THOUGHTLESS WORDS.
This is the last part of our history, and you must be prepared for
changes, although but little time--not very much more than a year--has
gone by.
Death has been busy during that period. Mrs. Peter Arkell survived her
son so short a time, that it is already twelve months since she was laid
in the churchyard of St. James the Less. It is a twelvemonth also since
Mr. Fauntleroy died, and his daughters are the great heiresses of
Westerbury.
Westerbury had need of heiresses, or something else substantial, to keep
up its consequence; for it was dwindling down lower (speaking of its
commercial importance) day by day. The clerical party (in
contradistinction to the commercial) rose and flourished; the other
fell.
Amidst those with whom it was beginning to be a struggle to keep their
heads above water was Mr. Arkell. The hope that times would mend; a hope
that had buoyed up for years and years other large manufacturers in
Westerbury, was beginning to show itself what it really was--a delusive
one. A deplorable gloom hung over the brow of Mr. Arkell, and he most
bitterly repented that he had not thrown this hope to the winds long
ago, and given up business before so much of his good property was
sacrificed. He had in the past year made those retrenchments in his
expenditure, which, in point of prudence, ought to have been made
before; but his wife had set her face determinately against it, and to a
peaceable-dispositioned man like Mr. Arkell, the letting the ruin come
is almost preferable to the contention the change involves. Those of my
readers who may have had experience of this, will know that I only state
what is true. But necessity has no law: and when Mr. Arkell could no
longer drain himself to meet these superfluous expenses, the change was
made. The close carriage was laid down; the household was reduced to
what it had been in his father's time--two maids, and a man for the
horse and garden, and he admonished his wife and daughters that they
must spend in dress just half what they had spent. But with all the
retrenchment, Mr. Arkell saw himself slowly drifting downwards. His
manufactory was still kept on; but it had been far better given up. It
must surely come to it, and Travice would have to seek a different
channel of obtaining a living. Not only Travice: the men who had grown
old in William Arkell's service, they must be turned adrift. There's not
the least doubt that this last thought helped, more than all else, to
keep Mr. Arkell's decision on the balance.
And Peter Arkell? Peter was in worse plight than his cousin. As it had
been all their lives, the contrast in their fortunes marked, so it was
still; so it would be to the end. William still lived well, and as a
gentleman; he had but lopped off superfluities; Peter was a poor, bowed,
broken man, obliged to be careful how he laid out money for even the
common necessaries of life. But for Mildred's never-ceasing forethought,
those necessaries might not always have been bought. The death of his
wife, the death of his gifted son, had told seriously upon Peter Arkell:
and his health, never too good, had since been ominously breaking up.
His good and gentle daughter, Lucy, had care upon her in many ways. The
little petty household economies it was necessary to practise
unceasingly, wearied her spirit; the uncertainty of how they were to
live, now that her father could no longer teach or write--and his
learned books had brought him in a trifle from time to time--chilled her
hope. Not yet had she recovered the shock, the terrible heart-blow
brought to her by the death of Henry; and her mother's death had
followed close upon it. It seemed to have cast a blight upon her young
spirit: and there were times when Lucy, good and trusting girl though
she was, felt tempted to think that God was making her path one of
needless sorrow. The sad, thoughtful look was ever in her countenance
now, in her sweet brown eyes; and her fair features, not strictly
beautiful, but pleasant to look upon, grew more like what Mildred's were
after the blight had fallen upon her. But no heart-blight had as yet
come to Lucy.
One evening an old and confidential friend of Peter Arkell's dropped in
to sit an hour with him. It was Mr. Palmer, the manager and cashier of
the Westerbury bank, and the brother to Mr. Palmer of Heath Hall. As the
two friends talked confidentially on this evening, deploring the
commercial state of the city, and saying that it would never rise again
from its distress, Mr. Palmer dropped a hint that the firm of George
Arkell and Son had been effecting another mortgage on their property.
Mr. Peter Arkell said nothing then; but Lucy, who went into the room on
the departure of their guest, noticed that he remained sunk in
melancholy silence; and she could not arouse him from it.
