Works of Ellen Wood, page 688
“Yes, it has pulled me down. At one period there was little chance of my life, I believe. But they no doubt told you all at the time. I daresay you knew more of the different stages of the danger than I did.”
“And what was it that brought it on?” asked Miss Fauntleroy, untying her bonnet, and throwing back the strings. “Brain fever is not a common disorder; it does not go about in the air!”
There was a slight trace of colour now on the thin cheeks, and she noticed it. Travice faintly shook his head to disclaim any knowledge on his own part.
“It is not very often that we know how these illnesses are brought on. My chief concern now” — and he looked up at her with a smile— “must be to find out how I can best throw it off.”
“I have been very anxious for some days to see you,” she resumed, after a pause. “Do you know what I have come to say?”
“No,” he said, rather languidly.
“But I’ll tell you first what I heard. When you were lying in that awful state between life and death — and it is an awful state, Travice, the danger of passing, without warning, to the presence of one’s Maker — I heard that it was I who had brought on the fever.”
His whole face was flushed now — a consciousness of the past had risen up so vividly within him. “You!” he uttered. “What do you mean?”
“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 nobody. 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 friendship. 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, wishing 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 appetite, 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! God 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 God for all the benefits that He hath done unto me?”
It was during this illness of Travice Arkell’s that a circumstance 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 nobody 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 assize 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 assize 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 assuming 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 assuredly 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 circumstances 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 circumstance, 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 associations 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. Dundyke’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 passing through the cloisters with Mrs. Dundyke, 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.
“Oh, Aunt Betsey” — she had caught the name from Travice— “if he had but lived! If he could but be with us to-morrow!”
Aunt Betsey touched with her gentle finger the sorrowing face. “He is better off, Lucy.”
“Yes, I know. But in times of joy it seems hard to remember it. I wonder — I hope it is not wrong to wonder it — whether he and mamma are always with me in spirit? I have grown to think so.”
“The thinking it will not do you harm, Lucy.”
“Oh, was it not a cruel thing, Aunt Betsey, for that boy Lewis to throw him down! He was forgiven by everybody at the time; but in my heart — I won’t say it. But for that, Henry might be alive now. They left the college school afterwards. Did you know that?”
“The Lewises? Yes; I think I heard it.”
“A reaction set in for Henry after he died, and the boys grew shy and cool to the two Lewises. In fact, they were sent to Coventry. They did not like it, and they left. The eldest went up to be in some office in London, and the youngest has gone to a private school.”
“It is strange that the two great inflicted evils in your family and in mine, should have come from the Carrs!” exclaimed Mrs. Dundyke. “But, my dear, do not let us get into a sorrowful train of thought to-day. And, all the sorrow we can give, cannot bring back to us those who are gone.”
“I wish you could have seen him!” murmured Lucy. “He was so beautiful! he — —”
“Here are people coming, my dear.”
Lucy turned away, drying her eyes. A clerical dignitary and a young lady were advancing through the cloisters. As they met, the young lady bowed to Lucy, and the gentleman raised his shovel hat — not so much as to acquaintances, as because they were ladies passing through his cloisters.
“Who are they?” whispered Mrs. Dundyke, when the echo of their footsteps had died away.
“The dean and Miss Beauclerc. Aunt Betsey, she knew Henry so well! She came to see him in his coffin.”
They were at Mr. Arkell’s house, in the evening — Lucy, her aunt, and Mrs. Dundyke. The breakfast in the morning was to be given in it, Miss Arkell’s house being small, and the carriages would drive there direct from St. James-the-Less. Mrs. Arkell, gracious now beyond everything, had sent for them to spend the last evening, and see the already laid-out table in the large drawing-room. She could not spare Travice that last evening, she said.
Oh, how it all came home to Mildred! She had gone to that house the evening before a wedding in the years gone by, taken to it perforce, because she dared make no plea of refusal. She had seen the laid-out table in the drawing-room then, just as she was looking down upon it now.
