CHAPTER XII.
MISCONCEPTION
"It shall be put a stop to! it shall be put a stop to!" murmured Mrs. Arkell to herself, as she sat alone when Travice had left her, trying to recover her equanimity. "Once separated from that wretched Lucy, he would soon find charms in Barbara Fauntleroy."
There was no time to be lost; and that same afternoon, when Lucy arrived, according to promise, crafty Mrs. Arkell began to lay the foundation stone. Lucy found her in the drawing-room alone.
"I will take my bonnet upstairs," said Lucy. "Shall I find Charlotte and Sophy anywhere?"
"No," replied Mrs. Arkell, in a very uncompromising tone. "They have gone out with the Miss Fauntleroys."
"I was unwilling to come this afternoon," observed Lucy, as she returned and sat down, "for papa does not seem so well. I fear he may have taken cold to-day; but he got to his books and writing after dinner, as usual."
"Does he think of bringing out a new book?" asked Mrs. Arkell; and Lucy did not detect the irony of the question.
"Not yet. He is about half through one. Is there any meeting to-day, do you know, Mrs. Arkell?" she resumed. "I met several gentlemen hurrying up the street as I came along."
"I thought everybody knew of it," replied Mrs. Arkell. "A meeting of the manufacturers was convened at the Guildhall for this afternoon. Mr. Arkell and Travice have gone to it."
"Their meetings seem to bring them no redress," returned Lucy, sadly. "The English manufacturers have no chance against the French now."
"I don't know what is to become of us," ejaculated Mrs. Arkell. "Charlotte, thank goodness, will soon be married and away; but there's Sophy! Travice will have enough to live upon, without business."
"Will he?" exclaimed Lucy, looking brightly up. "I am so glad to hear it! I thought your property had diminished until it was but small."
"Our property is diminishing daily," replied Mrs. Arkell. "Which makes it the more necessary that Travice should secure himself by his marriage."
Lucy did not answer; but her heart throbbed violently, and the faint colour on her cheek forsook it. Mrs. Arkell, without looking towards her, rose to poke the fire, and continued talking as she leaned over the grate, with her back to Lucy.
"It is intended that Travice shall marry Barbara Fauntleroy."
The sense of the words was very decided, carrying painful conviction to Lucy's startled ear. She could not have answered, had her life depended on it.
"Lucy, my dear," proceeded Mrs. Arkell, speaking with unwonted affection, and looking Lucy full in the face, "I am speaking to you in entire confidence, and I desire you will respect it as such. Do not drop a hint to Travice or the girls; they would not like my speaking of it."
Lucy sat quiet; and Mrs. Arkell quite devoured the pale face with her eyes.
"At first he did not care much for Barbara; and in truth he does not care for her now, as one we intend to marry ought to be cared for. But that will all come in time. Travice, like many other young men, may have indulged in a little carved-out romance of his own—I don't know that he did, but he may—and he has the good sense to see that his romance must yield to reality."
"Yes!" ejaculated Lucy, feeling that she was expected to say something in answer.
"There is our property dwindling down to little; there's the business dwindling down to nothing; and suppose Travice took it into his head to many a portionless girl, what prospect would there be before him? Why, nothing but poverty and self-reproach; nothing but misery. And in time he would hate her for having brought him to it."
"True! true!" murmured Lucy.
"And now," added Mrs. Arkell, "that he is on the point of consenting to marry Miss Fauntleroy, it is the duty of all of us, if we care for his future happiness and welfare, to urge his hopes to that point. You see it, Lucy, I should think, as well as we do."
There was no outward emotion to be observed in Lucy. A transiently white cheek, a momentary quiver of the lip, and all that could be seen was over. Like her aunt Mildred, it was her nature to bear in silence; but some of us know too well that that is the grief which tells. There was a slight shiver of the frame, visible to those keen eyes watching her, and she compelled herself to speak as with indifference.
"Has he consented?"
