Works of Ellen Wood, page 647
Travice Arkell was in partnership with his father now. At the time of his leaving school there had been a visible improvement in the prospects of the manufacturers, and Mr. Arkell yielded to his son’s wish to join him, and hoped that the good times were coming back again. But the improvement had not lasted long; and Mr. Arkell was wont to say that Travice had cast in his lot with a sinking ship. The designation of the firm had never been altered; it was still “George Arkell and Son.” Times fluctuated very much. Just now again there was a slight improvement; and altogether Mr. Arkell was still upon the balance, to give up business or not to give it up, as he had been for so many years.
Henry walked home from the Bishop’s Garden, with the strange emotion displayed by Georgina Beauclerc, at the mention of Mr. St. John, telling upon his memory and his heart. Lucy met him at the door, her sweet face radiant.
“Oh, Henry! such news! News in two ways. I don’t know which to tell you first. One part concerns you.”
“Tell me that first, then,” said he, laughing.
“You are not to be at Mr. Arkell’s while we are away. You are to be at —— guess where.”
“I can’t guess at all. I don’t know anybody who’d have me.”
“At the master’s.”
His eye lightened as he looked up.
“Am I? I am so glad! Is it true, Lucy?”
“It is quite true. Mr. Wilberforce saw mamma at the window, and came in to ask her how she was, and when she went, and all that. Mamma said how puzzled she had been what to do with you, but it was decided now you were to go to Mr. Arkell’s. So then the master said he thought you had better go to him, and he should be most happy to invite you there for the time, no matter how long we remained away; and when mamma attempted to say something about the great kindness, he interrupted her, saying you had always been so good a pupil, and given him so little trouble, and did him altogether so much credit, that he should consider the obligation was on his side. So it is quite decided, Harry, and you are to go there.”
“That’s good news, then. And what’s the other, Lucy?”
“Ah! the other concerns me. It is good, too.”
“Are you going to be married?”
The question was but spoken in jest, and Henry wondered to see his sister’s face change; but she only shook her head and laughed.
“Eva Prattleton is to accompany us to the sea-side.”
“Eva Prattleton!”
“Mr. Prattleton came in just after the master left,” resumed Lucy. “He said he had come with a petition: would mamma take charge of Eva to the sea-side, and let her go with us? He had intended — you know we heard of it, Harry — to take his two daughters to Switzerland this summer for a treat; but he begins to fear that Eva will not be equal to the travelling, for she’s not strong, and a little thing fatigues her; and he thinks a month or two of quiet at the sea-side would do her more good. So that’s arranged as well as the other.”
“And what will Mary do?”
“Oh, she goes to Switzerland with her papa. He has not given up his journey. The two boys are to stay at home, and George Prattleton’s to take care of them.”
Henry laughed. The idea of Mr. George Prattleton’s taking care of the boys struck him as being something ludicrous.
“But what do you think mamma says?” added Lucy, dropping her voice. “The terms hinted at by Mr. Prattleton for Eva were so liberal, that mamma feels sure he is doing this as much to make our sojourn there more easy to us, as for Eva’s benefit; though she is not well, of course, and never has been since her mother’s death; the grief then seemed to take such a hold upon her. How kind to us the Prattletons have always been!”
Henry mentally echoed the words — for they were true ones — all unconscious that a time was quickly approaching when he should have to repay this kindness with something very like ingratitude.
CHAPTER II.
THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE.
Perhaps of all the changes time had wrought, in those connected with our history, not one was more remarkable than that in Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke, in regard to their position in the world. They had changed in themselves of course; we all change; and were now middle-aged people of some five-and-forty years: Mr. Dundyke being red and portly; his wife, thin and meek as ever.
Little by little, step by step, had David Dundyke risen in the world. There had come a day when he was made a fourth partner in that famous tea-importing house, with which he had been so long connected. He was now the third partner, and his income was a large one. There had also come a day when he was elected a common councilman (I am not sure but this has been previously mentioned), and now the old longing, the height of his ambition, was really and truly dawning upon him. In the approaching autumn he was to be proposed for sheriff; and that, as we all know, leads in time to the civic chair.
