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                                  THE
                          MOORS AND THE FENS.


                                   BY

                            F. G. TRAFFORD.


                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.


                                LONDON:
                  SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.

                                 1858.


               [_The Right of Translation is reserved._]


                                London:
 Printed by SMITH, ELDER & CO., Little Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey.




                               CONTENTS.


            CHAP.                                        PAGE
              I.— A Happy Home                              1
             II.— The Wilfulness of Youth                  21
            III.— Introduces Mr. Alfred Westwood           43
             IV.— Mina                                     58
              V.— Renders a Change of Abode necessary      77
             VI.— Fancy and Fact                           99
            VII.— Brother and Sister                      120
           VIII.— Treats of many things                   141
             IX.— Advances the Story but little           156
              X.— Dead Men’s Shoes                        178
             XI.— The Baronet’s First-born                195
            XII.— A Bone of Contention                    215
           XIII.— The Spider and the Fly                  242
            XIV.— Ernest begins to see the Value of Life  266
             XV.— A Discovery                             291
            XVI.— Cousin Allan                            309




                        THE MOORS AND THE FENS.




                               CHAPTER I.
                             A HAPPY HOME.


Amongst the fens of Lincolnshire—in the dreariest portion of that
miserable county, where all is barren and, if not unprofitable, at least
uninteresting—stood, at the period this history commences, an
old-fashioned, dingy-looking mansion, tenanted by Sir Ernest Ivraine,
the miser-descendant of a long line of contemptible ancestors.

The house, situated near the centre of a large quagmiry park, commanded
a mournful view over marshy lands, stagnant pools, and a river, so
sluggish in its course that all kinds of water-plants grew and
flourished on the surface; connecting it, in reality as in appearance,
with the low flat fields bordering it—for they were terrestrial swamps,
while it was an aquatic one.

How far the roots of the poplar and willow trees, standing like spectral
sentinels at regular intervals along the margin of the “stream”—as the
natives, with a species of satire, none the less melancholy because
unconscious, called it—had to penetrate before reaching a solid
foundation, was a mystery nobody ever cared to fathom; for the damp
stagnated the curiosity as well as the blood of the inhabitants: and
whilst the guardians of the sorrowful river throve upon its banks, it
was deemed, and justly, a matter of secondary importance how they
managed to effect it.

Of all trees in the world poplars are, surely, the least beautiful;
particularly when, as is the most approved mode in Lincolnshire, they
are clipped and pruned, and stuck like sinful spirits along the edges of
stagnant rivers, to make the desolate landscape look—if that were
possible—doubly desolate and forlorn.

What an unspeakably wretched place that “Paradise” was where Sir Ernest
Ivraine lived and sinned: or rather, starved and sinned! Who could have
dreamed that, in times long past, it was so christened, not by a grim
old cynic, but by a fair young bride; who soon, pining away broken
hearted, sickened, died, and sought a brighter and a happier home? What
mortal man, seeing the baronet’s abode on a December’s day, would have
credited, had verbal testimony not been corroborated by additional
evidence, that any human being could choose to inhabit such a spot, if
it were possible for him, by dint of labour or stratagem, to escape from
it?

In the glorious summer days, indeed, when most of the fields were
covered with waving corn, and the swamps donned a brownish-greenish
mantle, and draining was spoken of by theoretical persons as possible;
when water-lilies bloomed on the bosom of the slimy river, and
everything looked its very best; it became just palpable to the vivid
imaginations of a few, that, with an immense expenditure of money,
something might be made of the place: and people suggested that, when
the old baronet died, great improvements might be anticipated; for, of
course, Sir Ernest the younger, when he came to his estate and title,
would render the home of his boyhood worthy of its name and his
ancestors. In plain words, Lincolnshire sages expected he would waste a
fortune in endeavouring to beautify that which nature and climate
decreed should never be beautiful, or habitable for more than three
brief months out of the twelve universally admitted to “make one year.”

