MILDRED'S RECOMPENSE.
The consent of Travice once obtained, the necessary word spoken to Miss
Fauntleroy, Mrs. Arkell hurried the marriage on in earnest. So long as
Travice had only made the offer, and given no signs of wishing for the
ceremony to take place, not much could be done; but he had now said to
Barbara, "Fix your own day."
There was no trouble needed in regard to a house; at least, there had
not hitherto been. The house that the Miss Fauntleroys lived in was
their own, and Barbara wished to continue in it. It was supposed that
her sister would be moving to a farm in the parish of Eckford. That was
now frustrated. "Never mind," said Barbara, in her easy way, "Lizzie can
stop on with us; Travice won't mind it, and I shall like it. If we find
afterwards that it does not answer, different arrangements can be made."
The Miss Fauntleroys were generous in the matter of Benjamin Carr. Those
others who had been present were generous, even Mrs. Dundyke. The
identification of the gentleman with the Mr. Hardcastle, of Geneva
memory, was not allowed to transpire: they all had regard to the
feelings of the squire and his family. It was fortunate that the only
servant in the room had gone from it with Benjamin Carr's over-coat, and
Barbara had had the presence of mind to slip the bolt of the door. Mr.
Ben Carr, however, thought it well to take a tour just at this time, and
he did not show his face in Westerbury previous to his departure.
Lucy Arkell was solicited to be one of the bridesmaids; but Lucy
declined. Mildred remembered a wedding which _she_ had declined to
attend as bridesmaid. How little, how little did she think that the same
cruel pain was swaying the motives of Lucy!
Lucy and her aunt saw but little now of the Arkells. Travice never
called; Mr. Arkell, full of trouble, confined himself to his home; and
Mrs. Arkell had not entered the house since the rebuff given her by Mrs.
Dundyke. Lucy held aloof from them; and Mildred certainly did not go
there of her own accord. It therefore came to pass that they heard
little news of the doings there, except what might be dropped by chance
callers-in.
And now, as if Mildred had really been gifted with prevision, Tom Palmer
made an offer of his hand and heart to Lucy. Lucy's response was by no
means a dignified one--she burst out crying. Mildred, in surprise, asked
what was the matter, and Lucy said she had not thought her old friend
Tom could have been so unkind. Unkind! But the result was, that Lucy
refused him in the most positive manner, then and for always. Mildred
began to think that she could not understand Lucy.
There was a grand party given one night at Mrs. Arkell's, and they went
to that. Mildred accepted the invitation without consulting Lucy. The
Palmers were there; and Travice treated Tom very cavalierly. In fact,
that word is an appropriate one to characterise his general behaviour to
everybody throughout the evening. And, so far as anybody saw, he never
once went near Miss Fauntleroy, with the exception that he took her into
the supper room. Mr. Arkell did not appear until quite late in the
evening. It was said he had an engagement. So he had, with men of
business; while the revelry was going on in doors, he was in his
counting-house, endeavouring to negotiate for a loan of money, in which
he was not successful. Little heart had he at ten o'clock to go in and
dress himself and enter upon that scene of gaiety. Mildred exchanged but
a few sentences with him, but she thought he was in remarkably low
spirits.
"Are you not well, William?" she asked.
"I have a headache, Mildred."
It was a day or two after this, and but a few days previous to the
completion of the wedding, when unpleasant rumours, touching the
solvency of the good old house of George Arkell and Son, reached the
ears of Miss Arkell. They were whispered to her by Mr. Palmer, the old
friend of the family.
"It is said their names will be in the _Gazette_ the day after
to-morrow, unless some foreign help can come to them."
Miss Arkell sat, deeply shocked; and poor Lucy's colour went and came,
showing the effect the news had upon her.
"I had no idea that they were in embarrassment," said Mildred.
