Mildred Arkell Volume Iii Part 34

Charlotte Arkell married, and departed with her husband, Captain Anderson, for India, taking Sophy with her. The paying over her marriage portion of a thousand pounds--a very poor portion beside what she once might have expected--further crippled the resources of Mr. Arkell; and things seemed to be coming to a crisis.

And Travice? Travice succ.u.mbed. Hardly caring what became of him, he allowed himself to be baited--badgered--by his mother into offering himself to one of the "great brazen milkmaids." From the hour of Lucy's departure from the city, she let him have no peace, no rest.

One day--and it was the last feather in the scale, the little balance necessary to weigh it down--Mr. Arkell summoned his son to a private interview. It was only what Travice had been expecting.

"Travice, what is your objection to Miss Fauntleroy?"

"I can't bear the sight of her," returned Travice, curling his lips contemptuously. "Can you, sir?"

Mr. Arkell smiled. "There are some who would call her a fine woman, Travice: she is one."

"A fine _vulgar_ woman," corrected Travice, with a marked stress upon the word. "I always had an instinctive dread of vulgar people myself. I certainly never could have believed I should voluntarily ally myself with one."

"Never marry for looks, my boy," said Mr. Arkell in an eager whisper.

"Some, who have done so before you, have awoke to find they had made a cruel mistake."

"Most likely, sir, if they married for looks alone."

Mr. Arkell glanced keenly at his son. "Travice, have I your full confidence? I wish you would give it me."

"In what way?" inquired Travice. "Why do you ask that?"

"Am I right in suspecting that you have cherished a different attachment?"

The tell-tale blood dyed Travice Arkell's brow. Mr. Arkell little needed other answer.

"My boy, let there be no secrets between us. You know that your welfare and happiness--your _happiness_, Travice--lie nearest to my heart. Have you learnt to love Lucy Arkell?"

"Yes," said Travice; and there was a whole world of pain in the simple answer.

"I thought so. I thought I saw the signs of it a long while ago; but, Travice, it would never do."

"You would object to her?"

"Object to her!--to Lucy!--to Peter's child! No. She is one of the sweetest girls living; I am not sure but I love her more than I do my own: and I wish she could be my real daughter and your wife. But it cannot be, Travice. There are impediments in the way, on her side and on yours; and your own sense must tell you this as well as I can."

He could not gainsay it. The impediments were all too present to Travice every hour of his life.

"You cannot take a portionless wife. Lucy has nothing now, or in prospect, beyond any little trifle that may come to her hereafter at Mildred's death; but I don't suppose Mildred can have saved much. It is said, too, that Lucy is likely to marry Tom Palmer."

"I know she is," bitterly acquiesced Travice.

"Lucy, then, for both these reasons, is out of the question. Have you not realized to your own mind the fact that she is?"

"Oh yes."

"Then, Travice, the matter resolves itself into a very small compa.s.s. It stands alone; it has no extraneous drawbacks; it can rest upon its own merits or demerits. Will you, or will you not, marry Miss Fauntleroy?"

Travice remained silent.

"It will be well for me that you should, for the temporary use of money that would then be yours would save us, as you know, from a ruinous loss; but, Travice, I would not, for the wealth of worlds, put that consideration against your happiness; but there is another consideration that I cannot put away from me, and that is, that the marriage will make you independent. For your sake, I should like to see you marry Miss Fauntleroy."

"She----"

"Wait one moment while I tell you why I speak. I do not think you are doing quite the right thing by Miss Fauntleroy, in thus, as it were, trifling with her. She expects you to propose to her, and you are keeping her in suspense unwarrantably long. You should either make her an offer, or let it be unmistakably known that there exists no such intention on your part. It would be a good thing in all ways, if you can only make up your mind to it; but do as you please: _I_ do not urge you either way."

"I may as well do it," muttered Travice to himself. "_She_ has chosen another, and it little matters what becomes of me: look which way I will, there's nothing but darkness. As well go through life with Bab Fauntleroy at my side, like an incubus, as go through it without her."

And Travice Arkell--as if he feared his resolution might desert him--went out forthwith and offered himself to Miss Fauntleroy. Never, surely, did any similar proposal betray so much _hauteur_, so much indifference, so little courtesy in the offering. Barbara happened to be alone; she was sitting in a white muslin dress, looking as big as a house, and waiting in state for any visitors who might call. He spoke out immediately. She probably knew, he said, that he was a sort of bankrupt in self, purse, and heart; little worth the acceptance of any one; but if she would like to take him, such as he was, he would try and do his duty by her.

