Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 35

But, oh! that false morning brightness! Before the concert was over, the rain was coming down with fury, pelting, as the college boys chose to phrase it, cats and dogs. Very few had given orders for their carriages to be there; and they could only wait in hopes they would come, or send messengers after them. What, perhaps, rendered it more inconvenient was, that the concert was over a full half-hour earlier than had been expected.

The impatient company began to congregate in the lower hall; its folding doors of egress and its large windows looking to the street. Some one had been considerate enough to have a fire lighted at the upper end; and most inviting it was, now the day had turned to damp. The head master, who had despatched one of the boys to order his close carriage to be brought immediately, gave the fire a vigorous poke, and turned round to look about him. He was a little man, with silver-rimmed spectacles.

Two causes were exciting some commotion in the minds of the lesser satellites of the grounds. The one was the presuming behaviour of those people with Lucy Arkell, and the unjustifiable folly of Travice; the other was the remarkable absence of the Dean of Westerbury and his family from the concert. It, the absence, was put down to the dean's having at the last moment refused to patronize it, in consequence of its growing unpopularity; and Mrs. St. John's absence was attributed to the same cause. People knew later that the dean and Mrs. Beauclerc had remained at home in consequence of the death of a relative; but that is of no consequence to us.

"The dean is given to veering round," remarked Mrs. Aultane in an under tone to the head master. "Those good-natured men generally are."

The master cleared his throat, as a subst.i.tute for a reply. It was not his place to speak against the dean. And, indeed, he had no cause. He walked to the window nearest him, and looked out at the carriages and flies as they came tardily up.

Travice Arkell seemed determined to offend. He was securing chairs for those ladies now near the fire; and Mrs. Lewis put her gla.s.s to her eye, and surveyed them from head to foot. Her wild brother, Benjamin Carr, could not have done it more insolently.

"Who is that lady, Arkell?" demanded the master, of Travice, when he got the opportunity.

"It is a Mrs. James, sir."

"Oh. A friend of yours?"

"No, sir. I never saw her until to-day."

Mrs. Aultane bent her head. "Mrs. James? Who _is_ Mrs. James? And the other one, too? I should be glad to know, Mr. Travice Arkell."

"I can't tell you much about them, Mrs. Aultane," returned Travice, suppressing the laugh of mischief in his eye. "I saw them for the first time in the concert-room."

"They came with your relative, Peter Arkell's daughter."

"Exactly so. That is, she came with them."

"Some people from the country, I suppose," concluded Mrs. Aultane, with as much hauteur as she thought it safe to put into her tone. "It is easy to be seen they have no style about them."

Travice laughed and went across the room. He was speaking to the ladies in question, when a gentleman of three or four-and-twenty came up and tapped him on the back.

"Won't you speak to me? It _is_ Travice Arkell, I see, though he has shot up into a man."

One moment's indecision, and Travice took the hand in his. "Anderson!

Can it be?"

"It can, and is. _Captain_ Anderson, if you please, sir, now."

"No!"

"It's true. I have been lucky, and have got my company early."

"But what brings you here? I did not know you were in Westerbury."

"I arrived only this morning. Hearing of your concert when I got here, I thought I'd look in; but it was half over then, and I barely got inside the room. You don't mean to say that you are in the school still?"

Travice laughed, and held out the betraying cap. "It is a shame. I am too big for it. I have only a month or two longer to stay."

"But you must have been in beyond your time."

"I know I have."

"And who is senior?"

"Need you ask, looking at my size. This is Lucy; have you forgotten her?"

Captain Anderson turned. He had been educated in the college school, a private pupil of the head master's. Travice Arkell was only a junior in it when Anderson left; but Anderson had been intimate at the houses of both the Arkells.

"Miss Lucy sprung up to this! You were the prettiest little child when I left. And your sisters, Travice? I should like to see them."

Lucy laughed and blushed. Captain Anderson began talking to Mrs. James, and to the young lady who sat between her and Lucy.

"I can't stop," he presently said. "I see the master there. And that--yes, that must be Mr. and Mrs. Prattleton. There! the master is scanning me through his spectacles, wondering whether it's me or somebody else. I'll come back to you, Arkell."

He went forward, and was beset at once. People were beginning to recognise him. Anderson, the private pupil, had been popular in the grounds. Mrs. Aultane on one side, Mrs. Lewis on the other, took forcible possession of him, ere he had been a minute with the head master and his wife. It was hard to believe that the former somewhat sickly, fair-haired private pupil, who had been coddled by Mrs.

Wilberforce with bark and flannel and beaten-up eggs, could be this fine soldierly man.

"Those ladies don't belong to you, do they?" cried Mrs. Aultane, beginning to fear she had made some mistake in her treatment of the ladies in question, if they did belong to Anderson.

"Ladies! what ladies?"

"Those to whom Travice Arkell is talking. He has been with them all day."

"They don't belong to me. What of them?"

"Nothing. Only these inferior people, strangers, have no right to push themselves amidst us, taking up the best places. We are obliged to draw a line, you know, in this manufacturing town; and none but strangers, ignorant of our distinctions, would dare to break it."

Captain Anderson laughed; he could not quite understand. "I don't think they are inferior," he said, indicating the two ladies. "Anything but that, although they may belong to manufacturers, and not be in your set.

The younger one is charming; so is Lucy Arkell."

Mrs. Aultane vouchsafed no reply. It was rank heresy. The college boys were making a noise and commotion at the other end of the hall, and the master called out sharply--

"Arkell, keep those boys in order."

Travice sauntered towards them, gave his commands for silence, and returned to the place from whence he came. Henry Arkell came into the hall from the upper room, and there was a lull in the proceedings. The carriages came up but slowly.

"Don't you think we might walk home, Mrs. James?" inquired the younger lady. "I do not care to stay here longer to be stared at. I never saw people stare so in my life."

She said it with reason. Many were staring, and not in a lady-like manner, but with a.s.suming manner and eye-gla.s.s to eye.

"They look just as though they thought we had no right to be here, Mrs.

James."

"Possibly, my dear. It may be the Westerbury custom to stare at strangers. But I cannot allow you to walk home; you have thin shoes on.

Mrs. St. John is certain to send your carriage, or hers."

"You did well, Harry," cried Travice Arkell, laying his hand on the young boy's shoulders. "Many a fair dame would give her price for your voice."

"And for something else belonging to you," added Mrs. James, taking the boy's hand and holding him before her as she gazed. "It is the very face; the very same face that your mother's was at your age."