by Ellen Wood
“Besides — what?” asked Mildred, for the words had come to a sudden stand-still.
“There’s David,” came forth the faint and shame-faced answer.
“David?”
“Mrs. Dundyke’s son. We are to be married sometime.”
Mildred had the honour of an introduction to the gentleman before she left — for Mr. David came in — a young man above the middle height, somewhat free and confident in his address and manners. He was not bad-looking, and he was attired sufficiently well; for the house he was in, in Fenchurch-street, was one of the first houses of its class, and would not have tolerated shabbiness in any of its clerks. The shirt-sleeve episodes, the blacking-boot and carrying-up coal attire, so vivid in the remembrance of Charlotte Travice, were kept for home, for late at night and early morning. Of this, Mildred saw nothing, heard nothing.
“He has eighty pounds a year now,” whispered Betsey to Mildred; “his next rise will be a hundred and fifty. And then, when it has got to that —— ,” the blush on the cheeks, the downcast eyes, told the rest.
“Them there shrimps ain’t bad; take some more of ‘em.”
Mildred positively started — not at the invitation so abruptly given to her, but at the wording of it. It was the first sentence she had heard him speak. Had he framed it in joke?
No; it was his habitual manner of speaking. She cast her compassionate eyes on Betsey Travice, just as Charlotte would have cast her indignant ones. But Betsey was used to him, and did not feel the degradation.
“Now, mother, don’t you worry your inside out after that girl,” he said, as Mrs. Dundyke, for the fiftieth time, plunged into the kitchen, groaning over the shortcomings of the servant. “You won’t live no longer for it. Betsey, just put them two squalling chickens down, and pour me out a drop more tea; make yourself useful if you can till mother comes back. Won’t you take no more, Miss Arkell?”
“Betsey,” asked Mildred, in a low tone, as they were alone for a few minutes when Mildred was about to leave, “do you like Mr. David Dundyke?”
Betsey’s face was sufficient answer.
“I think you ought not to be too precipitate to say you will do this or do the other. You are young, Mr. Dundyke is young, and — and — if you had had more experience in the world, you might not have engaged yourself to him.”
“Thank you kindly; that is just as Charlotte says. But we are not going to marry yet.”
“Betsey — you will excuse me for saying it: if I speak, it is for your own sake — do you consider Mr. Dundyke, with his — his apparently imperfect education, is suitable for you?”
“Indeed,” answered Betsey, “his education is better than it appears. He has fallen into this odd way of speaking from habit, from association with his mother. She speaks so, you must perceive. He rather prides himself upon keeping it up, upon not being what he calls fine. And he is so clever in his business!”
Mildred could not at all understand that sort of “pride.” Betsey Travice noticed the gravity of her eye.
“What education have I had, Miss Arkell? None. I learnt to read, and write, and spell, and I learnt nothing more. If I speak as a lady, it is because I was born to it, because papa and mamma and Charlotte so spoke, not from any advantages they gave me. I have been kept down all my life. Charlotte was made a lady of, and I was made to work. When I was only six years old I had to wait on mamma and Charlotte. I am not complaining of this; I like work; but I mention it, to ask you in what way, remembering these things, I am better than David Dundyke?”
In truth, Mildred could not say.
“What am I now but a burden on his mother?” continued Betsey. “In one sense I repay my cost; for, if I were not here, she would have to take a servant for the two little children. I have no prospects at all; I have nobody in the world to help me; indeed, Miss Arkell, it is generous of David to ask me to be his wife.”
“You might find a home with your sister, now she has one. You ought to have it with her.”
Betsey shook her head. “You don’t know Charlotte,” was all she answered.
Mildred dropped the subject. She took a ring from her purse, an emerald set round with pearls, and put it into Betsey’s hand.
“It was my mother’s,” she said, “and I brought it for you. She had two of these rings just alike; one of them had belonged to a sister of hers who died. I wear the other — see! My mother was very poor, Betsey, or she might have left something worth the acceptance of you, her goddaughter.”
Betsey Travice burst into tears, partly at the kind words, partly at the munificence of the gift, for she had never possessed so much as a brass ring in all her life.
“It is too good for me,” she said; “I ought not to take it from you. I would not, but for your having one like it. What have I done that you should all be so kind to me? But I will never part with the ring.”
And, indeed, the contrast between the kindness to her of the Arkells generally and the unfeeling behaviour of her sister Charlotte, could but mark its indelible trace on even the humble mind of Betsey Travice.
“Has Charlotte come home?” she asked.
“Have you heard from her?” exclaimed Mildred in astonishment. “She came home before I left Westerbury.”
Betsey shook her head. “We are not to keep up any correspondence; Charlotte said it would not do; that our paths in life lay apart; hers up in the world, mine down; and she did not care to own me for a sister. Of course I know I am inferior to Charlotte, and always have been; but still — —”
Betsey broke down. The grieved heart was full.
CHAPTER XII.
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 k
eep 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.