by Ellen Wood
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 an
y 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.
CHAPTER XVI.
MISS FAUNTLEROY LOVED AT LAST.
But Travice Arkell did not die. The lethargy that was thought to be death proved to be only the exhaustion of spent nature. When the first faint indications of his awaking from it appeared, the physicians said it was possible that he might recover. He lay for some days in a critical state, hopes and fears about equally balancing, and then he began to get visibly stronger.
“I have been nearly dead, have I not?” he asked one day of his father, who was sitting by the bed.
“But you are better now, Travice. You will get well. Thank God!”
“Yes, the danger’s over. I feel that, myself. Dear father! how troubled you have been!”
“Travice, I could hardly have borne to lose you,” he murmured, leaning over him. “And — thus.”
“I shall soon be well again; soon be strong. Be stronger, I hope,” and Travice faintly pressed the hand in which his lay, “to go through the duties that lie before me, than I was previously.”
Mr. Arkell sighed from the very depths of his heart. If his son could but have looked forward to arise to a life of peace, instead of pain!
Mildred was with the invalid often. Mrs. Dundyke, who, concerned at the imminent danger of one in whom she had always considered that she held a right, had hastened to Westerbury when the news was sent to her, likewise used to go and sit with him. But not Lucy. It was instinctively felt by all that the sight of Lucy could only bring the future more palpably before him. It might have been so different!
Mrs. Dundyke saw Mr. Arkell in private.
“Is there no escape for him?” she asked; “no escape from this marriage with Miss Fauntleroy? I would give all I am worth to effect it.”
“And I would give my life,” was the agitated answer. “There is none. Honour must be kept before all things. Travice himself knows there is none; neither would he accept any, were it offered out of the line of strict honour.”
“It is a life’s sacrifice,” said Mrs. Dundyke. “It is sacrificing both him and Lucy.”
“Had I possessed but the faintest idea of the sacrifice it really was, even for him, it should never have been contemplated, no matter what the cost,” was Mr. Arkell’s answer.
“And there was no need of it. If you had but known that! My fortune is a large one now, and the greater portion of it I intended for Travice.”
“Betsey!”
“I intended it for no one else. Perhaps I ought to have been more open in expressing my intentions; but you know how I have been held aloof by Charlotte. And I did not suppose that Travice was in necessity of any sort. If he marries Miss Fauntleroy, the half of what I die possessed of will be his; the other half will go to Lucy Arkell. Were it possible that he could marry Lucy, they’d not wait for my death to be placed above the frowns of the world.”
“Oh Betsey, how generous you are! But there is no escape for him,” added Mr. Arkell, with a groan at the bitter fact. “He cannot desert Miss Fauntleroy.”
It was indisputably true. And that buxom bride-elect herself seemed to have no idea that anybody wanted to be off the bargain, for her visits to the house were frequent, and her spirits were unusually high.
You all know the old rhyme about a certain gentleman’s penitence when he was sick; though it may not be deemed the perfection of good manners to quote it here. It was a very apt illustration of the feelings of Mrs. Arkell. While her son lay sick unto death, she would have married him to Lucy Arkell; but no sooner was the danger of death removed, and he advancing towards convalescence, than the old pride — avarice — love of rule — call it what you will — resumed sway within her; and she had almost been ready to say again that a mouldy grave would be preferable for him, rather than desertion of Miss Fauntleroy. In fine, the old state of things was obtaining sway, both as to Mrs. Arkell’s opinions and to the course of events.
“When can I see him?” asked Miss Fauntleroy one day.
Not the first time, this, that she had put the question, and it a little puzzled Mrs. Arkell to answer it. It was only natural and proper, considering the relation in which each stood to the other, that Miss Fauntleroy should see him; but Mrs. Arkell had positively not dared to hint at such a visit to her son.
“Travice sits up now, does he not?” continued the young lady.
“Yes, he has sat up a little in the afternoon these two days past. We call it sitting up, Barbara, but, in point of fact, he lies the whole time on the sofa. He is not strong enough to sit up.”
