dividends than he was to provide for that obligation when the time came,
Peter gave in. He signed his name, and from that hour thought no more of
the matter. When a person promised Peter to do a thing he had the
implicit faith of a child. And now comes the event that so astounded
Westerbury.
You remember Lucy Cheveley, the young lady whose lovely face had so won
on Mildred's admiration? How it came about no human being could ever
tell, least of all themselves; but she and Peter Arkell fell in love
with each other. It was not one of those ephemeral fancies that may be
thrown off just as easily as they are assumed, but a passionate,
powerful, lasting love, one that makes the bliss or the bane of a whole
future existence. The chief of the blame was voted by the meddling town
to Colonel and Mrs. Dewsbury. Why had they allowed Miss Cheveley to mix
in familiar intercourse with the tutor? To tell the truth, Miss Cheveley
had not been much better there than a governess. Her means were very
small. She had only the pension of a deceased officer's daughter, and
Mrs. Dewsbury, what with clothes and maintenance, was considerably out
of pocket by her; therefore she repaid herself by making Miss Cheveley
useful with the children. The governess was a daily one, and Lucy
Cheveley helped the children at night to prepare their lessons for her.
The study for both boys and girls was the same, and thus Lucy was in
constant daily intercourse with Mr. Peter Arkell. Since the publication
of Peter's learned book, and his consequent rise in public estimation,
Colonel Dewsbury had once or twice invited him to dinner; and Miss
Cheveley met him on an equality.
But the marvel was, how ever that lovely girl could have lost her heart
to Peter Arkell--plain, shy, awkward Peter! But that such things have
been known before, it might have been looked upon as an impossibility.
There was a fearful rumpus. The discovery came through Mrs. Dewsbury's
bursting one night into the study in search of a book, when the children
had left it, and she supposed it empty. Mr. Peter Arkell stood there
with his arm round Lucy's waist, and both her hands gathered and held in
his. For the first minute or so, Mrs. Dewsbury did not believe her own
eyes. Lucy stood in painful distress, the damask colour glowing on her
transparent cheek, and the explanation, as of right it would, fell to
Peter.
These shy, timid, awkward-mannered men in every-day life, are sometimes
the most collected in situations of actual embarrassment. It was so with
Peter Arkell. In a calm, quiet way he turned to Mrs. Dewsbury, and told
her the straightforward truth: that he and Miss Cheveley were attached
to each other, and he had asked her to be his wife.
Mrs. Dewsbury was an excitable woman. She went back to the dining-room,
shrieking like one in hysterics, and told the news. It aroused Colonel
Dewsbury from his wine; and it was not a light thing in a general way
that could do that, for the colonel was fond of it.
Then ensued the scene. Colonel and Mrs. Dewsbury heaped vituperation on
the head of the tutor, asking what he could expect to come to for thus
abusing confidence? Poor Peter, far more composed in that moment than he
was in every-day matters, said honestly that he had not intended to
abuse it; nothing would ever have been farther from his thoughts; but
the mutual love had come to them both unawares, and been betrayed to
each other without thought of the consequences.
All the abuse ever spoken would not avail to undo the past. Of course
nothing was left now but to dismiss Mr. Peter Arkell summarily from his
tutorship, and order Miss Cheveley never to hold intercourse by word or
look with him again. This might have mended matters in a degree had
Miss Cheveley acquiesced, and carried the mandate out; but, encouraged
no doubt secretly by Mr. Peter, she timidly declined to do so--said, in
fact, she would not. Colonel and Mrs. Dewsbury were rampant as two
chained lions, who long to get loose and tear somebody to pieces.
For Mr. Peter Arkell was not to be got at. The law did not sanction his
imprisonment; and society would not countenance the colonel in beating
or killing him. Neither could Mrs. Dewsbury lock up Miss Lucy Cheveley,
as was the mode observed to refractory damsels in what is called the
good old time.
The next scene in the play was their marriage. Lucy, finding that she
could never hope to obtain the consent of her protectors to it, walked
quietly to church from their house one fine morning, met Peter there,
and was married without consent. Peter had made his arrangements for the
event in a more sensible manner than one so incapable would have been
supposed likely to do. The friends who had occupied his house vacated it
previously to oblige him; he had it papered and painted, and put into
thoroughly nice order, spending about a hundred pounds in new furniture,
and took Lucy home to it. Never did a more charming wife enter on
possession of a home; and Westerbury, which of course made everybody's
affairs its own, in the usual manner, was taken with a sudden fit of
envy at the good fortune of Peter Arkell, when it had recovered its
astonishment at Miss Cheveley's folly. One of her order marry poor Peter
Arkell, the banker's clerk! The world must be coming to an end.
Colonel and Mrs. Dewsbury almost wished it _was_ coming to an end, for
the bride and bridegroom at any rate, in their furious anger. The
colonel went to the bank, and coolly requested it to discharge Peter
Arkell from its service. The bank politely declined, saying that Mr.
Peter Arkell had done nothing to offend it, or of which it could take
cognizance. Colonel Dewsbury threatened to withdraw his account, and
carry it off forthwith to a sort of patent company bank, recently opened
in the town. The bank listened with equanimity; it would be sorry of
course, and hoped the colonel would think better of it; but, if he
insisted, his balance (he never kept more than a couple of hundred
pounds there) should then be handed to him. The colonel growled, and
went out with a bang. He next wrote to Lady Dewsbury a peremptory
letter, almost _requiring_ her to discharge Miss Arkell from her
service. Lady Dewsbury wrote word back that Mildred had become too
valuable to her to be parted with; and that if Peter Arkell was like
his sister in goodness, Lucy Cheveley had not chosen amiss.
