Mr. Carr had nearly finished tea when he got in. The meal was taken in a small, snug room, at the end of the hall—a round room, whose windows opened upon the garden in summer, but were closed in now behind their crimson-velvet curtains.
Robert sat down in silence. He looked in the tea-pot, saw that it was nearly empty, and rang the bell to order fresh tea to be made for him. Whether the little assumption of authority (though it was no unusual circumstance) was distasteful to Mr. Carr, and put him further out of temper, cannot be told; one thing is certain, that he—he, the father—took up again the quarrel.
It was not a seemly one. Less loud than it had been at dinner-time, the tones on either side were graver, the anger more real and compressed. It seemed too deep for noise. An hour or so of this unhappy state of things, during which many, many bitter words were said by both, and then Robert rose.
"Remember," he said to his father, in a low, firm tone, "if I am driven from my home and my native place by this conduct of yours, I swear that I will never come back to it."
"And do you hear me swear," retorted Mr. Carr, in the same quiet, concentrated voice of passion, "if you marry that girl, Martha Ann Hughes, not one penny of my money or property shall you ever inherit; and you know that I will keep my word."
"I never said I had any thought of marrying her."
"As you please. Marry her; and I swear that I will leave all I possess away from you and yours. Before Heaven, I will keep my oath!"
And now we must go to the following morning, to the house of Mr. Arkell. These little details may appear trivial to the reader, but they bear their significance, as you will find hereafter; and they are remembered and talked of in Westerbury to this day.
The breakfast hour at Mr. Arkell's was nine o'clock. Some little time previous to it, William was descending from his room, when in passing his father's door he heard himself called to. Mr. Arkell appeared at his door in the process of dressing.
"William, I heard the carriage go out a short while ago. Have you sent it anywhere?"
Just the question that William had anticipated would be put. Being released now from his promise, he told the truth.
"Over to Purford! Why could he not have gone by the coach?"
"I don't know I'm sure," said William; and the same thought had occurred to himself. "I did not like to promise him without speaking to you, hut he made such a favour of it, and—I thought you would excuse it. I fancy he is on worse terms than ever with his father, and feared you might tell him."
"He need not have feared that: what should I tell him for?" was the rejoinder of Mr. Arkell as he retreated within his room.
Now it should have been mentioned that Mary Hughes was engaged to work that day at Mr. Arkell's. It was regarded in the town as a singular coincidence; and, perhaps, what made it more singular was the fact that Mrs. Arkell's maid, Tring (who had lived in the house ever since William was a baby, and was the only female servant kept besides the cook), had arranged with Mary Hughes that she should go before the usual hour, eight o'clock, so as to give a long day. The fact was, Mary Hughes's work this day was for the maids. It was Mrs. Arkell's custom to give them a gown apiece for Christmas, and the two gowns were this day to be cut out and as much done to them as the dressmaker, and Tring at odd moments, could accomplish. Mary Hughes, naturally obliging, and anxious to stand well with the servants in one of her best places, as Mrs. Arkell's was, arrived at half-past seven, and was immediately set to work in what Tring called her pantry—a comfortable little boarded room, a sort of offshoot of the kitchen.
Mr. Arkell spoke again at breakfast of this expedition of Robert Carr's. It wore to him a curious sound—first, that Robert could not have gone by the coach, which left Westerbury about the same hour, and had to pass through Purford on its way to London; and, secondly, why the matter of borrowing the carriage need have been kept from him. William could not enlighten him on either point, and the subject dropped.
Breakfast was over, and Mr. Arkell had gone into the manufactory, when the carriage came back. Philip drove at once to the stables, and William went out.
"Well," said he, "so you are back!"
"Yes, sir."
Philip began to unharness the horse as he spoke, and did not look up. William, who knew the man and his ways well, thought there was something behind to tell.
"You have driven the horse fast, Philip."
"Mr. Carr did, sir; it was he who drove. I never sat in front at all after we got to the three-cornered field. He drove fast, to get on pretty far before the coach came up."
"What coach?" asked William.
"The London coach, sir. He's gone to London in it."
"What! did he take it at Purford?"
"We didn't go to Purford at all, Mr. William. He ain't gone alone, neither."
"Philip, what do you mean?"
"Miss Hughes—the young one—is gone with him."
"No!" exclaimed William.
"It was this way, sir," began the man, disposing himself to relate the narrative consecutively. "I had got the carriage ready and waiting by a few minutes after eight, as he ordered me; but it was close upon half-past before he came, and we started. 'I'll drive, Philip,' says he; so I got in beside him. Just after we had cleared the houses, he pulls up before the three-cornered field, saying he was waiting for a friend, and I saw the little Miss Hughes come scuttering across it—it's a short cut from their house, you know, Mr. William—with a bit of a brown-paper parcel in her hand. 'You'll sit behind, Philip,' he says; and before I'd got over my astonishment, we was bowling along—she in front with him, and me behind. Just on this side Purford he pulled up again, and waited—it was in that hollow of the road near the duck-pond—and in two minutes up came the London coach. It came gently up to us, stopping by degrees; it was expecting him—as I could hear by the guard's talk, a saying he hoped he'd not waited long—and they got into it, and I suppose he's gone to London. Mr. William, I don't think the master will like this?"
William did not like it, either; it was an advantage that Robert Carr had no right to take. Had the girl forgotten herself at last, and gone off with him? Too surely he felt that such must be the case. He saw how it was. They had not chosen to get into the coach at Westerbury, fearing the scandal—fearing, perhaps, prevention; and Robert Carr had made use of this ruse to get her away. That there would be enough scandal in Westerbury, as it was, he knew—that Mr. Arkell would be indignant, he also knew; and he himself would come in for a large portion of the blame.
"Philip," he said, awaking from his reverie, "did the girl appear to go willingly?"
"Willingly enough, sir, for the matter of that, for she came up of her own accord—but she was crying sadly."
"Crying, was she?"
"Crying dreadfully all the way across the field as she came up, and along in this carriage, and when she got into the coach. He tried to persuade and soothe her; but it wasn't of any good. She hid her face with her veil as well as she could, that the outside passengers mightn't see her state as she got in; and there was none o' the inside."
William Arkell bit his lip. "Carr had no business to play me such a turn," he said aloud, in his vexation.
"Mr. William, if I had known what he was up to last night, I should just have told the master, in spite of the half-sovereign he gave me."
"Oh, he gave you one, did he?"
"He gave me one last evening, and he gave me another this morning; but, for all that, I should have told, if I'd thought she was to be along of him. I know what the master is, and I know what he'll feel about the