"My dear Lucy, I said he was on the point of consenting. And there's no doubt he is. I had an explanation with Travice this morning; he seemed inclined to shun Miss Fauntleroy, for I sent for him while she was here, and he did not come. After you left, I spoke to him; I pointed out the state of the case, and said what a sweet girl Miss Fauntleroy was, what a charming wife she would make him; and I hope I brought him to reason. You see, Lucy, how advantageous it will be in all ways, their union. Not only does it provide for Travice, but it will remove the worst of the great care hanging over the head of Mr. Arkell, and which I am sure, if not removed, will shorten his life. Do you understand?"
"I—think so," replied Lucy, whose brain was whirling in spite of her calm manner.
Mrs. Arkell drew her chair nearer to Lucy, and dropped her voice.
"Our position is this, my dear. A very great portion of Mr. Arkell's property is locked up in his stock, which is immense. I should not have kept on manufacturing as he has done; and I believe it has been partly for the sake of those rubbishing workmen. Unless he can get some extraneous help, some temporary assistance, he will have to force his stock to sale at a loss, and it would just be ruin. Miss Fauntleroy proposes to advance any sum he may require, as soon as the marriage has taken place, and there's no doubt he will accept it. It will be only a temporary loan, you know; but it will save us a great, a ruinous loss."
"She proposes to advance it?" echoed Lucy, struck with the words, in the midst of her pain.
"She does. She is as good hearted a girl as ever lived, and proposed it freely. In fact, she would be ready and willing to advance it at once, for of course she knows it would be a safe loan, but Mr. Arkell will not hear of it. She knows what our wishes are upon the subject of the marriage, and she sees that Travice has been holding back; and but for her very good-natured disposition she might not have tolerated it. However, I hope all will soon be settled now, and she and Travice married. Lucy, my dear, I rely upon you for Mr. Arkell's sake, of whom you are so fond, for Travice's own sake, to forward on this by any little means in your power. And, remember, the confidence I have reposed in you must not be broken."
Lucy sat cold and still. In honour she must no longer think of a possible union with Travice—must never more allow word or look from him seeming to point to it.
"For Mr. Arkell's sake," she kept repeating to herself, as if she were in a dream; "for Travice's own sake!" She saw the future as clearly as though it had been mapped out before her eyes in some prophetic vision: Travice would marry Barbara Fauntleroy and her riches. She almost wished she might never see him more; it could only bring to her additional misery.
Charlotte Arkell came in with Barbara Fauntleroy. Sophy had gone home with the other one for the rest of the day. An old aunt, bed-ridden three parts of her time, had lived with the young ladies since the death of their father. But they were not so very young; and they were naturally independent. Barbara was quite as old as Travice Arkell.
"How shall I bear to see them together?" thought Lucy, as Barbara Fauntleroy sat down opposite to her, in her rustling silk of many colours, and no end of gold trinkets jingling about her. "I wonder why I was born? But for papa, I could wish I had died as Harry did!"
For that first evening, however, she was spared. Their little maid arrived in much commotion, asking to see Miss Lucy. Her papa was feeling worse than when she left home, was the word she brought, and he thought if Lucy did not mind it, he should like her to go back to him at once.
Lucy hastened home. She found her father very poorly; feverish, and coughing a great deal. It was the foreshadowing of an illness from which he was destined never to recover.
Whether his allotted span of life had indeed run out, or whether his exposure to the weather that unlucky morning helped to shorten it, Lucy never knew. A week or two of uncertain sickness—now a little better, now a little worse, and it became too evident that hope of recovery for Peter Arkell was over. A bowed, broken man in frame and spirit, but comparatively young in years, Peter was passing from the world he had found little else than trouble in. Lucy wrote in haste and distress for her Aunt Mildred, but a telegram was received in reply, announcing the death of Lady Dewsbury. She had died somewhat suddenly, Mildred said, when a letter came by the next morning's post, in which she gave particulars.
It was nearly impossible for her to come away before the funeral: nothing short of imminent danger in her brother's state would bring her. She had for a long while been almost sole mistress of the household; Lady Dewsbury was ever her kind friend and protectress; and she could not reconcile it to her feelings to abandon the house while she lay dead in it, unless her brother's state absolutely demanded that she should. Lucy was to write, or telegraph, as necessity should require.
