Works of Ellen Wood, page 631
“What do you think of my choice?”
“People will say you might have made a better.”
“I don’t care if they do,” returned Mr. William, firing up. “I have a right to please myself, and I will please myself. I am not taking a wife for other people, meddling mischief-makers!”
The outburst seemed unnecessary. It struck Mildred that he must have seriously feared opposition from some quarter, the tone of his voice was so sore a one. She looked up with questioning eyes.
“I have plenty of money, you know, Mildred,” he added, more quietly. “I don’t want to look out for a fortune with my wife.”
“Very true,” murmured Mildred.
“I wonder whether she has brought it out to my father?” resumed William, nodding towards his mother at the card-table. “I don’t think she has; he seems only just as usual. She’ll make it the subject of a curtain-lecture to-night, for a guinea!”
Mildred stole a glance at her uncle. He was intent on his cards, good old man, his spectacles pushed to the top of his ample brow.
“Do you know, Mildred, I was half afraid to come to the point with them,” he presently said. “I dreaded opposition. I — —”
“But why?” timidly interrupted Mildred.
“Well, I can’t tell why. All I know is, that the feeling was there — picked up somehow. I dreaded opposition, especially from my mother; but, as I say, I cannot tell why. I never was more surprised than when she said I had made her happy by my choice — that it was a union she had set her heart upon. I am not sure yet, you know, that my father will approve it.”
“He may urge against it the want of money,” murmured Mildred; “it is only reasonable he should. And — —”
“It is not reasonable,” interposed William Arkell, in a tone of resentment. “There’s nothing at all in reason that can be urged against it; and I am sure you don’t really think there is, Mildred.”
“And yet you acknowledge that you dreaded opening the matter to them?”
“Yes, because fathers and mothers are always so exacting over these things. Every crow thinks its own young bird the whitest, and many a mother with an only son deems him fit to mate with a princess of the blood-royal. I declare to you, Mildred, I felt a regular coward about telling my mother — foolish as the confession must sound to you; and once I thought of speaking to you first, and getting you to break it to her. I thought she might listen to it from you better than from me.”
Mildred thought it would have been a novel mode of procedure, but she did not say so. Her cousin went on: —
“We must have the wedding in a month, or so; I won’t wait a day longer, and so I told my mother. I have seen a charming little house just suitable for us, and — —”
“You might have consulted me first, William, before you fixed the time.”
“What for? Nonsense! will not one time do for you as well as another?”
Miss Arkell looked up at her cousin: he seemed to be talking strangely.
“But where is the necessity for hurrying on the wedding like this?” she asked. “Not to speak of other considerations, the preparations would take up more time.”
“Not they,” dissented Mr. William, who had been accustomed to have things very much his own way, and liked it. “I’m sure you need not raise a barrier on the score of preparation, Mildred. You won’t want much beside a dress and bonnet, and my mother can see to yours as well as to Charlotte’s. Is it orthodox for the bride and bridesmaid to be dressed alike?”
“Who was it fixed upon the bridesmaid?” asked Mildred. “Did you?”
“Charlotte herself. But no plans are decided on, for I said as little as I could to my mother. We can go into details another day.”
“With regard to a bridesmaid, Mary Pembroke has always been promised — —”
“Now, Mildred, I won’t have any of those Pembroke girls playing a conspicuous part at my wedding,” he interrupted. “What you and my mother can see in them, I can’t think. Provided you have no objection, let it be as Charlotte says.”
“I think Charlotte takes more upon herself than she has any cause to do,” returned Mildred, the old sore feeling against Miss Travice rising again into prominence in her heart.
“I’ll tell her if you don’t mind, Mildred,” laughed William. “But now I think of it, it was not Charlotte who mentioned it, it was my mother. She — —”
“Mr. Peter Arkell.”
The announcement was Tring’s. It cut off William’s sentence in the midst, and also any further elucidation that might have taken place. Peter came forward in his usual awkward manner, and was immediately pressed into the service of cribbage, in the place of Miss Travice, who never “put out” to the best advantage, and could not count. As Peter took her seat, he explained that his early appearance was owing to his having remained but an hour with Mr. Arthur Dewsbury, who was going out that evening.
Charlotte Travice sat down to the piano, and William got his flute. Sweet music! but, nevertheless, it grated on Mildred’s ear. His whole attention became absorbed with Charlotte, to the utter neglect of Mildred. Now and then he seemed to remember that Mildred sat behind, and turned round to address a word to her; but his whispers were given to Charlotte. “It is not right,” she murmured to herself in her bitter pain; “this night, of all others, it is not surely right. If she were but going back to London before the wedding!”
