Mildred Arkell Volume Iii Part 41

"Ah! Travice, I see how it has been. I know all. You have tried to like me, and you cannot. Be still, be calm; I do not reproach you even in thought. You loved Lucy Arkell long before anybody thought of me, in connection with you; and I declare I honour the constancy of your heart in keeping true to her. Now, if you are not tranquil I shall get my ears boxed by your doctors, and I'll not come and see you again."

"But----"

"You just be quiet. I'm going to do the talking, and you the listening.

There, I'll hold your hands in mine, as some old, prudent spirit might, to keep you still--a sister, say. That's all I shall ever be to you, Travice."

His chest was beginning to heave with emotion.

"I have a great mind to run away, and leave you to fancy you are going to be tied to me after all! _Pray_ calm yourself. Oh! Travice, why did you not tell me the truth--that you had no shadow of liking for me; that your love for another was stronger than death? I should have been a little mortified at first, but not for long. It is not your fault; you did all you could; and it has nearly killed you----"

"Who has been telling you this?" he interrupted.

"Never mind. Perhaps somebody, perhaps n.o.body. It's the town's talk, and that's enough. Do you think I could be so wicked and selfish a woman as to hold you to your engagement, knowing this? No! Never shall it be said of Barbara Fauntleroy, in this or in aught else, that she secured her own happiness at the expense of anybody else's."

"But Barbara----"

"Don't 'Barbara' me, but listen," she interrupted playfully, laying her finger on his lips. "At present you hate me, and I don't say that your heart may not have cause; but I want to turn that hatred into love. If I can't get it as a wife, Travice, I may as a friend. I like you very much, and I can't afford to lose you quite. Heaven knows in what way I might have lost you, had we been married; or what would have been the ending."

He lay looking at her, not altogether comprehending the words, in his weakness.

"You shall marry Lucy as soon as you are strong enough; and a little bird has whispered me a secret that I fancy you don't know yet--that you'll have plenty and plenty of money, more than I should have brought you. We'll have a jolly wedding; and I'll be bridesmaid, if she'll let me."

Barbara had talked till her eyes were running down with tears. His lashes began to glisten.

"I couldn't do it, Barbara," he whispered; "I couldn't do it."

"Perhaps not; but I can, and shall. Listen, you difficult old fellow, and set your mind and your conscience at rest. Before that great and good Being, who has spared you through this death-sickness, and has spared _me_, perhaps, a life of unhappiness, I solemnly swear that I will not marry you! I don't think I have much pride, but I've some; and I am above stooping to accept a man that all the world knows hates me like poison. I'd not have you now, Travice, though there were no Lucy Arkell in the world. A pretty figure I should cut on our wedding day, if I did hold you to your bargain! The town might follow us to church with a serenade of marrowbones and cleavers, as they do the butchers. I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end between us--on your side as on mine."

"It is not right, Barbara. It is not right that I should treat you so."

"I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end."

"I _can't_ tell it you."

"I'll not leave you until you tell me all is at an end," she persistently repeated. "No, not if I have to stop in the room all the blessed night, as your real sister might. What do I care for their fads and their punctilios? Here I'll stop."

He looked up in her face with a smile. It had more of _love_ in it than Barbara had ever seen expressed to her from him. She bent down and kissed his lips.

"There! that's an earnest of our new friends.h.i.+p. Not that I shall be giving you kisses in future, or expect any from you. Lucy might not like it, you know, or you either. I don't say _I_ should, for I may be marrying on my own score. We might have been an estranged man and wife, Travice, wis.h.i.+ng each other dead and buried and perhaps not gone to heaven, every day of our lives. We will be two firm friends. You don't reject _me_, you know; _I_ reject you, and you can't help yourself."

"We will be friends always, Barbara," he said, from the depths of his inmost heart, as he held her warm hand on his breast. "I am beginning to love you as one already."

"There's a darling fellow! Yes, I should call you so though Lucy were present. Oh, Travice! it's best as it is! A little bit of smart to get over--and that's what I have been doing the past week or so--and we begin on a truer basis. I never was suited to you, and that's the truth.