"It is so. You see, this wedding of young Travice Arkell's, that is to
bring so much money into the family, has been delayed too long,"
observed Mr. Palmer. "It is said now that Travice, poor fellow, has an
unconquerable antipathy to his bride, and though he consented to the
alliance to save his family, he has been unable to bring his mind to
conclude it. While the grass grows, the steed starves, you know."
"Miss Fauntleroy was willing that her money should be sacrificed."
"It would not have been sacrificed, not a penny of it; but the use of it
would have enabled the house to redeem its own money, and bring its
affairs to a satisfactory close. Had there been any risk to the money,
William Arkell would not have agreed to touch it: you know his
honourable nature. However, through the protracted delay--which Travice
will no doubt reflect sharply upon himself for--the marriage and the
money will come too late to save them."
Mr. Palmer departed, and Lucy sat like one in a dream. Her aunt glanced
at her, and mused, and glanced again. "What are you thinking of, Lucy?"
she asked.
Lucy burst into tears. "Aunt, I was thinking what a blight it is to be
poor! If I had thousands, I would willingly devote them all to save Mr.
Arkell. Papa told me, when he lay dying, how his cousin William had
helped him from time to time; had saved his home more than once; and had
never been paid back again."
"And suppose you _had_ money--attend to me, Lucy, for I wish a serious
answer--suppose you were in possession of money, would you be really
willing to sacrifice a portion of it, to save this good friend, William
Arkell?"
"All, aunt, all!" she answered, eagerly, "and think it no sacrifice."
"Then put on your bonnet, Lucy, child," returned Miss Arkell, "and come
with me."
They went forth to the house of Mr. Arkell; and as it turned out, the
visit was opportune, for Mrs. Arkell was away, dining from home. Mr.
Arkell was in a little back parlour, looking over accounts and papers,
with his son. The old man--and he was looking an old man that evening,
with trouble, not with years--rose in surprise when he saw who were his
visitors, and Travice's hectic colour went and came. Mildred had never
been in the room since she was a young woman, and it called up painful
recollections. It was the twilight hour of the evening: that best hour,
of all the twenty-four, for any embarrassing communication.
"William," began Miss Arkell, seating herself by her cousin, and
speaking in a low tone, "we have heard it whispered that your affairs
are temporarily involved. Is it so?"
"The world will soon know it, Mildred, above a whisper."
"It is even so then! What has led to it?"
"Oh, Mildred! can you ask what has led to it, when you look at the
misery and distress everywhere around us? Search the _Gazette_ for the
past years, and see how many names you will find in it, who once stood
as high as ours! The only wonder is, that we have not yet gone with the
stream. It is a hard case, Mildred, when we have toiled all our lives,
that the labour should come to nothing at last," he continued; "that our
closing years, which ought to be given to thoughts of another world,
must be distracted with the anxious cares of this."
"Is your difficulty serious, or only temporary?" resumed Miss Arkell.
"It ought to be only temporary," he replied; "but the worst is, I
cannot, at the present moment, command my resources. We have kept on
manufacturing, hoping for better times; and, to tell you the truth,
Mildred, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to turn off my old
workmen to beggary. There was Travice, too. I have a heavy stock of
goods on hand; to the amount of some thousands; and this locks up my
diminished capital. I am still worth what would cover my business
liabilities twice over--and I have no others--but I cannot avail myself
of it for present emergencies. I have turned every stone, Mildred, to
keep my head above water: and I believe I can struggle no longer."
"What amount of money would effectually relieve you?" asked Miss Arkell.
"About three thousand pounds," he replied, answering the question
without any apparent interest.
"Then to-morrow morning vouchers for that sum shall be placed in the
Westerbury bank at your disposal. _And for double that sum, if you
require it._"
Mr. Arkell looked up in astonishment; and finally addressed to her the
very words which he had once before done, in early life, upon a far
different subject.
"You are dreaming, Mildred!"