Very little doubt ever remains on the minds of unprejudiced individuals,
after visiting the favoured county referred to, that when Dr. Syntax set
out on his memorable journey in search of the picturesque, it was
through Lincolnshire he wandered; and, in support of the above
proposition, it may briefly be stated, that the only pretty or cheering
object visible from the windows of Paradise was the grey primitive
church spire of Lorton; which always, solemnly though silently, reminded
him whose eye fell upon it, that sooner or later he would have finished
gazing wearily over the swampy earth, and be lying, with closed lids and
quiet heart, under it.

It might have been imagined that years spent in a place like this, must
have reduced any human being to a state of utter hopelessness: have
paled his cheek, crushed his spirit, emaciated his body, and enfeebled
his mind; but such was not the case with a single inhabitant of that
dreary pile, whose interior indeed more resembled Tartarus than what the
poor gentle lady had fancied it would prove to her—Paradise.

But some people, like some plants, seem able to flourish anywhere; and
the minds of a few, instead of stagnating by reason of dwelling among
swamps, either prey incessantly on themselves or else become restlessly
active in striking out, on the anvils of their imaginations, burning
plans, presenting a remote chance of escape from the bonds wherewith
destiny has bound them.

The first effect had apparently been produced, by place and
circumstances, upon Ernest Ivraine, the elder son of the baronet, heir
apparent to the old man’s title, and to the swamps and waters and
poplars of Paradise,—heir presumptive to the gold, and bonds, and
mortgages, and title-deeds which his father kept under lock and key so
rigidly, that relative nor stranger never knew what might be the precise
amount of the wealth in the midst of which he denied himself and his
sons everything, save the poorest and barest necessaries of existence.
It appeared, indeed, as if the stern and gloomy young man had at length
come to the conclusion that it was desirable for him to relinquish
altogether a habit wherein, even at his best, he could scarcely have
been deemed proficient—that of thinking aloud. He very rarely spoke: two
or three persons, besides his brother, had, it is true, a vague
recollection of having, at some remote period, heard Ernest Ivraine
talk; but the recollection was so very vague, that they frequently felt
inclined to believe it a delusion.

He seemed to have finally retired into himself, in the conviction that
life, under such circumstances, was a curse, and grumbling would not
mend the matter. If he could have grown callous and insensible, it would
have been better for him; but not having been endowed by nature with the
invaluable faculty of converting himself _à plaisir_ into a vegetable,
he decided on taking refuge in silence.

Personally he was what that portion of Her Majesty’s subjects
disrespectfully termed “bogtrotters,” so expressively style “a dark
solitary looking man,” who might readily enough have passed for thirty,
ere twenty-three years had set their stamp upon his brow. His hair was
black, long, and innocent of the remotest intention of curling; his
whiskers were also of the same raven shade, and as he considered it a
useless labour to make more than a very moderate use of the razor, the
lower portion of his face looked blue; thus affording a strange contrast
to the remainder of his countenance, which was of a clear olive. Large
melancholy eyes, seeming to be perpetually gazing forth, bitterly and
sorrowfully, over the world in which he had been so unhappily placed; a
straight nose; a mouth, which, when he did open it, displayed teeth
white and regular; these were the main features of a face, whose
characteristic expression was that of proud, quiet, despairing grief. It
would have been impossible to determine from it, whether he were
possessed of talent, of the capability to love, of the desire to
struggle; whether he cared for anything or nothing; if his temper were
good or bad; if his principles were noble or the reverse; what his rules
of action might be, or whether he had any. Only three things could
positively be ascertained from his countenance, namely, that he thought
about something, and felt a vast deal; and that what he thought about,
and upon what subject he felt so deeply, mortal man would never learn
from those firmly-compressed lips, which he only opened when dire
necessity compelled the disagreeable task.

He lived in himself; whether for himself alone was a mystery, which,
like the roots of the poplar trees, no one cared to solve: perhaps his
thoughts remained in the swamps; perhaps they went further, and struck
deep in better soil beyond; some few suggested they stayed in his
father’s coffers: at all events, nobody knew where they dwelt, or what
they were.