You will readily understand that it was not at all consistent for a partner in a wealthy tea house, and a common councilman rising into note and attending the civic feasts, to remain the tenant of two humble rooms. Mr. Dundyke had made a change long ago. He and his wife, clinging still to apartments, as being less trouble, and also less expense on the whole, had moved into handsome ones; and there they remained for some years. But the prospect of the shrievalty demanded something more; and latterly Mr. Dundyke had taken a handsome villa at Brixton, had furnished it well, and set himself up there with two maid servants and a footman. In some degree his old miserly habits were on him still, and he rarely spent where he could save, or launched into any extravagance unless he had an end in view in doing it; but he had never very much loved money for its own sake alone, only as means to an end.
His great care, now that the glorious end was near, was to blazon forth his importance. He wanted the world (his little world) to forget what he had been; to forget the pinching and saving, the poor way of living, the red-herring dinners, and the past in general. He did what he could to blot out the past in the present. He looked out for correspondents to address him as “esquire;” and he took to wear a ring with a crest upon it.
In this very month of July, when you saw Henry Arkell and the dean’s daughter walking in the Bishop’s Garden — and a very hot July it was — Mr. Dundyke came to the decision of taking a tour. What first put it into his unfortunate head to do so, his wife never knew; though she asked herself the question afterwards many and many a time. He debated the point with himself, to go or not to go, some little while; balancing the advantages against the drawbacks. On the one hand, it would cost time and money; on the other, it would certainly be another stepping-stone in his advancing greatness, the more especially if he could get the Post or some other fashionable organ to announce the departure of “David Dundyke, Esquire, and Lady, on a Continental tour.”
One sultry afternoon, when Mrs. Dundyke was sewing in her own sitting-room, he returned home somewhat earlier than usual.
“My mind is made up, Mrs. Dundyke,” he said, before he had had time to look round, as he came in, wiping his hot brows. “I told you I thought I should go that tour; and I mean to start as soon as we have fixed upon our route. It must be somewhere foreign.”
Mr. Dundyke’s intellectual improvement had not advanced in an equal ratio with his fortunes; he called tour tower, and route rout. Indeed, he spoke almost exactly as he used to speak.
“Foreign!” echoed Mrs. Dundyke, somewhat aghast. Her geographical knowledge had always been imperfect and confused; the retired life she led, occupied solely in domestic affairs, had not tended to enlarge it; and the word “foreign” suggested to her mind extremely remote parts of the globe — the two poles and Cape Horn. “Foreign?”
“One can’t travel anywhere now that’s not foreign, Betsey,” returned Mr. Dundyke, testily. “One can’t humdrum up and down England in a stage-coach, as one used to do.”
“True; but you said foreign. You don’t mean America — or China — or any of those parts, do you, David?”
“It’s never of no use talking to you about anything, Mrs. D.,” said the common-councilman, in wrath. “Chinar! Why, it would be a life-journey! I shall go to Geneva.”
“But, David, is not that very far?” she asked. “Where is it? Over in Greece, or Turkey, or some of those places.”
“It is in Switzerland, Mrs. D. The tip-top quality go to it, and I mean to go. It will cost a good deal, I know; but I can stand that.”
“And how shall we manage to talk Swiss?”
“There is no Swiss,” answered Mr. Dundyke. “The language spoke there is French; the guide-book says so.”
“It will be the same to us, David,” she mildly said; “we cannot speak French.”
“I know that ‘we’ means ‘yes,’ and ‘no’ means ‘no.’ We shall rub on well enough with that. So get all my stockings and shirts seen to, Betsey, and your own things; for the day after to-morrow I shall be off.”