There was no immediate necessity for her to come, and Lucy wrote accordingly. Lucy stayed on alone with the invalid, shunning as much as was possible the presence of Travice, when he made his frequent visits: that presence which had hitherto been to her as a light from heaven. Mrs. Arkell, paying a ceremonious call of condolence one day, whispered to Lucy that Travice was becoming quite "reconciled," quite "fond" of Barbara Fauntleroy.
On the evening of the day after Lady Dewsbury was interred, Mildred arrived in Westerbury. Lucy did not know she was coming, and no one was at the station to meet her. Leaving her luggage to be sent after her, she made her way to her brother's house on foot: it was but a quarter of an hour's walk, and Mildred felt cramped with sitting in the train.
She trembled as she came in sight of it, the old home of her youth, fearing that its windows might be closed, as those had been in the house just quitted. As she stood before the door, waiting to be admitted, remembrances of her childhood came painfully across her—of her happy girlhood, when those blissful dreams of William Arkell were mingled with every thought of her existence.
"And oh! what did they end in!" she cried, clasping her hands tightly together and speaking aloud in her anguish. "What am I now? Chilled in feeling; worn in heart; old before my time."
A middle-aged woman, with a light in her hand, opened the door. Mildred stepped softly over the threshold.
"How is Mr. Arkell?"
The woman—she was the night nurse—stared at the handsomely attired strange lady, whose deep mourning looked so fresh and new, coming in that unceremonious manner at the night-hour.
"He is very ill, ma'am; nearly as bad as he can be," she replied, dropping a low curtsey. "What did you please to want?"
"He is in his old chamber, I suppose," said Mildred, turning towards the staircase. The woman, quite taken aback at this unceremonious proceeding, interposed her person.
"Goodness, ma'am, you can't go up to his chamber!" she cried out in amazement. "The poor gentleman's dying. I'll call Miss Lucy."
"I am Miss Arkell," said Mildred quietly, passing on up the staircase.
She laid aside her sombre bonnet, with its deep crape veil, her heavy shawl, and entered the chamber softly. Lucy was at a table, measuring some medicine into a tea-cup. A pale, handsome young man stood by the fire, his elbow resting on the mantel-piece. Mildred glanced at his face, and did not need to ask who he was.
Near the bed was Mr. William Arkell; but oh! how different from the lover of Mildred's youth! Now he was a grey-haired man, stooping slightly, looking older than his actual years—then tall, handsome, attractive, as Travice was now. And did William Arkell, at the first view, recognise his cousin? No. For that care-worn, middle-aged woman, whose hair was braided under a white net cap, bore little resemblance to the once happy Mildred Arkell. But the dying man, lying panting on the raised pillows, knew her instantaneously, and held out his feeble hands with a glad cry.
It was a painful meeting, and one into which we have little right to penetrate. Soon, very soon, Peter spoke out the one great care that was lying at his heart. He had not touched upon it till then.
"I am leaving my poor child alone in the world," he panted. "I know not who will afford her shelter—where she will find a home?"
"I would willingly promise you to take her to mine, Peter," said Mr. Arkell. "Poor Lucy should be as welcome to a shelter under my roof as are my own girls; but, heaven help me! I know not how long I may have a home for any of them."
"Leave Lucy to me, Peter," interposed Miss Arkell. "I shall make a home for myself now, and that home shall be Lucy's. Let no fear of her welfare disturb your peace."
Travice listened half resentfully. He was standing against the mantel-piece still, and Lucy, just then stirring something over the fire, was close to him.
"They need not think about a home for you, Lucy," he whispered, taking the one disengaged hand into his. "That shall be my care."
Lucy coldly drew her hand away. Her head was full of Barbara Fauntleroy—of the certainty that that lady would be his wife—for she believed no earthly event would be allowed to set aside the marriage: her spirit rebelled against the words. What right had he to breathe such to her—he, the engaged husband of another?
"I shall never have my home with you," she said, in the same low whisper. "Nothing should induce me to it."