Supper came in, for they dined early, you remember; and afterwards Mrs. Dan and Mildred had their bonnets brought down.
“What a lovely night it is!” exclaimed Peter, as he waited at the hall door.
“It is that!” assented William, looking out; “I think I’ll have a run with you. Those stars are enough to tempt one forth. Shall I go, Mildred?”
“Yes,” she softly whispered, believing she was the attraction, not the stars.
But Mrs. Dan lingered. The fact was, Mrs. Arkell had drawn her to the back of the hall.
“Did you speak to her, Betty?”
“I spoke to her as soon as she came home. It was that that made us late.”
“Well? She does not object to William?”
“Not she. I’ll tell you a secret,” continued Mrs. Dan; “I could see by Mildred’s agitation when I told her to-day, that she already loved William. I suspected it long ago.”
Mrs. Arkell nodded her head complacently. “I noticed her face when he was talking to her as they sat apart to-night; and I read love in it, if it ever was read. Yes, yes, it is all right. I thought I could not be mistaken in Mildred.”
“I say, Aunt Dan, are you coming to-night or to-morrow?” called out William.
“I am coming now, my dear,” replied Mrs. Dan; and she walked forward and took her son’s arm. William followed with Mildred.
“Now, Mildred, don’t you go and tell all the world to-morrow about this wedding of ours,” he began; “don’t you go chattering to those Pembroke girls.”
“How can you suppose it likely that I would?” was the pained answer.
“Why, I know all young ladies are fond of gossiping, especially when they get hold of such a topic as this.”
“I don’t think I have ever deserved the name of gossip,” observed Mildred, quietly.
“Well, Mildred, I do not know that you have. But it is not all girls who possess your calm good sense. I thought it might be as well to give even you a caution.”
“William, you are scarcely like yourself to-night,” she said, anxiously. “To suppose a caution in this case necessary for me!”
He had begun to whistle, and did not answer. It was a verse of “Robin Adair,” the song Charlotte was so fond of. When the verse was whistled through, he spoke —
“How very bright the stars are to-night! I think it must be a frost.”
Inexperienced as Mildred was practically, she yet felt that this was not the usual conversation of a lover on the day of declaration, unless he was a remarkably cool one. While she was wondering, he resumed his whistling — a verse of another song, this time.
Mildred looked up at him. His face was lifted towards the heavens, but she could see it perfectly in the light of the night. He was evidently thinking more of the stars than of her, for his eyes were roving from one constellation to another. She looked down again, and remained silent.
“So you like my choice, Mildred!” he presently resumed.
“Choice of what?” she asked.
“Choice of what! As if you did not know! Choice of a wife.”
“How is it you play so with my feelings this evening?” she asked, the tears rushing to her eyes.
“I have not played with them that I know of. What do you mean, Mildred? You are growing fanciful.”
She could not trust her voice to reply. William again broke into one of his favourite airs.
“I proposed that we should be married in London, amidst her friends,” he said, when the few bars were brought to a satisfactory conclusion. “I thought she might prefer it. But she says she’d rather not.”
“Amidst whose friends?” inquired Mildred, in amazement.
“Charlotte’s. But in that case I suppose you could not have been bridesmaid. And there’d have been all the trouble of a journey beforehand.”
“I bridesmaid!” exclaimed Mildred; and all the blood in her body seemed to rush to her brain as a faint suspicion of the terrible truth stole into it. “Bridesmaid to whom?”
William Arkell, unable to comprehend a word, stopped still and looked at her.
“You are dreaming, Mildred!” he exclaimed.
“What do you mean? Who is it you are going to marry?” she reiterated.
“Why, what have we been talking of all the evening? What did my mother say to you to-day? What has come to you, Mildred? You certainly are dreaming.”
“We have been playing at cross purposes, I fear,” gasped Mildred, in her agony. “Tell me who it is you are going to marry.”
“Charlotte Travice. Whom else should it be?”
They were then turning round by what was called the boundary wall; the old elms in the dean’s garden towered above them, and Mildred’s home was close in sight. But before they reached it, William Arkell felt her hang heavily and more heavily on his arm.
Ah! how she was struggling! Not with the pain — that could not be struggled with for a long, long while to come — but with the endeavour to suppress its outward emotion. All, all in vain. William Arkell bent to catch a glimpse of her features under the bonnet — worn large in those days — and found that she was white as death, and appeared to be losing consciousness.
“Mildred, my dear, what ails you?” he asked, kindly. “Do you feel ill?”
She felt dying; but to speak was beyond her, then. William passed his arm round her just in time to prevent her falling, and shouted out, excessively alarmed —
“Peter! Aunt! just come back, will you? Here’s something the matter with Mildred.”