Travice Arkell came in. Travice was in the habit of coming in a great
deal more than one of the ruling powers at home had any idea of. Travice
would very much have liked to make Lucy his wife; but there were serious
impediments in more ways than one, and he was condemned to silence, and
to wait and see what an uncertain future might bring forth.
The romance that had been enacted in the early days of William Arkell
and Mildred was being re-enacted now. But with a difference. For whereas
William, as you have seen, forsook the companion of his boyhood, and
cast his love upon a stranger, Travice's whole hopes were concentrated
upon Lucy. And Lucy loved him with all the impassioned ideality of a
first and powerful passion, with all the fervour of an imaginative and
reticent nature. It was impossible but that each should detect, in a
degree, the feelings of the other, though they might not be, and had not
been, spoken of openly.
Travice reached the chess-board from a side-table where it was kept,
took his seat opposite Peter, and began to set out the men. Of the same
kind, considerate nature that his father was before him, he
compassionated the lonely man's solitary days, and was wont to play a
game at chess with him sometimes in an evening, to while away one of his
weary hours. But Peter, on this night, put up his hand in token of
refusal.
"Not this evening, Travice. I am not equal to it. My spirits are low."
"Do you feel ill?" asked Travice, beginning to put the pieces in the box
again.
"I feel low; out of sorts. Mr. Palmer has been here talking of things,
and he gives so deplorable a state of private affairs generally,
consequent upon the long-continued commercial depression, that it's hard
to say who's safe and whose tottering. He has especial means of
ascertaining, you know, so there's no doubt he's right."
"Well, what of that?" returned Travice. "It cannot affect you; you are
not in business."
"True. I was not thinking of myself."
"A game at chess will divert your thoughts."
"Not to-night, Travice; I'd rather not play to-night."
"Will you have a game, Lucy?"
She looked up from her sewing to smile a negative. "That would be
leaving papa quite to his thoughts. I think we had better talk to him."
"Travice," Peter Arkell suddenly said, "I am sure this depression must
seriously affect your father."
"Of course it does," was the ready answer. "He has just now had to
borrow more money again."
"Then Palmer was right," thought Peter Arkell. "Will he keep on the
business?" he asked aloud.
"I should not, were I in his place," said Travice. "He would have given
up long ago, I believe, but for thinking what's to become of me. Of
course if he does give up, I am thrown on the world, a wandering Arab."
His tone was as much one of jest as of gravity. The young do not see
things in the same light as the old. To his father and to Peter Arkell,
his being thrown out of the business he had embraced as his own,
appeared an almost irrecoverable blight in life; to Travice himself it
seemed but a very slight misfortune. The world was before him, and he
had honour, education, health, and brains; surely he could win his way
in it!
"It is not well to throw down one calling and take up another," observed
Peter, thoughtfully. "It does not always answer."
"But if you are forced to it!" argued Travice. "There's no help for it
then, and you must do the best you can."
"It is a pity but you had gone to Oxford, Travice, and entered into some
profession!"
"I suppose it is, as things seem to be turning out. Thrown out of the
manufactory, I should seem a sort of luckless adventurer, not knowing
which way to turn to prey upon the public."
"It would be just beginning life again," said Peter, his grave tone
bearing in it a sound of reproach to the lighter one.
He rose, and went to the next room--the "Peter's study" of the old
days--to get something from his desk there. Travice happened to look at
Lucy, and saw her eyes fixed upon him with a troubled, earnest
expression. She blushed as he caught their gaze.
"What's the matter, Lucy?"
"I was wondering whatever you would do, if Mr. Arkell does give up."
"I think I should be rather glad of it? I could turn astronomer."
"Turn astronomer! But you don't really mean that, Travice?"
He laughed.
"I should mean it, but for one thing."
"What is that one thing?"
"That it might not find me in bread and cheese. Perhaps they'd make me
honorary star-gazer at the observatory royal. The worst is, one must eat
and drink; and the essentials necessary for that don't drop from the
clouds, as the manna once did of old. Very convenient for some of us if
it did."
