Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 13

"Not exactly that," returned Mr. Arkell, in his keen, emphatic tone.

"But I suppose you can't have everything. Few of us can. She has been a good and affectionate daughter, William, and she will make you a good wife. I should have been better pleased though, had there been no relationship between you."

"Relationship!" repeated William.

"For I share in the popular prejudice that exists against cousins marrying. But I am not going to make it an objection now, as you may believe, when I tell you that I foresaw long ago what your intimacy would probably end in. Your mother says it has been her cherished plan for years."

William listened in bewilderment. "She is no cousin of mine," he said.

"No what?" asked Mr. Arkell, pushing his gla.s.ses to the top of his forehead, the better to stare at his son--for those gla.s.ses served only for near objects, print and writing--"is the thought of this marriage turning your head, my boy?"

"I don't understand what you are speaking of," returned William, perfectly mystified; "I only said she was not my cousin."

"Why, bless my heart, what do you mean?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell. "She has been your cousin ever since she was born; she is the daughter of my poor brother Dan; do you want to disown the relationship now?"

"Are you talking of Mildred Arkell?" exclaimed the astonished young man.

"I don't want to marry _her_. Mildred is a very nice girl as a cousin, but I never thought of her as a wife. I want Charlotte Travice!"

"Charlotte Travice!"

The change in the tone, the deep pain it betrayed, struck a chill on William's heart. Mr. Arkell gazed at him before he again broke the silence.

"How came you to tell your mother yesterday that you wanted to marry Mildred?"

"I never did tell her so, sir; I told her I wished to marry Charlotte."

Mr. Arkell took another contemplative stare at his son. He then turned short away, quitted the manufactory by his own private entrance, walked across the yard, past the coach-house and stable, and went straight into the presence of his wife.

"A pretty amba.s.sador you would make at a foreign court!" he began; "to mistake your credentials in this manner!"

Mrs. Arkell was seated alone, puzzling herself with a lap-fall of patchwork, and wishing Mildred was there to get it into order. Every now and then she would be taken with a sewing fit, and do about two st.i.tches in a morning. She looked up at the strange address, the mortified tone.

"You told me William wanted to marry Mildred!"

"So he does."

"So he does _not_," was Mr. Arkell's answer. "He wants to marry your fine lady visitor, Miss Charlotte Travice."

Mrs. Arkell rose up in consternation, disregardful of the work, which fell to the ground. "You must be mistaken," she exclaimed.

"No; it is you who have been mistaken. William says he did not speak to you of Mildred; never thought of her as a wife at all; he spoke to you of Charlotte Travice."

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Arkell, a feeling very like unto faintness coming over her spirit; "I hope it is not so! I hope still there may be some better elucidation."

"There can be no other elucidation, so far, than this," returned Mr.

Arkell, his tone one of sharp negation. "The extraordinary part of the affair is, how you could have misinterpreted his meaning, and construed Charlotte Travice into Mildred Arkell! I said we kept the girl here too long."

He turned away again with the last sentence on his tongue. He was not sufficiently himself to stay and talk then. Mrs. Arkell, in those first few minutes, was as one who has just received a blow. Presently she despatched a message for her son; she was terribly vexed with him; and, like we all do, felt it might be a relief to throw off some of her annoyance upon him.

"How came you to tell me yesterday you wanted to marry Mildred?" she began when he appeared, her tone quite as sharp as ever was Mr.

Arkell's.

"I did not tell you so. My father has been saying something of the same sort, but it is a mistake."

"You must have told me so," persisted Mrs. Arkell; "how else could I have imagined it? Charlotte's name was never mentioned at all.

Except--yes--I believe I said that she could be the bridesmaid."

"I understood you to say that Mildred could be the bridesmaid," returned William. "Mother, indeed the mistake was yours."

"We have made a fine mess of it between us," retorted Mrs. Arkell, in her vexation, as she arrived at length at the conclusion that the mistake was hers; "you should have been more explicit. What a simpleton they will think me! Worse than that! Do you know what I did yesterday?"

"No."

"I went straight to Mrs. Dan Arkell's as soon as you had spoken to me, and asked for Mildred to marry you."

"Mother!"

"I did. It is the most unpleasant piece of business I was ever mixed up in."

"Mildred will only treat it as a joke, of course?"

"Mildred treated it in earnest. Why should she not? When she came here last evening, she came expecting that she would shortly be your wife."

They stood looking at each other, the mother and son, their thoughts travelling back to the past night, and its events. What had appeared so strange in William's eyes was becoming clear; the cross-purposes, as Mildred had expressed it, in their conversation with each other, and Mildred's fainting-fit, when the elucidation came. He very much feared, now that he knew the cause of that fainting-fit--he feared that Mildred's love was his.

Mrs. Arkell's thoughts were taking the same course, and she spoke them:--"William, that fainting-fit must in some way have been connected with this. Mildred is not in the habit of fainting."

He made no reply at first. Loving Mildred excessively as a cousin, he would not have hurt her feelings willingly for the whole world. A half-wish stole over him that it was the fashion for gentlemen to cut themselves in half when two ladies were in the case, and so gallantly bestow themselves on both. Mrs. Arkell noted the mortification in his expressive face.

"What is to be done, William? Mrs. Dan told me she felt sure Mildred had been secretly attached to you for years."

Mrs. Arkell might not have spoken thus openly to her son, but for a hope, now beginning to dawn within her--that his choice might yet fall upon Mildred. William made no reply. He smoothed his hand over his troubled brow; he recalled more and more of the previous evening's scene; he felt deeply perplexed and concerned, for the happiness of Mildred was dear to him as a sister's. But the more he reflected on the case, the less chance he saw of mending it.

"You must marry Mildred," Mrs. Arkell said to him in a low tone.

"Impossible!" he hastily rejoined; "I cannot do that."

"But I made the offer for her to her mother! Made it on your part."

"And I made one for myself to Charlotte."

An embarra.s.sed, mortified silence. Mrs. Arkell, an exceedingly honourable woman, did not see a way out of the double dilemma any more than William did.

"Do you know that I do not like her?" resumed Mrs. Arkell, in a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion. "That I have grown to _dis_like her? And what will become of Mildred?"

"Mildred will get over it in no-time," he answered, already beginning to reason himself into a satisfactory state of composure and indifference, as people like to do. "She is a girl of excellent common sense, and will see the thing in its proper light."

Strange perhaps to say, Mrs. Arkell fell into the same train of reasoning when the first moments of mortification had cooled down. She saw Mrs. Dan, and intimated that she had been under an unfortunate mistake, which she could only apologise for. Mrs. Dan, a sober-minded, courteous old lady, who never made a fuss about anything, and had never quarrelled in her life, said she hoped she had been mistaken as to Mildred's feelings. And when Mrs. Arkell next saw Mildred, the latter's manner was so quiet, so unchanged, so almost indifferent, that Mrs.

Arkell repeated with complacency William's words to herself: "Mildred will get over it in no-time."