She remembered them; had she ever forgotten one word said to her on that
eventful night? and sighed as she replied:
"This money is mine. I enjoyed, as you know, a most liberal salary for
seven or eight-and-twenty years; and the money, as it came in, was
placed out from the first to good interest; later, a part of it to good
use. Lady Dewsbury also bequeathed me a munificent sum by her will; so
that altogether I am worth----"
His excessive surprise could not let her continue. That Mildred had
saved just sufficient to live upon, he had deemed probable; but not
more. She had been always assisting Peter. He interrupted her with words
to this effect.
Mildred smiled. "I could place at your disposal twelve thousand pounds,
if needs must," she said. "I had a friend who helped me to lay out my
money to advantage. It was Mr. Dundyke. William, _how_ can I better use
part of this money than by serving you?"
William Arkell shook his head in deprecation. Not all at once, in the
suddenness of the surprise, could he accept the idea of being assisted
by Mildred. Peter had taken enough from her.
"Peter did not take enough from me," she firmly said. "It is only since
Peter's death that I have learnt how straitened he always was--he kept
it from me. I have been taking great blame to myself, for it seems to me
that I ought to have guessed it--and I did not. But Peter is gone, and
you are left. Oh, William, let me help you!"
"Mildred, I have no right to it from _you_."
She laid her hand upon his arm in her eagerness. She bent her gentle
face, with its still sweet expression, near to him, and spoke in a
whisper.
"_Let_ me help you. It will be a recompense for the past pain of my
lonely life."
His eyes looked straight into hers for the moment. "I have had my pain,
too, Mildred."
"But this loan? you will take it. Lucy, speak up," added Miss Arkell,
turning to her niece. "This money is willed to you, and will be yours
sometime. Is it not at your wish that I come this evening, as well as at
my own?"
"Oh, sir," sobbed Lucy to Mr. Arkell, "take it all. Let my aunt retain
what will be sufficient for her life, but keep none for me; I am young
and healthy, and can go out and work for my living, as she has done.
Take all the rest, and save the credit of the family."
William Arkell turned to Lucy, the tears trickling down his cheeks. She
had taken off her bonnet on entering, and he laid his hand fondly on her
head.
"Lucy, child, were this money exclusively your aunt's, I would not
hesitate to make use of sufficient of it now to save my good name. In
that ease, I should wind up my affairs as soon as would be conveniently
possible, retire from business, and see how far what is left to me would
go towards a living. It would be enough; and my wife would have to bring
her mind to think it so. But this sum that your aunt offers me--that you
second--may be the very money she has been intending to hand over with
you as a marriage portion. And what would your husband say at its being
thus temporarily appropriated?"
"My husband!" exclaimed Lucy, in amazement; "a marriage portion for me!
When I take the one, it will be time enough to think of the other." Miss
Arkell, too, looked up with a questioning gaze, for she had quite
forgotten the little romance--her romance--concerning young Mr. Palmer.
"I shall never marry," continued Lucy, in answer to Mr. Arkell's puzzled
look. "I think I am better as I am."
"But, Lucy, you _are_ going to marry. You are going to marry Tom
Palmer."
Lucy laughed. She could not help it, she said, apologetically. She had
laughed ever since he asked her, except just at the time, at the very
idea of her marrying Tom Palmer, the little friend of her girlhood. Tom
laughed at it himself now; and they were as good friends as before. "But
how _did_ you hear of it?" she exclaimed.
Travice came forward, his cheek pale, his lip quivering. He laid his
fevered hand on Lucy's shoulder.
"Is this true, Lucy?" he whispered. "Is it true that you do not love Tom
Palmer?"
"Love him!" cried Lucy, indignantly, sad reproach in her eye, as she
turned it on Travice. "You have seen us together hundreds of times; did
you ever detect anything in my manner to induce you to think I 'loved'
him?"
"_I_ loved _you_," murmured Travice, for he read that reproach aright,
and the scales which had obscured his eyes fell from them, as by magic.