"I wish you'd be serious," she rejoined, the momentary tears rising to
her eyes. She was feeling wretchedly troubled, she could not tell why,
and his light mood jarred upon her.
It changed now as he looked at her. Travice Arkell's face changed to an
expression of deep, grave meaning, of troubled meaning, and he dropped
his voice to a low tone as he rose and stood near Lucy, looking down
upon her.
"I wish I could be serious; I have wished it, Lucy, this long while
past. Other men at my age are thinking of forming those social ties that
man naturally expects to form; of gathering about him a home, and a
wife, and children. I must not; for what I can see at present, they must
be denied to me for good and all; unless--unless----"
He broke off abruptly. Lucy, suppressing the emotion that had arisen,
glanced up at him, as she waited for the conclusion. But the conclusion
did not come.
"You see now, Lucy, why I cannot be serious. Perhaps you have seen why
before. In the uncertain state that our business is, not knowing but the
end of it may be bankruptcy----"
"Oh, Travice!" she involuntarily exclaimed, in the shock that the word
brought to her.
"I do assure you it has crossed my mind now and then, that such may be
the final ending. It would break my father's heart, I know, and it would
half break mine for his sake; but others in the town have succumbed, who
were once nearly as rich as we were, and the fate may overtake us. I
wish I could be serious; serious to a purpose; but I cannot."
"I wanted to show you a prospectus, Travice, that was left here to-day,"
interrupted Peter Arkell, coming back to the room. "I wonder what next
they'll be getting up a company over? I put it into my desk, but I can't
find it. Lucy, look about for it, will you?"
She got up to obey, and Travice caught a sight of the raised face, whose
blushes had been hidden from him; blushes called forth by his words and
their implied meaning. She had understood it.
But she had not understood the sentence at whose conclusion Travice
Arkell had broken down. "That the ties of wife and children must be
denied to him for good and all, unless----"
Unless what? Unless he let them sacrifice him, would be the real answer.
Unless he sacrificed himself, his dearest hopes, every better feeling
that his heart possessed, at a golden shrine. But Travice Arkell would
have a desperate fight first.
The Miss Fauntleroys, co-heiresses of the wealthy old lawyer--who might
have died worth more but for his own entanglements in early life--had
become intimate and more intimate at the house of William Arkell. Ten
thousand pounds were settled on each, and there was other money to
divide between them, which was not settled. How Lawyer Fauntleroy had
scraped together so much, Westerbury could not imagine, considering he
had been so hampered with old claims. Strapping, vulgar, good-humoured
damsels, these two, as you have before heard; with as little refinement
in looks, words, and manner as their father had possessed before them.
Their intimacy had grown, I say, with the Arkell family. Mrs. Arkell
courted them to her house; the young ladies were quite eager to frequent
it without courting; and it had come to be whispered all over the
gossiping town, that Mr. Arkell's son and heir might have either of them
for the asking.
Perhaps not quite true this, as to the "either," perhaps yes. It was
indisputable that both liked him very much; but any hope the younger
might have felt disposed to cherish had long been merged in the more
recognised claim to him of the elder; recognised by the young ladies
only, mind you, in the right, it may be, of her seniorship. Nothing in
the world could have been more satisfactory to Mrs. Arkell than this
union. She overlooked their want of refinement, and their many other
wants of a similar nature--of refinement, indeed, she may have deemed
that Travice possessed enough for himself and for a wife too--she
thought of the golden hoard in the bank, the firm securities in the
three per cent consols, and she pertinaciously cherished the hope and
the resolve that Barbara Fauntleroy should become Barbara Arkell.
It is well to say "pertinaciously." That Travice had set his resolve
against it, she tacitly understood; and once when she went so far as to
put her project before him in a cautious hint, Travice had broken out
with the ungallant assertion that he would "as soon marry the deuce."
But he might have to give in at last. The constant dropping of water on
a stone will wear it away; and the constant, unceasing tongue of a woman
has been known to break the iron walls of man's will.