"But, Lucy–"
"I will not hear you. You have no right so to speak to me. Aunt! aunt!"—and the tears gushed forth in all their bitter anguish—"let me find a home with you!"
Mildred turned and clasped fondly the appealing form as it approached her. Travice, hurt and resentful, quitted the room.
The death came, and then the funeral. A day or two afterwards, Mrs. Arkell condescended to pay a stately visit of ceremony to Mildred, who received her in the formerly almost-unused drawing-room. Lucy did not appear. Miss Arkell, her heart softened by grief, by much trial, was more cordial than perhaps she had ever been to Mrs. Arkell, before her marriage or after it.
"What a fine young man Travice is!" she observed, in a pause of their conversation.
"The finest in Westerbury," said Mrs. Arkell, with all the partiality of a mother. "I expect he will be thinking of getting married shortly."
"Of getting married! Travice! To whom? To Lucy?"
The question had broken from her in her surprise, in association with an idea that had for long and long floated through her brain—that Travice and Lucy were attached to each other. Mildred knew not whence it had its origin, unless it was in the frequent mention of Travice in Lucy's letters. Mrs. Arkell heard, and tossed her head indignantly.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Arkell—to Lucy, did you say? Travice would scarcely think of wedding a portionless bride, under present circumstances. You must have heard of the rich Fauntleroy girls? It is one of them."
Mildred—calm, composed, quiet Mildred—could very nearly have boxed her own ears. Never, perhaps, had she been more vexed with herself—never said an inadvertent thing that she so much wished recalled. How entirely Lucy was despised, Mrs. Arkell's manner and words proclaimed; and the fact carried its sting to Mildred's heart.
"I had no reason to put the question," she said, only caring how she could mend the matter; "I dare say Lucy would not thank me for the idea. Indeed, I should fancy her hopes may lie in quite a different direction. Young Palmer, the lawyer, the son of her father's old friend, has been here several times this past week, inquiring after our health. His motives may be more interested ones."
This was a little romance of Mildred's, called forth by the annoyance and vexation of the moment. It is true that Tom Palmer frequently did call; he and Lucy had been brought up more like brother and sister than anything else; but Miss Arkell had certainly no foundation for the supposition she had expressed. And Mrs. Arkell knew she could have none; but she chose to believe it.
"It would be a very good match for Lucy," she replied. "Tom Palmer has a fine practice for so young a man; there are whispers, too, that he will be made town-clerk whenever the vacancy occurs."
Home went Mrs. Arkell; and the first of the family she happened to come across was Travice.
"Travice, come to me for an instant," she said, taking his arm to pace the court-yard; "I have been hearing news at Peter Arkell's. Lucy's a sly girl; she might have told us, I think. She is engaged—but I don't know how long since. Perhaps only in these few days, since the funeral."
"Engaged in what?"
"To be married. She marries Tom Palmer."
"It is not true," broke forth Travice. "Who in the world has been telling you that falsehood?"
"Not true!" repeated Mrs. Arkell. "Why don't you say it is not true that I am talking to you—not true that this is Monday—not true that you are Travice Arkell? Upon my word! You are very polite, sir."
"Who told it you?" reiterated Travice.
"They told me. Mildred Arkell told me. I have been sitting there for the last hour, and we have been talking that and other affairs over. I can tell you what, Travice—it will be an excellent match for Lucy; a far superior one to anything she could have expected—and they seem to know it."
Even as she spoke, there shot a remembrance through Travice Arkell's heart, as an icebolt, of the night he had stood with Lucy in the chamber of her dying father, and her slighting words, in answer to his offer of a home: "I shall never have my home with you; nothing should induce me to it." She would not hear him; she told him he had no right so to speak to her. She had been singularly changed to him during the whole period of her father's illness; had shunned him by every means in her power; had been cold and distant when they were brought into contact. Before that, she was open and candid as the day. This fresh conduct had been altogether inexplicable to Travice, and he now asked himself whether it could have arisen from any engagement to marry Tom Palmer. If so, the change was in a degree accounted for; and it was certainly not impossible, if Tom Palmer had previously been wishing to woo her, that Mr. Peter Arkell, surprised by his dangerous illness, should have hurried matters to an engagement.