His wife looked up, not believing in the haste. But it proved true, nevertheless; for Mr. Dundyke had a motive in it. On the morning but one after, an excursion opposition steamer was advertised to start for Boulogne — fares, half-a-crown; return-tickets, four shillings. Of course David Dundyke could not let so favourable an opportunity slip; he still saved where he could.
Accordingly, on the said morning, which was very squally, they found themselves on the crowded boat. Such a sight! such a motley freight! Half London, as it seemed, had been attracted by the cheapness; but it was by no means a fashionable assemblage, nor yet a refined one.
“I hear somebody saying we shall have it rough, David,” whispered Mrs. Dundyke, as they sat side by side, and the vessel passed Greenwich. “I hope we shall not be sea-sick.”
“Pooh! sea-sick! we shan’t be sea-sick!” imperiously cried the sheriff in prospective, as he turned his ring, now assumed for good, to the front of all beholders. “I don’t believe in sea-sickness for my part. We did not feel sick when we went to Gravesend; you remember that, don’t you, Betsey? It is more brag than anything else with people, talking about sea-sickness, that’s my belief; a genteel way of letting out that they can afford to be travellers.”
Excepting that one trip to Gravesend, of which he spoke, neither he nor his wife had ever been on the water in their lives. Neither of them had seen the sea. They had possessed really no inclination to stir from home; and saving had been, the ruling motive in David Dundyke’s life.
The steamer went on. The river itself growing rough at Gravesend, the dead-lights were put in; and as they got nearer to the sea, the wind was freshening to a gale. Oh, the good steamer! will she ever live through it? The unbelieving common-councilman, to his horror and dismay, found sea-sickness was not a brag. He lay on the floor of the cabin, groaning, and moaning, and bewailing his ill fate in having come to sea.
“Heaven forgive me for having thought of this foreign tour! Steward! He stops up with them outsiders on deck! Heavens! Steward! Call him, somebody! Tell him it’s for a common-councilman!”
Mrs. Dundyke was in the ladies’ cabin — very ill, but very quiet. A dandy-looking man, impervious to the miseries of the passage, who had nothing to do but gape and yawn, took a sudden look in, by way of gratifying his curiosity, and, having done so, withdrew again — not, however, before one of the lady passengers had marked him. She took him for the captain.
“Capting! capting!” she called out; “if you please is that the capting?”
“Which? — where?” asked the steward’s boy, to whom the question was addressed, turning round with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand, which he was presenting to another lady, groaning up aloft in a berth.
“He came in at the door; he have got on tan kid gloves and shiny boots.”
“That the captain!” cried the boy, gratified beyond everything at the lady’s notion of a captain’s rigging. “No, ma’am, he’s up on deck.”
“Just call the captain here, will you?” resumed the lady; “I know we are going down. I’m never ill aboard these horrid boats; but I’m worse, I’m dreadful timid.”
“There ain’t no danger, ma’am,” said the boy.
“I know there is danger, and I know we are a going to be emerged to the bottom. If you’ll call the capting down here, boy, I’ll give you sixpence; and if you don’t call him, I’ll have you punished for insolence.”
“Call him directly, ma’am,” said the boy, rushing off with alacrity.
“I am the captain,” exclaimed a rough voice, proceeding from a rough head, poking itself down the companion ladder; “what’s wanted of me?”
“Oh! capting, we are going to the fishes fast! and some of us is dead of fright already. The vessel’ll be in pieces presently! see how she rolls and pitches! and there’s the sea dashing over the decks and against them boards at the windows, such as I never heard it; and all that awful crashing and cording, what is it?”
“There ain’t no danger,” shortly answered the commander, mentally vowing to punch the boy’s head for calling him for nothing.
“Can’t you put back, and land us somewhere, or take us into smooth water?” implored the petitioner; “we’d subscribe for a reward for you, capting, sir.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” echoed a faint chorus of voices; “any reward.”