Another suitor had recently sprung up for Miss Lizzie Fauntleroy. No
less a personage than Benjamin Carr. The reappearance of Mr. Dundyke
upon the scene of the living world had considerably astonished many
people; possibly, amidst others, Ben Carr himself. In the great relief
it brought to the mind of Mr. Arkell, distorted, you may remember, with
a certain unpleasant doubt, he almost forgot to suspect him at all; and
he buried the past in silence, and in a measure, took luckless Ben into
favour again; that is, he did not forbid him his house.
Ben, in fact, had come out apparently nourishing from all past escapades
suspected and unsuspected, and was residing with his father, and
dressing like a gentleman. No more was heard of his wish to go abroad.
Squire Carr had made him a half promise to put him into a farm; and
while Ben waited for this, he paid court to Lizzie Fauntleroy. At first
she laughed in his face for an old fool, next she began to giggle at his
soft speeches, and now she listened to him. Ben Carr had some attraction
yet, in spite of his four-and-forty years.
In the course of the following morning, Peter Arkell suddenly announced
his intention of going out, to the great surprise of Lucy. It was a most
unfit day, rainy, and bleak for the season; and he had not stepped over
the threshold for weeks and weeks.
"Papa! You cannot go out to-day. It is not fit for you."
"Yes, I shall go. I want particularly to speak to my cousin William: you
can help me thither with your arm, Lucy. Get my old cloak down, and air
it at the fire; I can wrap myself in that."
Lucy ventured no further remonstrance. When her papa took a thing into
his head, there was no turning him.
They started together through the bad weather to the house of William
Arkell. The dear old house! where Peter had spent so many pleasant
evenings in his youthful days. He crossed the yard at once to the
manufactory, telling Lucy to go indoors and wait for him. William Arkell
was alone in his private room, and was not a little surprised at the
visit.
"Why Peter!" he exclaimed, rising from his desk, and placing an
arm-chair by the fire, "What has brought you out such a day as this? Sit
down."
Before Peter did so, he closed the door, so that they should be quite
alone. He then turned and clasped his cousin by the hand.
"William," he began, emotion mingling with his utterance, "I have come
to you, a poor unhappy man. Conscious of my want of power to do what I
ought--fearing that there is less chance of my doing it, day by day."
"What do you mean?" inquired Mr. Arkell.
"Amidst the ruin that has almost universally fallen on the city, you
have not escaped, I fear your property is being seriously drawn upon?"
"And, unless things mend, it will soon be drawn to an end, Peter."
"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Peter. "And to know that I am in your debt,
and cannot liquidate it! It is to speak of this, that I am come out
to-day."
"Nay, now you are foolish!" exclaimed Mr. Arkell. "What matters a
hundred pounds or two, more or less, to me? The sum would cut but a poor
figure by the side of what I am now habituated to losing. Never think of
it, Peter: _I_ never shall. Besides, you had it from me in driblets, so
that I did not miss it."
"When I had used to come to you for assistance in my illnesses, for I
was ashamed to draw too much upon Mildred," proceeded the poor man, "I
never thought but that I should, in time, regain permanent strength, and
be able to return it. I never meant to cheat you, William."
"Don't talk like that, Peter!" interrupted Mr. Arkell. "If the money
were returned to me now, it would only go the way that the rest is
going. I have always felt glad that it was in my power to render you
assistance in your necessities: and if I stood this moment without a
shilling to turn to, I should not regret it any more than I do now."
They continued in converse, but we need not follow it. Lucy meanwhile
had entered the house, and went about, looking for some signs of its
inhabitants. The general sitting-room was empty, and she crossed the
hall and opened the door of the drawing-room. A bouncing lady in fine
attire was coming forth from it, talking and laughing loudly with Mr.
Arkell; it was Barbara Fauntleroy.
Shaking hands with Lucy in her good-humoured manner as she passed her,
she talked and laughed her way out of the house. Lucy was in black silk
and crape still; Miss Fauntleroy was in the gayest of colours; and Mrs.
Peter Arkell had been dead longer than Mr. Fauntleroy. They had worn
their black a twelvemonth and then quitted it. It was not fashionable to
wear mourning long now, said the Miss Fauntleroys.
