Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 20

Mildred thought so too. "I will serve her to the very best of my power, Mrs. Dewsbury, if she will but try me;" and Mrs. Dewsbury noted the same eagerness that had been in her tone before, and smiled at it.

"She is willing to try you. Lady Dewsbury has, in fact, left the decision to the judgment of myself and the colonel. She has described exactly what she requires, and has empowered us to engage you, if we think you will be suitable."

"And will you engage me, Mrs. Dewsbury?"

"I will engage you now. The next question is about salary. Lady Dewsbury proposes to give at the rate of thirty pounds per annum for the first six months; after that at the rate of forty pounds; and should you remain with her beyond two years, it would be raised to fifty."

"Fifty!" echoed Mildred, in her astonishment. "Fifty pounds a year! For me!"

"Is it less than you expected?"

"It is a great deal more," was the candid answer. "I had not thought much about salary. I fancied I might be offered perhaps ten or twenty pounds."

Mrs. Dewsbury smiled. "Lady Dewsbury is liberal in all she does, Miss Arkell. I should not be surprised, were you to remain with her any considerable length of time, several years for instance, but she would double it."

But for the skeleton preying on Mildred Arkell's heart--the bitter agony that never left it by night or by day--she would have walked home, not knowing whether she trod on her head or her heels. The prospect of fifty pounds a-year to an inexperienced girl, who, perhaps, had never owned more than a few s.h.i.+llings at a time in her life, was enough to turn her head.

But it was not all to be quite plain sailing. Mildred had not disclosed the project to her aunt yet. Truth was, she shrunk from the task, foreseeing the opposition that would inevitably ensue. But it must no longer be delayed, for she was to depart for London that day week, and she went straight to Mrs. Arkells. As she had expected, Mrs. Arkell met the news with extreme astonishment and anger.

"Do you know what you are doing, child! Don't talk to me about being a burden upon Peter! You----"

"Aunt, hear me!" she implored: and be it observed, that to Mrs. Arkell, Mildred put not forth one word of that convenient plea of "seeing the world," that she had filled Peter with. To Mrs. Arkell she urged another phase of the reasoning, and one, in truth, which had no slight weight with herself--Peter's interests. "I ought not to be a burden upon Peter, aunt, and I will not. You know how his heart is set upon going to the university; but he cannot get there if he does not save for it? If I remain at home, the house must be kept up the same as now; the housekeeping expenses must go on; and it will take every s.h.i.+lling of Peter's earnings to do all this. Aunt, I could not live upon him, for very shame. While my mother was here it was a different thing."

"But--to go to Peter's own affairs for a moment," cried Mrs. Arkell, irascibly--"what great difference will your going away make to his expenses? Twenty pounds a year at most. Where's the use of your putting a false colouring on things to me?"

"I have not done so, aunt. Peter and I have talked these matters over since I resolved to go out, and I believe he intends to let his house."

"To let his house!"

"It is large for him now; large and lonely. He means to let it, if he can, furnished; just as it is."

"And take up his abode in the street?"

"He will easily find apartments for himself," said Mildred, feeling for and excusing Mrs. Arkell's unusual irritability. "And, aunt, don't you see what a great advantage this would be to him in his plans? Saving a great part of what he earns, receiving money for his house besides, he will soon get together enough to take him to college."

"I don't see anything, except that this notion of going away, which you have taken up, is a very wrong one. It cannot be permitted, Mildred."

"Oh! aunt, don't say so," she entreated. "Peter must put by."

"Let him put by; it is what he ought to do. And you, Mildred, must come to us. Be a daughter to me and to your uncle in our old age. Since William left it, the house is not the same, and we are lonely. We once thought--you will not mind my saying it now--that you would indeed have been a daughter to us, and in that case William's home and yours would have been here. He should never have left us."

"Aunt----"

"Be still, and hear me, Mildred. I do not ask you this on the spur of the moment, because you are threatening to go out to service; and it is nothing less. Child! did you think we were going to neglect you? To leave you alone with Peter, uncared for? Your uncle and I had already planned to bring you home to us, but we were willing to let you stay a short while with Peter, so as not to take everybody from him just at once. Why, Mildred, are you aware that your _mother_ knew you were to come to us?"

