by Ellen Wood
He had four hundred pounds a year now, and they lived upon fifty. Betsey, the most generous heart in the world, saw but with his eyes, and was as saving and careful as might be, because it pleased him. Many and many a time he had taken home a red herring and made his dinner of it, giving his wife the head and the tail to pick for hers. Not less meek than of yore was Mrs. Dundyke, and felt duly thankful for the head and the tail.
Mrs. Dundyke had been at some household work when Mildred entered, but she soon put it aside and sat down with Mildred in the sitting-room, a cheerful apartment with a large window. Betsey was considerably over thirty years of age now, but she looked nearly as young as ever, as she sat bending her face a little down over her sewing while she talked, the stitching of a wristband; for she was one who thought it a sin to lose time. Mildred told her the news she had come to tell — that she was going on the morrow to Westerbury.
“Going to Westerbury!” echoed Mrs. Dundyke in great surprise; for it had seemed to her that Miss Arkell never meant to go to her native place again.
Mildred explained. She had a holiday for the first time since going to Lady Dewsbury’s, and should use it to see her brother and his wife. “I came to tell you, Betsey,” she added, “thinking you might have some message you would like me to carry to your sister.”
A faint change, like a shadow, passed over Betsey Dundyke’s face. “She would not thank you for it, Miss Arkell. But you may give my best love to her. She never came to see me, you know, when they were in London.”
“When were they in London?” asked Mildred, quickly.
“Last year. Did you not know of it? Perhaps not, for you were in Paris with Lady Dewsbury at the time, and the reminiscence to me is not so pleasing as to make me mention it gratuitously. She came up with Mr. Arkell and their boy; they were in London about a week: he had business, I believe. The first thing he did was to come and see us, and he brought Travice; and he said he hoped I and my husband would make it convenient to be with them a good deal while they were in town, and would dine with them often at their hotel. Well, David, as you know, has no time to spare in the day, for business is first and foremost with him, but I went the next day to see Charlotte. She was very cool, and she let me unmistakably know in so many words that she could not make an associate of Mr. Dundyke. It was not nice of her, Miss Arkell.”
“No, it was not. Did you see much of her?”
“I only saw her that once. William Arkell was terribly vexed, I could see that; and as if to atone for her behaviour, he came here often and brought Travice. Indeed, Travice spent nearly the whole of the time with us, and David would have let me keep him after they went home, but I knew it was of no use to ask Charlotte. He is the nicest boy! I — I know it is wrong to break the tenth commandment,” she said, looking up and laughing through her tears, “but I envy Charlotte that boy.”
It was an indirect allusion to the one great disappointment of Betsey Dundyke’s life: she had no children. She was getting over the grief tolerably now; we get reconciled to the worst evil in time; but in the first years of her marriage she had felt it keenly. It may be questioned if Mr. Dundyke did. Children must have brought expense with them, so he philosophically pitted the gain against the loss.
“Why should Mrs. Arkell dislike to be on sisterly terms with you?” asked Mildred. “I have never been able to understand it.”
“Charlotte has two faults — pride and selfishness,” was Mrs. Dundyke’s answer: “though I cannot bear to speak against her, and never do to David. When she first married, she feared, I believe, that I might become a burden upon her; and she did not like that I should be in the position I was at Mrs. Dundyke’s; she thought it reflected in a degree upon her position as a lady. Now she shuns us, because she thinks we are altogether beneath her. Were we living in style, well established and all that, she would be glad to come to us; but we are in these two quiet rooms, living humbly, and Charlotte would cut off her legs before she’d come near us. Don’t think me unkind, Miss Arkell; it is Charlotte who has forced this feeling upon me. I worshipped her in the old days, but I cannot be blind to her faults now.”
David Dundyke came in. He shook hands cordially with Mildred, whom he was always glad to see. He had begun to dress like a city magnate now: in glossy clothes, and a white neckcloth; and a fine gold cable chain crossed on his waistcoat, in place of the modest silver one he used to wear. He had become more personable as he gained years, was growing portly, and altogether was a fine, gentlemanly-looking man. But his mode of speech! That had very little changed from the earlier style: perhaps David Dundyke was one who did not care to change it; or had no ear to catch the accents of others. If he had but never opened his mouth!