"I have long loved you--deeply, passionately. My brightest hopes were
fixed on you; the heyday visions of all my future existence represented
you by my side, my wife. But these misfortunes and losses came thick and
fast upon my father. They told me at home here, _he_ told me, that I was
poor and that you were poor, and that it would be madness in us to think
of marrying then, as it would have been. So I said to myself that I
would be patient, and wait--would be content with loving you in secret,
as I had done--with seeing you daily as a relative. And then the news
burst upon me that you were to marry Tom Palmer; and I thought what a
fool I had been to fancy you cared for me; for I knew that you were not
one to marry where you did not love."
The tears were coursing down her cheeks. "But I don't understand," she
said. "It is but just, as it were, that Tom has asked me; and you must
be speaking of sometime ago."
The fault was Mildred's. Not quite all at once could they understand it;
not until later.
"I shall never marry; indeed I shall never marry," murmured Lucy, as she
yielded for the moment to the passionate embrace in which Travice
clasped her, and kissed away her tears of anguish. "My lot in life must
be like my aunt's now, unloving and unloved."
"Oh, is there no escape for us!" exclaimed Travice, wildly, as all the
painful embarrassment of his position rushed over his mind. "Can we not
fly together, Lucy--fly to some remote desert place, and leave care and
sorrow behind us? Ere the lapse of many days, another woman expects to
be my wife! Is there no way of escape for us?"
None; none. The misery of Travice Arkell and his cousin was sealed:
their prospects, so far as this world went, were blighted. There were no
means by which he could escape the marriage that was rushing on to him
with the speed of wings: no means known in the code of honour. And for
Lucy, what was left but to live on unwedded, burying her crushed
affections within herself, as her aunt had done?--live on, and, by the
help of time, strive to subdue that love which was burning in her heart
for the husband of another, rendering every moment of the years that
would pass, one continued, silent agony!
"The same fate--the same fate!" moaned Mildred Arkell to herself, whilst
Lucy sunk into a chair and covered her pale face with her trembling
hands. "I might have guessed it! Like aunt, like niece. She must go
through life as I have done--and bear--and bear! Strange, that the
younger brother's family, throughout two generations, should have cast
their shadow for evil upon that of the elder! A blight must have fallen
upon my father's race; but, perhaps in mercy, Lucy is the last of it. If
I could have foreseen this, years ago, the same atmosphere in which
lived Travice Arkell should not have been breathed by Lucy. The same
fate! the same fate!"
Lucy was sobbing silently behind her hands. Travice stood, the image of
despair. Mildred turned to him.
"Then you do not love Miss Fauntleroy?"
"Love her! I _hate_ her!" was the answer that burst from him in his
misery. "May Heaven forgive me for the false part I shall have to play!"
But there was no escape for him. Mildred knew there was not; Mr. Arkell
knew it; and his heart ached for the fate of this, his dearly-loved son.
"My boy," he said, "I would willingly die to save you--die to secure
your happiness. I did not know this sacrifice was so very bitter."
Travice cast back a look of love. "You have done all you could for me;
do not _you_ take it to heart. I may get to bear it in time."
"Get to _bear_ it!" What a volume of expression was in the words!
Mildred rose and approached Mr. Arkell.
"We had better be going, William. But oh! why did you let it come to
this? Why did you not make a confidante of me?"
"I did not know you could help me, Mildred; indeed I did not."
"I will tell you who would have been as thankful to help you as I
am--and that is your sister-in-law, Betsey Dundyke. She could have
helped you more largely than I can."
"But not more lovingly. God bless you, Mildred!" he whispered, detaining
her for a moment as she was following Travice and Lucy out.
Her eyes swam with tears as she looked up at him; her hands rested
confidingly in his.
"If you knew what the happiness of serving you is, William! If you knew
what a recompence this moment is for the bitter past!"
"God bless you, Mildred!" he repeated, "God bless you for ever."
She drew her veil over her face to pass out, just as she had drawn it
after that interview, following his marriage, in the years gone by.