“There’s no danger whatever, I tell ye, ladies,” repeated the exasperated captain. “When we’ve got round this bit of headland, we shall have the wind at our starn, and go ahead as if the dickens druv us.”
With this consolatory information, the rough head turned round and vanished. The grinning boy came out of a corner where he had hid himself, and appealed to the lady for his promised sixpence.
“I know we are going down!” she cried, as she fumbled in her bag for one. “That capting ought to lose his place for saying there’s no danger; to me it’s apparent to be seen. If he’d any humanity in him, he’d put back and land us somewhere, if ’twas only on the naked shore. Good mercy! what a lurch! — and now we’re going to t’other side. No danger indeed! And all my valuable luggage aboard: my silk gownds, and my shawls, and my new lace mantle! Good gracious, ma’am, don’t pitch out of your berth! you’ll fall atop of me. Can’t you hold on? What were hands made for?”
Some hours more yet, and then the steward, who had been whisking and whirling like one possessed, now on deck, now in the cabins, and now in his own especial sanctum, amid his tin jugs and his broken crockery, came whirling in once more to the large cabin, and said they were at the mouth of Boulogne harbour. “Just one pitch more, ladies and gentlemen — there it is — and now we are in the port, safe and sound.”
“Don’t talk to me about being in,” cried poor Mr. Dundyke, from his place on the floor, not quite sure yet whether he was dead or alive, but rather believing he’d prefer to be the former. “Please don’t step upon me, anybody. I couldn’t stir yet.”
All minor disasters of the journey overcome, the travellers reached Paris in safety. So far, Mr. Dundyke had found no occasion to rub on with his “we” and “no,” for he encountered very few people who were not able to speak, or at least understand, a little English. But when they quitted Paris — and they remained in it but two days — then their difficulties commenced; and many were the distresses, and furious the fits of anger, of the common-councilman. It pleased Mr. Dundyke to travel by diligence on cross-country roads, rather than take the rail to Lyons — of which rail, and of all rails, he had a sort of superstitious dread — but this he found easy to do, though it caused him to be somewhat longer on the road. Here his tongue was at fault. He wanted to know the names of the towns and villages they passed through, the meaning of any puzzling object of wonder he saw on his way, and he could not ask; or, rather, he did ask repeatedly, but the answers conveyed to his ears only an unmeaning sound. It vexed him excessively.
“I don’t think they understand you, David,” Mrs. Dundyke said to him one day.
“And how should they understand, speaking nothing but heathen gibberish?” he returned. “It’s enough to make a saint swear.”
Another source of annoyance was the living. Those who have travelled by diligence in the more remote parts of France, and sat down to the tables-d’hôte at the road-side inns where the diligence halted, and remember the scrambling haste observed, may imagine the distresses of Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke. In common with their countrymen in general, they partook strongly of the national horror of frog-eating, and also of the national conviction that that delicate animal furnished the component parts of at least every second dish served up in France: so that it was little short of martyrdom to be planted down to a dinner, where half the dishes, for all the information they gave to the eye, might be composed of frogs, or something equally obnoxious. There would be the bouilli first, but Mr. Dundyke, try as he would, could not swallow it, although he had once dined on red-herrings; and there would be a couple of skinny chickens, drying on a dish of watercress, but before he could hope, in his English deliberation, to get at them, they were snapped up and devoured. Few men liked good living better than David Dundyke, — how else would he have been fit to become one of the renowned metropolitan body-corporate? — and when it was to be had at anybody else’s cost, none enjoyed it more. At these tables-d’hôte, eat or not eat, he had to pay, and bitter and frequent were the heartburnings at throwing away his good money, yet rising up with an empty stomach. Not a tenth part of the cravings of hunger did he and his wife ever satisfy at these miserable tables-d’hôte. The very idea of but the minutest portion of a frog’s leg going into their mouths, was more repulsive to their minds than that shuddering reminiscence of the steam-packet; and, what with this dread, and their inability to ask questions, Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke were nearly starved.