“I’m a little late, Betsey. Shouldn’t ha’ been, though, if I’d known who was here. Get us some tea, girl; and here’s something to eat with it.”
He pulled a paper parcel of shrimps out of his pocket as he spoke: a delicacy he was fond of. Some of them fell on the carpet in the process, and Betsey stooped to pick them up. David did not trouble himself to help her. He sat down and talked to Mildred.
“The last time you were here, I remember, something kept me out: extra work at the office, I think that was. I have been round now to Leifchild’s. He is my stock-broker.”
Mildred laughed. She supposed he was saying it for jest. But the keen look came over Mr. Dundyke’s face that was usual to it when he spoke of money.
“Leifchild is a steady-going man; he’s no fool, he isn’t: There’s not a steadier nor a keener on the stock exchange. I’ve knowed him since he was that high, for we was boys together; and, like me, he began from nothing. There was one thing kept him down — want of capital; if he had had that, he’d ha’ been a rich man now, for many good things fell in his way, and he had to let ’em slip by him. I turned the risk over in my mind, Miss Arkell; for, and against; and I came to the conclusion to put a thousand pound in his hands, on condition — —”
“A thousand pounds,” involuntarily interrupted Mildred. “Had you so much — to spare?”
“Yes, I had that,” said David Dundyke, with a little cough that seemed to say he might have found more, if he had cared to do so. “On condition that I went shares in whatsoever profit my thousand pound should be the means of realizing,” he resumed where he had broken off. “And my thousand pound has not done badly yet.”
Mildred could not help noting the significant satisfaction of the tone. “I should have fancied you too cautious to risk your money in speculating, Mr. Dundyke.”
“And you fancied right. ‘Tain’t speculating: leastways not now. There might be some risk at first, but I knew Leifchild. In three months after that there thousand pound was in his hand, he had made two of it for me, and I took the one back from him, leaving him the other to go on with again. That hasn’t done badly neither, Miss Arkell; it’s paying itself over and over again. And I’m safe; for if he lost it all, I’m only where I was afore I began, and my first risked thousand is safe.”
“And if failure should come, is there no risk to you?”
“Not a penny risk. Trust me for that. But failure won’t come. My head’s a pretty long one for seeing my way clear, and Leifchild lays every thing before me afore he ventures. It’s better, this is, than your five per cent. investments.”
“I think it must be,” assented Mildred. “I wish I could employ a trifle in the same manner.”
She spoke without any ulterior motive, but David Dundyke took the words literally. He had no objection to do a good turn where it involved no outlay to himself, and he really liked Mildred. He drew his chair an inch nearer, and talked to her long and earnestly.
“Let’s say it’s a hundred pound,” he said. “Risk it. And when Leifchild has doubled that for you, take the first hundred back. If you lose the rest, it won’t hurt; and if it multiplies its ones into tens, you’ll be so much the better off.”
It cannot be denied that Mildred was struck with the proposition. “But does Mr
. Leifchild do all this for nothing?” she asked.
“In course he don’t. Leifchild ain’t a fool. He gets his percentage — and a good fat percentage too. The thing can afford it. Do as you like, you know, Miss Arkell; but if you take my advice, you mayn’t find cause to be sorry for it in the end.”
“Thank you,” said Mildred, “I will think of it.”
“Give Aunt Betsey’s dear love to Travice,” whispered Mrs. Dundyke, when Mildred was leaving, “and my best and truest regards to Mr. Arkell. And oh, Miss Mildred, if you could prevail upon them to let Travice come back with you to visit me, I should not know how to be happy enough! I have always so loved children; and David would like it, too.”
“Is there any chance, think you?” returned Mildred.
“No, no, there is none; his mother would be indignant at the presumption of the request,” concluded Betsey in her bitter conviction.
And she was not mistaken.
CHAPTER XIV.
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 specialité,” 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 hai
r 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.”