The offer was really couched in those terms; and he did not take shame to himself as he spoke them. Travice Arkell _could_ not be a hypocrite: he knew that the girl was aware of the state of things and of his indifference; he believed she saw through his love for Lucy; and he hated her with a sort of resentful hatred for having fixed her liking and her hopes upon him. He had been an indulged son all his life--a sort of fortune's pet--and the turn that things had taken was an awful blow.

"Will she say she'll have me?" he thought as he concluded. "I don't believe any other woman would." But Barbara Fauntleroy did say she would have him; and she put out her hand to him in her hearty good-natured way, and told him she thought they should get on very well together when once they had "shaken down." Travice touched the hand; he shook it in a gingerly manner, and then dropped it; but he never kissed her--he never said a warmer word than "thank you." Perhaps Miss Fauntleroy did not look for it: sentiment is little understood by these matter-of-fact, unrefined natures, with their loud voices, and their demonstrative temperaments. Travice would have to kiss her some time, he supposed; but he was content to put off the evil until that time came.

"How odd that you should have come and made me an offer this morning, Mr. Travice," she said, with a laugh. "Lizzie has just had one."

"Has she?" languidly returned Travice. His mind was so absorbed in the thought just mentioned, that he had no idea whether the lady meant an offer or a kiss that her sister had received, and he did not trouble himself to ask. It was quite the same to Travice Arkell.

"It's from Ben Carr," proceeded Miss Fauntleroy. "He came over here this morning, bringing a great big nosegay from their hot-house, and he made Liz an offer. Liz was taken all of a heap; and I think, but for me, she'd have said yes then."

"I dare say she would," returned Travice, and then wished the words recalled. They and their haughty tone had certainly been prompted by the remembrance of the "yes," just said to him by another.

"Liz came flying into the next room to me, asking what she should do; he was very pressing, she said, and wanted her answer then. I'm certain she'd have given it, Mr. Travice, if I had not been there to stop her. I went into the room with her to Ben Carr, and I said, 'Mr. Ben, Liz won't say anything decided now, but she'll think of it for a few days; if you'll look in on Sat.u.r.day, she'll give you her answer, yes or no.' Ben Carr stared at me angry enough; but Liz backed up what I had said, and he had to take it."

"Does she mean to accept him?" asked Travice.

"Well, she's on the waver. She does not dislike him, and she does not particularly like him. He's too old for her; he's twenty years older than Liz; but it's her first offer, and young women are apt to think when they get _that_, they had better accept it, lest they may never get another."

"Your sister need not fear that. Her money will get her offers, if nothing else does."

He spoke in the impulse of the moment; but it occurred to him instantly that it was not generous to say it.

"Perhaps so," said Miss Fauntleroy. "But Lizzie and I have always dreaded that. We would like to be married for ourselves, not for our money. Sometimes we say in joke to one another we wish we could bury it, or could have pa.s.sed ourselves off to the world as being poor until the day after we were married, and then surprised our husbands by the news, and made them a present of the money."

She spoke the truth; Travice knew she did. Whatever were the failings of the Miss Fauntleroys, genuine good nature was with both a pre-eminent virtue.

"Ben Carr is not the choice I should make," remarked Travice. "Of course, it's no business of mine."

"Nor I. I don't much like Ben Carr. Liz thinks him handsome. Well, she has got till Sat.u.r.day to make up her mind--thanks to me."

Travice rose, and gingerly touched the hand again. The thought struck him again that he ought to kiss her; that he ought to put an engagement-ring on one of those fair and substantial fingers; ought to do many other things. But he went out, and did none of them.

"I'll not deceive her," he said to himself, as he walked down the street, more intensely wretched than he had ever in his life felt. "I'll not play the hypocrite; I couldn't do it if it were to save myself from hanging. She shall see my feeling for her exactly as it is, and then she'll not reproach me afterwards with coldness. It is impossible that I can ever like her; it seems to me now impossible that I can ever _endure_ her; but if she does marry me in the face of such evident feelings, I'll do my best for her. Duty she shall have, but there'll be no love."

A very satisfactory state in prospective! Others, however, besides Travice Arkell, have married to enter on the same.

Some few months insensibly pa.s.sed away in London for Miss Arkell and Lucy, and when they returned to Westerbury the earth was glowing with the tints of autumn. They did not return alone. Mrs. Dund.y.k.e, a real widow now beyond dispute, came with them. Poor David Dund.y.k.e, never quite himself after his return, never again indulging in the yearning for the civic chair, which had made the day-dream of his industrious life, had died calmly and peacefully, attended to the last by those loving hands that would fain have kept him, shattered though he was. He was lying now in Nunhead Cemetery, from whence he would certainly never be resuscitated as he had been from his supposed grave in Switzerland.

Mrs. Dund.y.k.e grieved after him still, and Mildred pressed her to go back with them to Westerbury, for a little change. She consented gladly.