Charlotte Arkell, with scant ceremony, sat down to the piano, giving
Lucy only a nod. Nothing could exceed the slighting contempt in which
she and her sister held Lucy. They had been trained in it. And they were
highly accomplished young ladies besides, had learnt everything there
was to be taught, from the harp and oriental tinting, down to Spanish,
German, and chenille embroidery. Lucy's education had been solid, rather
than ornamental: she spoke French well, and played a little; and she was
more skilled in plain sewing than in fancy. _They_ never allowed their
guarded fingers to come into contact with plain work, and had just as
much idea of how anything useful was done, as of how the moon was made.
So these two fine young ladies despised Lucy Arkell, after the fashion
of the fine young ladies of the present day. Charlotte also was great in
the consciousness of other self-importance, for she was soon to be a
wife. That Captain Anderson whom you once saw at a concert, had paid a
more recent visit to Westerbury; and he left it, engaged to Charlotte
Arkell.
Charlotte played a few bars, and then remembered to become curious on
the subject of Lucy's visit. She whirled herself round on the music
stool: it had been a favourite motion of her mother's in the old days.
"What have you come for, Lucy?"
"Papa wanted to see Mr. Arkell, and I walked with him. He is gone into
the manufactory."
"I thought your papa was too ill to go out."
"He is very ailing. I think he ought not to have come out on a day like
this. Do not let me interrupt your practising, Charlotte."
"Practising! I have no heart to practise!" exclaimed Charlotte. "Papa is
always talking in so gloomy a way. He was in here just now: I was deep
in this sonata of Beethoven's, and did not hear him enter, and he began
saying it would be better if I and Sophy were to accustom ourselves to
spend some of our time _usefully_, for that he did not know how soon we
might be obliged to do it. He has laid down the carriage; he has made
fearful retrenchments in the household: I wonder what he would have! And
as to our buying anything new, or subscribing to a concert, or anything
of that sort, mamma says she cannot get the money from him. I wish I was
married, and gone from Westerbury! I am thankful my future home is to be
far away from it!"
"Things may brighten here," was all the consolation that Lucy could
offer.
"I don't believe they ever will," returned Charlotte. "I see no hope of
it. Papa looks sometimes as if his heart were breaking."
"How soon the Miss Fauntleroys have gone out of mourning!" observed
Lucy.
"Oh, I don't know. They wore it twelve months; that's long enough for
anything. Let me give you a caution, Lucy," added Charlotte, laughing:
"don't hint at such a thing as that Barbara Fauntleroy's not immaculate
perfection: it would not do in this house."
"Why?" exclaimed Lucy, wondering at her words and manner.
"She is intended for its future head, you know, when the present
generation of heads shall--shall have passed away. I'm afraid that's
being poetical; I didn't mean to be."
Lucy sat as one in a maze, wondering WHAT she might understand by the
words. And Charlotte whirled round on her stool again to the sonata,
with as little ceremony as she had whirled from it.
While Miss Fauntleroy was there, Mrs. Arkell had sent a private message
to Travice that she wanted him; but Travice did not obey the summons
until the young lady was gone. He came then: and Mrs. Arkell attacked
him for not coming before; she was attacking him now, while Charlotte
and Lucy were talking.
"Why did you not come in at once?" asked Mrs. Arkell, in the cross tone
which had latterly become habitual; "Barbara Fauntleroy was here."
"That was just the reason," returned Travice, in his usual candid
manner; "I waited until she should be gone."
If there was one thing that vexed Mrs. Arkell worse than the fact
itself, it was the open way in which her son steadily resisted the hints
to him on the subject of Miss Fauntleroy. She felt at times that she
could have beaten him; she was feeling so now. Her temper turned acrid,
her face flushed, her voice rose.
"Travice, if you persist in this systematic rudeness----"
"Pardon me, mother. I wish you would refrain from bringing up the
subject of Miss Fauntleroy to me. I do not care to hear of her in any
way; she----Who's that? Why, I do believe it's Lucy's voice!"
The colloquy with Mrs. Arkell had taken place in the hall. Travice made
one bound to the drawing-room. The sudden flush on the pale face, the
glad eagerness of the tone, struck dismay to the heart of Mrs. Arkell.
