by Ellen Wood
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.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DEAN’S DAUGHTER.
The tender green of early spring was on the new leaves of the cathedral elm trees. Not sufficient to afford a shade yet; but giving promise of its fulness ere the sultry days of summer should come.
The deanery of Westerbury was a queer old building to look at, especially in front. It had no lower windows. There were odd-looking patches in the wall where the windows ought to have been, and three or four doors. These doors had their separate uses. One of them was the pri
vate entrance of the dean and his family; one was used by the servants; one was allotted to official or state occasions, at the great audit time, for instance, when the dean and chapter held their succession of dinners for ever so many days running; and one (a little one in a corner) was popularly supposed to be a sham. But the windows above were unusually large, and so they compensated in some degree for the lack of them below.
Standing at the smallest of the windows on this spring day, was a young lady of some ten or twelve years old. She had a charming countenance, rather saucy, and great blue eyes as large as saucers. She wore a pretty grey silk frock, trimmed with black velvet — perhaps, as slight mourning — and her light brown hair fell on her neck in curls, that were apt to get untidy and entangled. It was Georgina Beauclerc, the only child of the Dean of Westerbury.
The window commanded a good view of the grounds, as the space here at the back of the cathedral was called — a large space; the green, inclosed promenade, shaded by the elm-trees, in the middle; well-kept walks outside; and beyond, all around, the prebendal and other houses. Opposite to the deanery, on the other side the walks, the elm-trees, and the grassy promenade, was the house of the Rev. Mr. Wilberforce, minor canon and sacrist of the cathedral, rector of St. James the Less, and head-master of the college school. Side by side with it was the quaint and small house once inhabited by the former rector of St. James the Less, an old clergyman, subject to gout, now dead and gone. The Rev. Wheeler Prattleton lived in the house now: he was also a minor canon, and chanter to the cathedral — that is, he held the office of what was called the chanter, which gave him the right to fix upon the services for the choir when the dean did not, but he only took his turn for chanting in rotation with the rest of the minor canons. On the other side the head-master’s house was a handsome, good-sized dwelling, tenanted by a gentleman of the name of Lewis, who held a good and official position in connexion with the bishop, and had married the daughter of old Squire Carr, the sister to the present squire, and niece to Marmaduke. Beyond this, in a corner, was the quaintest house in the grounds, all covered with ivy, and seeming to have nothing belonging to it but a door; but the fact was, although the door was here, the house itself was built out behind, and could not be seen — its windows facing, some the river, some the open country, and catching a view of St. James the Less in the distance. Mr. Aultane, Westerbury’s greatest lawyer, so far as practice went, though not perhaps in honour, lived here; and he held up his head and thought himself above the minor canons. In this one nook of the grounds a few private individuals congregated — it is not necessary to mention them all; but the rest of the houses were mostly occupied by the prebendaries and minor canons. In some lived the widows and families of prebendaries deceased.