Mildred was not aware of it. She sat smoothing the black c.r.a.pe tucks of her dress with her forefinger, making no reply. Her heart was full.

"A few days after I made that foolish mistake--but indeed the fault was William's, and so I have always told him--I went and had it all out with Mrs. Dan. I told her how bitterly disappointed I and George both were; but I said, in one sense it need make no difference to us, for you should be our daughter still, and come home to us as soon as ever--I mean, when the time came that you would no longer be wanted at home. And I can tell you, Mildred, that your mother was gratified at the plan, though you are not."

Mildred's eyes were swimming. She felt that if she spoke, it would be to break into sobs.

"Your poor mother said it took a weight from her mind. The house is Peter's, as you know, and he can't dispose of it, but the furniture was hers, left absolutely to her by your papa at his death. She had been undecided whether she ought not to leave the furniture to you, as Peter had the house; and yet she did not like to take it from him. This plan of ours provided for you; so her course was clear, not to divide the furniture from the house. As it turned out, she made no will, through delaying it from time to time; and in law, I suppose, the furniture belongs as much to you as to Peter. You must come home to us, Mildred."

"Oh, aunt, you and my uncle are both very kind," she sobbed. "I should have liked much to come here and contribute to your comforts; but, indeed----"

"Indeed--what?" persisted Mrs. Arkell, pressing the point at which Mildred stopped.

"I cannot--I cannot come," she murmured, in her distress.

"But why?--what is your reason?"

"Aunt! aunt! do not ask me. Indeed I cannot stop in Westerbury."

They were interrupted by the entrance of William, and Mildred literally started from her seat, her poor heart beating wildly. She did not know of their return--had been in hopes, indeed, that she should have left the town before it; but, as she now learnt, they came home the previous night.

"I can make nothing of Mildred," cried Mrs. Arkell to her son; and in her anger and vexation, she gave him an outline of the case. "It is the most senseless scheme I ever heard of."

Mildred had touched the hand held out to her in greeting, and dried her tears as she best could, and altogether strove to be unconcerned and calm. _He_ looked well--tall, n.o.ble, good, as usual, and very happy.

"See if you can do anything to shake her resolution, William. I have tried in vain."

Mrs. Arkell quitted the room abruptly, as she spoke. Mildred pa.s.sed her handkerchief over her pale face, and rose from her seat.

Knowing what he did know, it was not a pleasant task for William Arkell.

But for the extreme sensitiveness of his nature, he might have given some common-place refusal, and run away. As it was, he advanced to her with marked hesitation, and a flush of emotion rose to his face.

"Is there _anything_ I can urge, Mildred, that will induce you to abandon this plan of yours, and remain in Westerbury?"

"Nothing," she replied.

"Why should you persist in leaving your native place?--why have you formed this strange dislike to remain in it?" he proceeded.

She would have answered him; she tried to answer him--any idle excuse that rose to her lips; but as he stood there, asking WHY she had taken a dislike to remain in the home of her childhood--he, the husband of another--the full sense of her bitter sorrow and desolation came rus.h.i.+ng on, and overwhelmed her forced self-control. She hid her face in her hands, and sobbed in anguish.

William Arkell, almost as much agitated as herself, drew close to her.

He took her hand--he bent down to her with a whisper of strange tenderness. "If _I_ have had a share in causing you any grief, or--or--disappointment, let me implore your forgiveness, Mildred. It was not intentionally done. You cannot think so."

She motioned him away, her sobs seeming as if they would choke her.

"Mildred, I must speak; it has been in my heart to do it since--you know when," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, in his emotion, and he gathered both her hands in his, and kept them there. "I have begun to think lately, since my marriage, that it might have been well for both of us had we understood each other better. You talk of going into the world, a solitary wanderer; and my path, I fear, will not be one of roses, although it was of my own choosing. But what is done cannot be recalled."

"I must go home," she faintly interrupted; "you are trying me too greatly." But he went on as though he heard her not.

"Can we not both make the best of what is left to us? Stay in Westerbury, Mildred! Come home here to my father and mother; they are lonely now. Be to them a daughter, and to me as a dear sister."

"I shall never more have my home in Westerbury," she answered; "never more--never more. We can bid each other adieu now."

A moment's miserable pause. "Is there no appeal from this, Mildred?"