But we can be the best friends living. It won't spoil my appet.i.te, Travice; I'm not of that flimsy temperament. Fancy _me_ getting brain-fever through being crossed in love!"

She laughed out loud at the thought--a ringing, merry laugh. It put Travice at ease on the score of the "smart."

"And now I'm going into the manufactory to tell Mr. Arkell that you and I are _two_. If he asks for the cause, perhaps I shall whisper to him that I've found out you won't suit me and I prefer to look out for somebody that will; and when Mrs. Arkell asks it me, 'We've split, ma'am--split' I shall tell her. Travice! Travice! did you really think I could stand, knowing it, in the way of anybody's life's happiness?"

He drew her face down to his. He kissed it as he had never kissed it before.

"Friends for life! Firm, warm friends for life, you and I and Lucy! G.o.d bless you, Barbara!"

"Mind! I stand out for a jolly ball at the wedding! Lizzie and I mean to dance all night. Fancy us!" she added, with a laugh that rang through the room, "the two forlorn damsels that were to have been brides ourselves! Never mind; we shan't die for the lack of husbands, if we choose to accept them. But it's to be hoped our second ventures will turn out more substantial than our first."

And Travice Arkell, nearly overcome with emotion and weakness, closed his eyes and folded his hands as she went laughing from the room, his lips faintly moving.

"What can I do unto G.o.d for all the benefits that He hath done unto me?"

It was during this illness of Travice Arkell's that a circ.u.mstance took place which caused some slight degree of excitement in Westerbury.

Edward Blissett Hughes, who had gone away from the town between twenty and thirty years before, and of whom n.o.body had heard much, if any, tidings of since, suddenly made his appearance in it again. His return might not have given rise to much comment, but for the very prominent manner in which his name had been brought forward in connexion with the a.s.size cause; and perhaps no one was more surprised than Mr. Hughes himself when he found how noted he had become.

It matters not to tell how the slim working man of three or four-and-thirty, came back a round, comfortable, portly gentleman of sixty, with a smart, portly wife, and well to do in the world. Well to do?--nay, wealthy. Or how he had but come for a transitory visit to his native place, and would soon be gone again. All that matters not to us; and his return needed not to have been mentioned at all, but that he explained one or two points in the past history, which had never been made quite clear to Westerbury.

One of the first persons to go to see him was William Arkell; and it was from that gentleman Mr. Hughes first learnt the details of the dispute and the a.s.size trial.

Robert Carr had been more _malin_--as the French would express it--than people gave him credit for. That few hours' journey of his to London, three days previous to the flight, had been taken for one sole purpose--the procuring of a marriage licence. Edward Hughes, vexed at the free tone that the comments of the town were a.s.suming in reference to his young sister, made a tardy interference, and gave Robert Carr his choice--the breaking off the acquaintance, or a marriage. Robert Carr chose the latter alternative, stipulating that it should be kept a close secret; and he ran up to town for the licence. Whether he really meant to use it, or whether he only bought it to appease in a degree the aroused precautions of the brother, cannot be told. That he certainly did not intend to make use of it so soon, Edward Hughes freely acknowledged now. The hasty marriage, the flight following upon it, grew out of that last quarrel with his father. From the dispute at dinner-time, Robert went straight to the Hughes's house, saw Martha Ann, got her consent, and then sought the brother at his workshop, as Edward Hughes still phrased it, and arranged the plans with him for the following morning. Sophia Hughes was of necessity made a party to the scheme, but she was not told of it until night; and Mary they did not tell at all, not daring to trust her. Brother and sister bound themselves to secrecy, for the sake of the fortune that Robert Carr would a.s.suredly lose if the marriage became known; and they suffered the taint to fall on their sister's name, content to know that it was undeserved, and to look forward to the time when all should be cleared up by the reconciliation between father and son, or by the death of Mr.