The more Travice Arkell reflected on this phase of probabilities, the more he became impressed with it: he grew to look upon it as a certainty; he felt that all chance for himself with Lucy was over. Could he blame her? As things were with him and his father, he saw no chance of his marrying her; and, in a worldly point of view, Lucy had done well—had done right. It's true he had never thought her worldly, and he had thought that she loved him; he believed that Tom Palmer had never been more to her than a wind that passes: but why should not Lucy have grown self-interested, as most other girls were? And to Travice it was pretty plain she had.
He grew to look upon it as a positive certainty; he believed, without a shadow of doubt, that it must be the fact: and how bitterly and resentfully he all at once hated Tom Palmer, that gentleman himself would have been surprised to find. It was only natural that Travice should feel it as a personal injury inflicted on himself—a slight, an insult; you all know, perhaps, what this feeling is: and in his temper he would not for some days go near Lucy. It was only when he heard the news that Mildred was returning to London, and would take her niece with her, that he came to his senses.
That same evening he took his way to the house. Mildred, it should be observed, was equally at cross-purposes. She hastened to speak to Lucy the day of Mrs. Arkell's visit, asking her if she had heard that Travice was engaged to Miss Fauntleroy; and Lucy answered after the manner of a reticent, self-possessed maiden, and made light of the thing, and was altogether a little hypocrite.
"Known that! O dear, yes! for some time," she said. "It would be a very good thing for Travice."
And so Mildred put aside any slight romance she had carved out for them, as wholly emanating from her imagination; but the sore feeling—that Lucy was despised by the mother, perhaps by the son—clung to her still.
She was sitting alone when Travice entered. He spoke for some time on indifferent subjects—of the news of the town; of her journey to London; of her future plans. They were to depart on the morrow.
"Where's Lucy?" he suddenly asked; and there was a restlessness in his manner throughout the interview that Mildred had never observed before.
"She is gone to spend the evening with Mrs. Palmer. I declined. Visiting seems quite out of my way now."
"I should have thought it would just now be out of Lucy's," spoke Travice, in a glow of resentment.
"Ordinary visiting would be," returned Miss Arkell, speaking with unnecessary coldness, and conscious of it. "Mrs. Palmer was here this afternoon; and, seeing how ill Lucy looked, she insisted on taking her home for an hour or two. Lucy will see no one there, except the family."
"What makes her look ill?"
Miss Arkell raised her eyes at the tone. "She is not really ill in body, I trust; but the loss of her father has been a bitter grief to her, and it is telling upon her spirits and looks. He was all she had in the world; for I—comparatively speaking—am a stranger."
There was a pause. Travice was leaning idly against the mantel-piece, in his favourite position, twirling the seals about that hung to his chain, his whole manner bespeaking indifference and almost contemptuous unconcern. Had anyone been there who knew him better than Mildred did, they could have told that it was only done to cover his real agitation. Mildred stole a glance at the fine young man, and thought that if he resembled his father in person, he scarcely resembled him in courtesy.
"Does Lucy really mean to have that precious fool of a Tom Palmer?" he abruptly asked.
Miss Arkell felt indignant. She wondered how he dared to speak in that way; and she answered sharply.
"Tom Palmer is a most superior young man. I have not perceived that he has any thing of the fool about him, and I don't think many others have. Whenever he marries, he will make an excellent husband. Why should you wish to set me against him? Let me urge you not to interfere with Lucy's affairs, Travice; she is under my protection now."
Oh, if Mildred could but have read Travice Arkell's heart that night!—if she had but read Lucy's! How different things might have been! Travice moved to shake hands with her.
"I must wish you good evening," he said. "I hope you and Lucy will have a pleasant journey to-morrow. We shall see you both again some time, I suppose."
He went out with the cold words upon his lips. He went out with the conviction, that Lucy was to marry Tom Palmer, irrevocably seated on his heart. And Travice Arkell thought the world was a miserable world, no longer worth living in.