“Then I’m sure I may see him. It might not have been proper, I suppose, to pay him a visit in bed,” she added, laughing loudly; “but there can’t be any impropriety now. I want to see him, Mrs. Arkell; I want it very particularly.”
“Of course, Barbara; I can understand that you do. I should, in your place. The only consideration is, whether it may not agitate him too much.”
“Not it,” said Barbara. “I wish you’d go and ask him when I may come. I suppose he is up now?”
Mrs. Arkell had no ready plea for refusal, and she went upstairs there and then. Travice was lying on the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of getting to it.
“My dear, I think you look better,” Mrs. Arkell began, not altogether relishing her task; and she gently pushed the bits of brown hair, now beginning to grow again, from the damp, white forehead. “Do you feel so?”
He drew her fingers for a moment into his, and held them there. He was always ready to respond to his mother’s little tokens of affection. She had opposed him in the matter of Lucy Arkell, but he was ever generous, ever just, and he blamed circumstances more than he blamed her.
“I feel a great deal better than I did a week ago. I shall get on now.”
Mrs. Arkell paused. “Some one wants to see you, Travice.”
The hectic came into his white face as she spoke — a wild rush of crimson. Was it possible that he thought she spoke of Lucy? The idea occurred, to Mrs. Arkell.
“My dear, it is Barbara. She has asked to see you a great many times. She is downstairs now.”
Travice raised his thin hand, and laid it for a moment over his face, over his closed eyes. Was he praying for help in his pain? — for strength to go through what must be gone through — his duty in the future; and to do it bravely?
“Travice, my dear, but for this illness she would now have been your wife. It is only natural that she should wish to come and see you.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, removing his hand, and speaking very calmly; “I have been expecting that she would.”
“When shall she come up? Now?”
He did not speak for a moment.
“Not now; not to-day; the getting up seemed to tire me more than it has done yet. Tell her so from me. Perhaps she will take the trouble to call again to-morrow, and come up then.”
The message was carried to Miss Fauntleroy, and she did not fail in the appointment. Mrs. Arkell took her upstairs without notice to her son; possibly she feared some excuse again. The sofa was drawn near the fire as before, and Travice lay on it; had he been apprised of the visit, he might have tried to sit up to receive her.
She was very big as usual, and very grand. A rich watered lilac silk dress, looped up above a scarlet petticoat; a velvet something on her arms and shoulders, of which I really don’t know the name, covered with glittering jet trimmings; and a spangled bonnet with fancy feathers. As she sailed into the room, her petticoats, that might have covered the dome of St. Paul’s, knocked over a little brass stand and kettle, some careless attendant having left them on the carpet, near the wall. There was no damage, except noise, for the kettle was empty.
“That’s my crinoline!” cried the hearty, good-humoured girl. “Never mind; there’s worse misfortunes at sea.”
“No, Travice, you had better not rise,” interposed Mrs. Arkell, for he was st
ruggling into a sitting position. “Barbara will excuse it; she knows how weak you are.”
“And I’ll not allow you to rise, that’s more,” said Barbara, laying her hand upon him. “I am not come to make you worse, but to make you better — if I can.”
Mrs. Arkell, not altogether easy yet upon the feelings of Travice as to the visit, anxious, as we all are with anything on our consciences, to get away, invited Barbara to a chair, and hastened from the room. Travice tried to receive her as he ought, and put out his hand with a wan smile.
“How are you, Barbara?”
There was no reply, except that the thin hand was taken between both of hers. He looked up, and saw that her eyes were swimming in tears. A moment’s struggle, and they came forth, with a burst.
“There! it’s of no good. What a fool I am!”
Just a minute or two’s indulgence to the burst, and it was over. Miss Fauntleroy rubbed away the traces, and her broad face wore its smiles again. She drew a chair close, and sat down in front of him.
“I was not prepared to see you look like this, Travice. How dreadfully it has pulled you down!”
She was gazing at his face as she spoke. Her entrance had not called up anything of colour or emotion to illumine it. The transparent skin was drawn over the delicate features, and the refinement, always characterizing it, was more conspicuous than it had ever been. No two faces, perhaps, could present a greater contrast than his did, with the broad, vulgar, hearty, and in a sense, handsome one of hers.