OLD YEARS BACK AGAIN.
Mildred's heart ached with the changes; Peter was growing into a
middle-aged man, his hair beginning to silver, his tall back bowed with
care.
They were gathered in the old familiar sitting-room the night of her
arrival at Westerbury. Peter and Mildred sat at the table, Mrs. Peter
Arkell lay on her sofa; the children remained orderly on the hearth rug.
Lucy was getting a great girl now; little Harry--a most lovely child,
his face the counterpart of his mother's--was but three years old.
Never but once in her life had Mildred seen the exquisite face of Miss
Lucy Cheveley; it had never left her memory. The same, same face was
before her now, looking upwards from the sofa, not a whit altered--not a
shade less beautiful. But Mildred had now become aware of a fact which
she had not known previously--Peter had kept it from her in his
letters--that the defect in Mrs. Peter Arkell's back had become more
formidable, giving her pain nearly always. They had had a hard,
reclining sofa made, a little raised at the one end; and here she had to
lie a great deal, some days only getting up from it to meals.
"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 _specialite_," 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.