Carr. They were anxious for the marriage, so far beyond anything they could have expected, and, consequently, did not stand at a little sacrifice. Human nature is the same all the world over, and ambition is inherent in it. Robert Carr, on his part, risked something--the chance that, with all their precautions, the fact of the marriage might become known. That it did not, the event proved, as you know; but circ.u.mstances at that moment especially favoured them. The rector of St. James the Less was ill; the Reverend Mr. Bell was Robert Carr's firm friend and kept the secret, and there was no clerk. They stole into the church one by one on the winter's morning. Mr. Bell was there before daylight, got it open, and waited for them. The moment Mary Hughes was out of the house, at half-past seven, in pursuance of her engagement at Mrs.

Arkell's, Martha Ann was so enveloped in cloaks and shawls that she could not have been readily recognised, had anybody met her, and sent off alone to the church. Her brother and sister followed by degrees.

Robert Carr was already there; and as soon as the clock struck eight, the service was performed. One circ.u.mstance, quite a little romance in itself, Mr. Hughes mentioned now; and but for a fortunate help in the time of need, the marriage might, after all, not have been completed.

Robert Carr had forgotten the ring. Not only Robert, but all of them.

That important essential had never once occurred to their thoughts, and none had been bought. The service was arrested midway for the want of it. A few moments' consternation, and then Sophia Hughes came to the rescue. She had been in the habit of wearing her mother's wedding-ring since her death, and she took it from her finger, and the service was completed with it. The party stole away from the church by degrees, one by one, as they had gone to it, and escaped observation. Few people were abroad that dark, dull morning; and the church stood in a lonely, unfrequented part. The getting away afterwards in Mr. Arkell's carriage was easy.

"Ah," said Mr. Arkell now to the brother, "I did not forgive Robert Carr that trick he played upon me for a long while, it so vexed my father. He thought the worst, you know; and for your sister's sake, could not forgive Robert Carr. Had he known of the marriage, it would have been a different thing."

"No one knew of it--not a soul," said Mr. Hughes. "Had we told one, we might as well have told all. I and Sophia knew that we could keep our own counsel; but we could not answer beyond ourselves--not even for Mary."

"Could you not trust her?"

"Trust her!" echoed Mr. Hughes. "Her tongue was like a sieve: it let out everything. She missed mother's ring off Sophia's finger. Sophia said she had lost it--she didn't know what else to say--and before two days were out, the town-crier came to ask if she'd not like it cried. Mary had talked of the loss high and low."

"Did she never know that there had been a marriage?" asked Mr. Arkell.

"Quite at the last, when she had but a day or two left of life. Sophia told her then; she had grieved much over Martha Ann, and was grieving still. Sophia told her, and it sent her easy to her grave. Soon after she died, Sophia married Jem Pycroft, and they came out to me. She's dead now. So that there's only me left out of the four of us," added the returned traveller, after a pause.

"And Martha Ann's eldest son became a clergyman, you say; and he died! I should like to see the other two children she left. Do they live in Rotterdam?"

"I am not sure; but you would no doubt hear of them there. They sold off Marmaduke Carr's property when they came into it, after the trial. It's not to be wondered at: they had no pleasant a.s.sociations connected with Westerbury."

Edward Hughes burst into a laugh. "What a blow it must have been for stingy John Carr!"

"It was that," said Mr. Arkell. "He is always pleading poverty; but there's no doubt he has been saving money ever since the old squire died and he came into possession. That can't be far short of twenty years now."

"Twenty years! How time flies in this world, sir!" was the concluding remark of Mr. Hughes.

There was no drawback thrown in the way of _this_ marriage of Travice Arkell's, by himself, or by anybody else; and the day for it was fixed as soon as he became convalescent. Mrs. Arkell had to reconcile herself to it in the best way she could; and if she found it a pill to swallow, it was at least a gilded one: Mrs. Dund.y.k.e's money would go to him and Lucy--and there was Miss Arkell's as well. They would be placed above the frowns of the world the hour they married, and Travice could turn amateur astronomer at will.

On the day before that appointed for the ceremony, Lucy, in pa.s.sing through the cloisters with Mrs. Dund.y.k.e, from some errand in the town, stopped as she came to that gravestone in the cloisters. She bent her head over it, for she could hardly read the inscription--what with the growing dusk, and what with her blinding tears.