They were at the door then, but they heard him, and hastened back. Mildred had fainted.
“What can have caused it?” exclaimed Peter, in his consternation. “I never knew her faint in all her life before.”
“It must have been that rich cream tart at supper,” lamented Mrs. Dan, half in sympathy, half in reproof. “I have told Mildred twenty times that pastry, eaten at night, is next door to poison.”
And so this was to be the ending of all her cherished dreams! Mildred lay awake in her solitary chamber the whole of that live-long night. There was no sleep, no rest, no hope for her. Desolation the most complete had overtaken her — utter, bitter, miserable desolation.
CHAPTER VII.
A HEART SEARED.
Mildred Arkell, in the midst of her agony, had the good sense to see that some extraordinary misapprehension had occurred, either on her mother’s part or on Mrs. Arkell’s; that William had not announced his wish of marrying her, but Charlotte Travice. From that time forward, Mildred would have a difficult part to play in the way of concealment. Her dearest feelings, her bitter mortification, her sighs of pain must be hidden from the world; and she prayed God to give her strength to go through her task, making no sign. The most embarrassing part would be to undeceive her mother; but she must do it, and contrive to do it without suspicion that she was anything but indifferent to the turn affairs had taken. Commonplace and insignificant as that little episode was — the partaking of a rich cream tart at Mrs. Arkell’s supper-table — Mildred was thankful for it. Her mother, remarkably single-minded by nature, unsuspicious as the day, would never think of attributing the fainting fit to any other cause.
It may at once be mentioned that the singular misapprehension was on the part of Mrs. Arkell. She was so thoroughly imbued with the hope — it may be said with the notion — that her son would espouse Mildred, that when William broached the subject in a hasty and indistinct manner, she somehow fell into the mistake. The fault was probably William’s. He did not say much, and his own fear of his mother’s displeasure caused him to be anything but clear and distinct. Mrs. George Arkell caught at the communication with delight, believing it to refer to Mildred. She mentioned a word herself, in her hasty looking forward, about a bridesmaid. The names of Mildred and Charlotte, not either of them mentioned above once, got confused together, and altogether the mistake took place, William himself being unconscious of it.
William ran home that night, startling them with the news of the indisposition of Mildred. She had fainted in the street as they were going home. Mr. and Mrs. Arkell, loving Mildred as a daughter, were inexpressibly concerned; Charlotte Travice sat listening to the tale with wondering ears and eyes. “My aunt said it must be the effect of the cream tart at supper,” he observed, “but I think that must be all rubbish. As if cream tart would make people faint! And Mildred has eaten it before.”
“It was the agitation, my dear. It was nothing else,” whispered Mrs. Arkell to her guest, confidentially, as she bid her good night in the hall. “A communication like that must cause agitation to the mind, you know.”
“What communication?” asked Charlotte, in surprise. For Mrs. Arkell spoke as if her words must necessarily be understood.
“Don’t you know? I thought William had most likely told you. It’s about her marriage. But there, we’ll talk of it to-morrow, I won’t keep you now, Miss Charlotte, and I have to speak to Mr. Arkell.”
Charlotte continued her way upstairs, wondering excessively; not able, as she herself expressed it, to make head or tail of what Mrs. Arkell meant. Mrs. Arkell returned to the dining-room, asked her husband to sit down again for a few minutes, for he was standing with his bed-candle in his hand, and she made the communication.
Elucidation was, however, near at hand, as it of necessity must be. On the following morning nothing was said at the breakfast-table; but on their going into the manufactory, Mr. Arkell took his son into his private room. Mr. Arkell sat down before his desk, and opened a letter that waited on it before he spoke. William stood by the fire, rather nervous.
“So, young sir! you are wanting, I hear, to encumber yourself with a wife! Don’t you think you had better have taken one in your leading-strings?”
“I am twenty-five, sir,” returned William, drawing himself up in all the dignity of the age. “And you have often said you hoped to see me settled before — —”
“Before I died. Very true, you graceless boy. But you don’t want me to die yet, I suppose?”
“Heaven forbid it!” fervently answered William.
“Well,” continued the good man — and William had known from the first, by the tone of the voice, the twinkle in the eye, that he was pleased instead of vexed— “I cannot but say you have chosen worthily. I suppose I must look over her being portionless.”
“Our business is an excellent one, and you have saved money besides, sir,” observed William. “To look out for money with my wife would be superfluous.”
“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 glasses to the top of his forehead, the better to stare at his son — for those glasses 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 ambassador you would make at a foreign court!” he began; “to mistake your credentials in this manner!”
