Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 16

"And you _do_ do me good, don't you!" retorted Charlotte. "Look at the awful disgrace you have this very evening brought upon me!"

"What disgrace?" asked Betsey, her blue eyes bespeaking compa.s.sion from the midst of her tears.

"Good heavens! what an idiot!" uttered the exasperated Charlotte. "She asks what disgrace! Did you not proclaim yourself before them a servant of all work--a scourer of rooms, a blacker of grates, a----"

"Stop, Charlotte; I have not done either of those things--Mrs. Dund.y.k.e would not let me. I made beds and waited on the drawing-room, and such-like light duties. I did this, but I did not black grates."

"And if you did do it, was there any necessity for your proclaiming it?

Had you not the sense to know that for my sister to avow these things was to me the very bitterest humiliation? Not for your doing them,"

tauntingly added Charlotte, in her pa.s.sion, "for you are worth nothing better; but because you are a sister of mine."

Betsey's sobs were choking her.

"Where did you get the money to come down?" resumed Charlotte.

"Mrs. Arkell sent it me, Charlotte. There was a five-pound note in her letter."

It seemed to be getting worse and worse. Charlotte sat down and poked the fire fiercely, Tring having lighted one in compa.s.sion to the young visitor's evident chilly state. Betsey checked her sobs, and bent down to kiss her sister's neck.

"Somehow I always offend you, Charlotte; but I never do it intentionally, as you know, and I hope you will forgive me. I so try to do what I can for everybody. I always hope that G.o.d will help me to do right. There was the work to be done at Mrs. Dund.y.k.e's, and it seemed to fall to me to do it."

Charlotte was not all bad, and the tone of the words could but conciliate her. Her anger was subsiding into fretfulness.

"The annoying thing is this, Betsey--that _you_ feel no disgrace in doing these things."

"I should not do them by choice, Charlotte. But the work was there, as I say; the servant was gone, and there was n.o.body but me to do it."

"Well, well, it can never be mended now," returned Charlotte, impatiently. "Why don't you let it drop?"

Betsey sighed meekly. She would have been too glad to let it drop at first. Charlotte pointed imperiously to a chair near her.

"Sit down there. You have tried me dreadfully this evening. Don't you know that in a few days I shall be Mrs. William Arkell? His father is one of the largest manufacturers in Westerbury, and they are rolling in money. It was not pleasant, I can tell you, for my sister to show herself out in such a light. What do you think of him?"

"Oh, Charlotte! I think you must be so happy! I am so thankful, dear!

Working, and all that, does not matter for me; but it would not have done for you. I never saw anyone so nice-looking."

"As I?"

"As Mr. William Arkell. How pleasant his manner is! And, Charlotte, who is that young lady down there? I did not quite understand. What a sweet face she has!"

"You never do understand. It is the cousin: Mildred. _She_ thought to be Mrs. William Arkell," continued Charlotte, triumphantly. "The very first night I came here I saw it as plain as gla.s.s, and I took my resolution--to disappoint her. She has been loving William all her life, and fully meant him to marry her. I said I'd supplant her, and I've done it; and I know our marriage is just breaking her heart."

Betsey Travice--than whom one more generous-hearted, more unselfishly forgetful of self-interest, more earnestly single-minded, did not exist--felt frightened at the avowal. Had it been possible for her to recoil from her imperious sister, she had recoiled then.

"Oh, Charlotte!" was all she uttered.

"Why, you don't think I should allow so good a match to escape me, if I could help it! And, besides, I love him," added Charlotte, in a deeper voice.

"But if----oh, Charlotte! pardon me for speaking--I cannot help it--if that sweet young lady loved him before you came? had loved him for years?"

"Well?" said Charlotte, equably.

"It _cannot_ be right of you to take him from her."

"Right or not right, I have done it," said Charlotte, with a pa.s.sing laugh. "But it _is_ right, for he loves me, and not her."

"What will she do?" cried Betsey, after a pause of concern; and it seemed that she asked the question of her own heart, not of Charlotte.

"Dwindle down into an old maid," was the careless answer: spoken, it is to be hoped, more in carelessness than heartlessness. "There, that's enough. Have you seen anything of Mrs. Nicholson?" resumed Charlotte.

"We have seen her a great many times, Charlotte; she has been very troublesome to Mrs. Dund.y.k.e. She wanted your address here: but for me, Mrs. Dund.y.k.e would have given it to her. She said--but, perhaps, I had better not tell it you."

"What who said? Mrs. Dund.y.k.e? Oh, you may tell anything _she_ said. I know her delight was to abuse me."

"No, no, Charlotte; it never was. She only said it was not right of you to order so many new things when you were coming here, unless you could pay for them. I went to Mrs. Nicholson and paid her a sovereign off the account."

"How did you get the sovereign?"

"Mrs. Dund.y.k.e made me a present of it--as a little recompense for my work, she said. I did not so very much want anything for myself, for I had just had new shoes, and I had not worn my best clothes; so I took it to Mrs. Nicholson."

Did the young girl's generosity strike no chord of grat.i.tude in Charlotte's heart? This money, owing to Mrs. Nicholson, a fashionable dressmaker, had been Charlotte's worry during her visit. She would soon have it in her power to pay now.

"I wonder what you'll do in future?" resumed Charlotte, looking at her sister. "You can't expect to find a home with me, you know. It would be entirely unreasonable. And you can't expect to marry, for I don't think you'd be likely to get anyone to have you. If----"

The exceedingly vivid blush that overspread the younger sister's cheek, the wondrous look of intelligence in the raised eyes, brought Charlotte's polite speech to a summary conclusion. "What's the matter?"

she asked.

"Charlotte, if you would let me tell you," was the whispered answer.

"Papa is dead, and mamma is dead, and there is no one left but you; and I suppose I _ought_ to tell you. I have promised to marry David."

"Promised----what?" repeated Charlotte, in an access of consternation.

"To marry David Dund.y.k.e. Not yet, of course; not for a long while, I dare say. When he shall be earning enough to keep a wife."

For once speech failed Charlotte Travice, and she sat gazing at her sister. Her equanimity had received several shocks that evening; but none had been like this. She had seen but little of this David Dund.y.k.e; but, a vision of remembrance rose before her of an inferior, common young man, carrying coal-scuttles upstairs in his shirt-sleeves, who could not speak a word grammatically.

"Are you really mad, Betsey?"

"I feared you would not like it, Charlotte; and I know I can't expect to be as you are. But we shall be more than a hundred miles apart, so that it need not annoy you."

Betsey had unconsciously put the matter in the right light. It was not because Mr. Dund.y.k.e was unfit to be Betsey's husband, but because he was unfit to be her brother-in-law, that the matter so grated on the ear of Charlotte.

"I cannot expect much better, Charlotte; I have not been educated as you have. Perhaps if I had been----"

"But the man is utterly beneath you!" burst forth Charlotte. "He is a common man. He used--if I am not mistaken--to black the boots and shoes for the house at night, and carry up the coal before he went out in the morning!"

"But not as a servant, Charlotte; only to save work for his mother. Just as I helped with the rooms and waited, you know. He does it all still.

They were very respectable once; but Mr. Dund.y.k.e died, and she had to struggle on, and she took this house in Upper Stamford-street. You have heard her tell mamma of it many a time."