Lucy had been married about a fortnight, and was sitting one evening in
all her fragile loveliness, the red light of the setting sun flickering
through the elm trees on her damask cheeks, when a tall elegant woman
entered. This was Mrs. St. John, whose family had been intimate with the
Cheveleys. The St. Johns inhabited that old building in Westerbury
called the Palmery, of which mention has been made, but they had been
away from it for the past two years. Mrs. St. John had just returned to
hear the scandal caused by the recent disobedient marriage.
Though all the world abandoned Lucy, Mrs. St. John would not. She had
not so many years been a wife herself, having married the widower, Mr.
St. John, who was more than double her age, and had a grown-up son. Lucy
started up, with many blushes, at Mrs. St. John's entrance; and she told
the story of herself and Peter very simply, when questioned.
"Well, Lucy, I wish you happy," Mrs. St. John said; "but it is not the
marriage you should have made."
"Perhaps not. I suppose not. For Mr. Arkell's family is of course
inferior to mine----"
"Inferior! Mr. Arkell's family!" interrupted Mrs. St. John, all her
aristocratic prejudices offended at the words. "What do you mean, Lucy?
Mr. Arkell is of _no_ family! They are tradespeople--manufacturers. We
don't speak of that class as 'a family.' _You_ are of our order; and I
can tell you, the Cheveleys have had the best blood in their veins. It
is a very sad descent for you; little less--my dear, I cannot help
speaking--than degradation for life."
"If I had good family," spoke Lucy, "what else had I?"
"_Beauty!_" was Mrs. St. John's involuntary answer, as she gazed at the
wondrously lustrous brown eyes, the bright exquisite features.
"Beauty!" echoed Lucy, in surprise. "Oh, Mrs. St. John! you forget."
"Forget what, Lucy."
"That I am deformed."
The word was spoken in a painful whisper, and the sensitive complexion
grew carmine with the sense of shame. It is ever so. Where any defect of
person exists, none can feel it as does its possessor; it is to the mind
one ever-present agony of humiliation. Lucy Cheveley's spine was not
straight; of fragile make and constitution, she had "grown aside," as
the familiar saying runs; but at this early period of her life it was
not so apparent to a beholder (unless the defect was known and searched
for) as it afterwards became.
"You are not very much so, Lucy," was Mrs. St. John's answer. "And your
face compensates for it."
Lucy shook her head. "You say so from kindness, I am sure. Do you know,"
she resumed, her voice again becoming almost inaudible, "I once heard
Mrs. Dewsbury joking with Sir Edward about me. He was down for a week
about a year ago, and she was telling him he ought to get married and
settle down to a steady life. He answered that he could get nobody to
have him, and Mrs. Dewsbury--of course you know it was only a jesting
conversation on both sides--said, 'There's Lucy Cheveley, would she do
for you?' '_She_,' he exclaimed; 'she's deformed!' Mrs. St. John, will
you believe that for a long while after I felt sick at having to go out,
or to cross a room?"
"Yes, I can believe it," said Mrs. St. John, sadly, for she was not
unacquainted with this sensitive phase in human misfortune. "Well, Lucy,
you cannot be convinced, I dare say, that your figure is _not_
unsightly, so we will let that pass. But I do not understand yet, how
you came to marry Peter Arkell."
Lucy laughed and blushed.
"Ah! I see; you loved him. And yet, few, save you, would find Peter
Arkell so lovable a man."
"If you only knew his worth, Mrs. St. John!"
"I dare say. But as a knight-errant he is not attractive. Of course, the
chief consideration now, is--the thing being irrevocably done, and you
here--what sort of a home will he be able to keep for you."
"I have no fear on that score; and I am one to be satisfied with so
little. Colonel Dewsbury discharged him, but he soon found an evening
engagement that is as good. He intends to go to Oxford when he can
accomplish it, and afterwards take orders. When he is a clergyman,
perhaps my friends, including you, Mrs. St. John, will admit that his
wife can then claim to be in the position of a gentlewoman."
"But, meanwhile you must live."
Lucy smiled. "If you knew how entirely I trust and may trust to Peter,
you would have no fear. We shall spend but little; we have begun on the
most economical plan, and shall continue it. We keep but one
servant----"
"But one servant!" echoed Mrs. St. John. "For _you_!"
"I did not bring Peter a shilling. I brought him but myself and the few
poor clothes I possess, for my bit of a pension ceased at my marriage.
You cannot think that I would run him into any expense not absolutely
necessary. We have no need of more than one servant, for we shall
certainly be free from visitors."
"How do you know that?"
"Peter has lived too retired a life to entertain any. And there's no
fear that my friends will visit me. I have put myself beyond their
pale."
"I cannot say that you have not. But how you will feel this, Lucy!"
"I shall not feel it. Mrs. St. John, when I chose my position in life as
Peter Arkell's wife, I chose it for all time," she emphatically added.
"Neither now, nor at any future period, shall I regret it. Believe me, I
shall be far happier here, in retirement with him, although I have the
consciousness of knowing that the world calls me an idiot, than I could
have been had I married in what you may call my own sphere. For me there
are not two Peter Arkells in the world."
And Mrs. St. John rose, and took her leave; deeply impressed with the
fact, that though there might not be two Peter Arkells in the world,
there was a great deal of infatuation. She could not understand how it
was possible for one, born as Lucy Cheveley had been, to make such a
marriage, and to live under it without repentance.