She quickly followed him, and saw that he had taken both of Lucy's hands
in greeting.
"Oh, Lucy! are you here this morning? I know you have come to stay the
day! Take your things off."
Lucy laughed--and Mrs. Arkell had the pleasure of seeing that _her_
cheeks wore an answering flush. She shook her head and drew her hands
from Travice, who seemed as if he could have kept them for ever.
"Do I spend a day here so often that you think I can come for nothing
else? I only came with papa, and I am going back with him soon."
But Travice pressed the point of staying. Charlotte also--feeling,
perhaps, that even Lucy was a welcome break to the monotony the house
had fallen into--urged it. Mrs. Arkell maintained a marked silence; and
in the midst of it the two gentlemen came in. Mr. Arkell kissed Lucy,
and said she had better stop.
But Peter settled it the other way. Lucy must go home with him then, he
said; but if she liked to come down in the afternoon, and stay for the
rest of the day, she could. It was so settled, and they took their
departure. Mr. Arkell walked with Peter across the court-yard, talking.
Travice, in the very face and eyes of his mother, gave his arm to Lucy.
"Why did you not stay?" he whispered, as they arrived at the gates.
"Lucy, do you know that to part with you is to part with my life's
sunshine?"
Mrs. Arkell was standing at the door as he turned, and beckoned to him
from the distance.
"I wish to speak with you," she said, as he approached.
She led the way into the dining-room, and closed the door on them, as if
for some formidable interview. Travice saw that she was in a scarcely
irrepressible state of anger, and he perched himself on a vacant
side-table--rather a favourite way of his. He began humming a tune;
gaily, but not disrespectfully.
"What possesses you to behave in this absurd manner to Lucy Arkell?" she
began, in passion.
"What have I done now?" asked Travice.
"You are continually, in some way or other, contriving to thrust that
girl's company upon us! I will not permit it, Travice; I have borne with
it too long. I----"
"Why, she is not here twice in a twelvemonth," interrupted Travice.
"Don't say absurd things. She is. And she is not fit society for your
sisters."
"If they were only half as worthy of her society as she is superior to
them, they would be very different girls from what they are," spoke
Travice, with a touch of his father's old heat. "If there's one thing
that Lucy is, pre-eminently, it's a gentlewoman. Her mother was one
before her."
Mrs. Arkell grew nearly black in the face. While she was trying to
speak, Travice went on.
"Ask my father what his opinion of Lucy is. _He_ does not say she is
here too much."
"Your father is a fool in some things, and so are you!" retorted Mrs.
Arkell, a sort of scream in her voice. "How dare you oppose me in this
way, Travice?"
"I am very sorry to do so," returned the young man; "and I beg your
pardon if I say more than you think I ought. But I cannot join in your
unjust feeling against Lucy, and I will not tolerate it. I wish you
would not bring up this subject at all: it is one we never can agree
upon."
"You requested me just now not to 'bring up' the subject of Miss
Fauntleroy to you," said Mrs. Arkell, in a tone of irony. "How many
other subjects would you be pleased to interdict?"
"I don't want to hear even the name of those Fauntleroys!" burst out
Travice, losing for a moment his equanimity. "Great brazen milkmaids!"
"No! you'd rather hear Lucy's!" screamed Mrs. Arkell. "You'd----"
"Lucy! Don't name them with Lucy, my dear mother. They are not fit to
tie Lucy's shoes! She has more sense of propriety in her little finger,
than they have in all their great overgrown bodies!"
This was the climax. And Mrs. Arkell, suppressing the passion that shook
her as she stood, spoke with that forced calmness that is worse than the
loudest fury. Her face had turned white.
"Continue your familiar intercourse with that girl, if you will; but,
listen!--you shall never make a wife of anyone so paltry and so pitiful!
I would pray Heaven to let me follow you to your grave, Travice, rather
than see you marry Lucy Arkell."
She spoke the words in her blind rage, never reflecting on their full
import; never dreaming that a day was soon to come, when their memory
would return to her in her extremity of vain and hopeless repentance.