And so the credit of the good and respected old house was saved; saved
by Mildred. Had it taken every farthing she had amassed; so that she
must have gone forth again, in her middle age, and laboured for a
living, she had rejoiced to do it! William Arkell had not waited until
now, to know the value of the heart he had thrown away.
And the marriage day drew on. But before it dawned, Westerbury knew that
it would bring no marriage with it. Miss Fauntleroy knew it. For the
bridegroom was lying between life and death.
Of a sensitive, nervous, excitable temperament, the explanation of that
evening, taken in conjunction with the dreadful tension to which his
mind had been latterly subjected, far greater than any one had
suspected, was too much for Travice Arkell. Conscious that Lucy Arkell
passionately loved him; knowing now that she had the money, without
which he could not marry, and that part of that money was actually
advanced to save his father's credit; knowing also, that he must never
more think of her, but must tie himself to one whom he abhorred; that he
and Lucy must never again see each other in life, but as friends, and
not too much of that, he became ill. Reflection preyed upon him: remorse
for doubting Lucy, and hastening to offer himself to Miss Fauntleroy,
seated itself in his mind, and ere the day fixed for his marriage
arrived, he was laid up with brain fever.
With brain fever! In vain they tried their remedies: their ice to his
head; their cooling medicines; their blisters to his feet. His
unconscious ravings were, at moments, distressing to hear: his deep love
for Lucy; his impassioned adjurations to her to fly with him, and be at
peace; his shuddering hatred of Miss Fauntleroy. On the last day of his
life, as the doctors thought, Lucy was sent for, in the hope that her
presence might calm him. But he did not know her: he was past knowing
any one.
"Lucy!" he would utter, in a hollow voice, unconscious that she or any
one else was present--"Lucy! we will leave the place for ever. Have you
got your things ready? We will go where _she_ can't find us out, and
force me to her. Lucy! where are you? Lucy!"
And Mrs. Arkell! She was the most bitterly repentant. Many a sentence is
spoken lightly, many an idle threat, many a reckless wish; but the vain
folly is not often brought home to the heart, as it was to Mrs. Arkell.
"I would pray Heaven to let me follow you to your grave, Travice, rather
than see you marry Lucy Arkell." _He_ was past feeling or remembering
the words; but they came home to _her_. She cast herself upon the bed,
praying wildly for forgiveness, clinging to him in all the agony of
useless remorse.
"Oh, what matters honour; what matters anything in comparison with his
precious life!" she cried, with streaming eyes. "Tell him,
Lucy,--perhaps he will understand _you_--that he shall indeed marry you
if he will but set his mind at rest, and get well; he shall never again
see Miss Fauntleroy. Lucy! are there no means of calming him? If this
terrible excitement lasts, it will kill him. Tell him it is you he shall
marry, not Barbara Fauntleroy."
"I cannot tell him so," said Lucy, from the very depth of her aching
heart. "It would not be right to deceive him, even now. There can be no
escape, if he lives, from the marriage with Miss Fauntleroy."
A few more hours, and the crisis came. The handsome, the intelligent,
the refined Travice Arkell, lay still, in a lethargy that was taken to
be that of death. It went forth to Westerbury that he was dead; and Lucy
took her last look at him, and walked home with her aunt Mildred--to a
home, which, however well supplied it was now with the world's comforts,
could only seem to her one of desolation. Lucy Arkell's eyes were dry;
dry with that intensity of anguish that admits not of tears, and her
brain seemed little less confused than _his_ had done, in these last few
days of life.
Mildred sat down in her home, and seemed to see into the future. She saw
herself and her niece living on in their quiet and monotonous home; her
own form drooping with the weight of years, Lucy's approaching middle
life. "The old maids" they would be slightingly termed by those who knew
little indeed of their inward history. And in their lonely hearts,
enshrined in its most hidden depths, the image that respectively filled
each in early life, the father and son, William and Travice Arkell,
never, never replaced by any other, but holding their own there so long
as time should last.
Seated by her fire on that desolate night, she saw it as in a vision.