Two years and six brief months of disparity in their ages did not solely
make the vast difference betwixt him and his only brother, Henry. We
must bear in mind the dissimilarity of their characters—wide as the
poles asunder: the elder endured, the younger chafed; the former
thought, the latter acted; Ernest was prudent, Henry rash; the one was
stern and melancholy by nature, the other had been rendered indignant
and desperate by circumstances. Ernest seemed older than he actually
was, his brother younger; the hair of the latter was light, his step
rapid, his manner frank, his complexion fair, his character energetic,
his temper amiable, though hasty. He was disposed to look on the bright
side of things; and assuredly it was not his fault that there was
nothing bright or happy about Paradise, excepting the birds singing in
the neglected gardens, and the water-lilies when they were in bloom:
nothing bright nor happy,—no one to talk to, to love, to cling to, to
confide in, to sympathise with, save Ernest, his silent brother. But,
notwithstanding his silence and his melancholy, and the dissimilarity of
their natures, it was quite touching to note the affection these two
young men entertained for one another; to hear how for hours the younger
would talk and the elder listen; to see how completely Henry seemed to
understand Ernest, not by the power of knowledge, but by the force of
faith and confiding love.

The unwavering, sterling attachment the miser’s sons felt and retained
in their hearts, from infancy to age, was for many and many a year the
only moral flower which bloomed and flourished in the withering,
pestilential atmosphere of Paradise.

“Ernest,” said the younger, as they sat together one gloomy November’s
evening over the smouldering embers of a wood fire, “Ernest.”

The person so addressed removed his steadfast gaze from the ashes on the
hearth, and fixing it, as was his wont, earnestly on his brother,
briefly answered, “Well!”

“I want you to attend to me for five minutes.”

“I am attending, pray go on,” said Ernest.

“I wish to tell you I have finally made up my mind that this state of
things can be endured no longer: what say you?”

“Nothing,” was the rejoinder.

“Yes, but I want you to say something: you do not think we ought to bear
it?”

“I do not see how we can avoid it.”

“We are not _forced_ to bear it,” remarked the younger.

“How do you make that out?” demanded Ernest.

“I will explain,” Henry continued; “but first let me throw a little
light on your face before proceeding to throw some light on my subject.
Now you need not say no, nor look so grave, for I am not going to be
frozen for any man living, even though he be my father; there are as
many branches and twigs and sticks about the park as would keep us
years. I expect one of these days to be ordered out to gather them: I
saw my father picking some up the other morning: but, at all events,
while the fuel lasts, we will have a rousing fire for once: so here
goes.”

As he spoke, he flung two or three short logs of wood on the embers, and
laughed bitterly to see how speedily they ignited, and how the flames
went crackling and blazing up the chimney.

“Now I can go on,” he said, looking fixedly at Ernest, whose face seemed
to grow graver and sterner by the changing light. “I say we are not
_forced_ to bear it, and you want to know how I make that out; and I
explain that, as nobody asks us to stay here, and no duty requires that
we should do so—as no one wants us to remain, as we are incumbrances
rather than blessings, sources of irritation instead of joy, or
satisfaction, or comfort—we are at perfect liberty to go.”

“Where?” demanded Ernest.

“Where!” repeated his brother, “anywhere, away from here—out into the
world, to some place where we can make money, or save it, or spend it,
or give it, as we like.”

“How?” was the brief question.

“Now you come to what has puzzled and kept me lounging here for so long
a time. I thought of that, you know, Ernest, till I got first angry, and
then sick, and at last furious. We are not well educated: that is,
though we have done a little for ourselves, and read and thought, still
we are _not_ well educated. We could not enter any profession even if we
were, for law and physic and theology, all require money: soul and body
and mind—there is no use attempting to cure any of them unless you are
prepared to pay a preliminary fee, in some shape or another, for the
privilege. Besides, I do not like lawyers, and I have a horror of
doctors, and I am sure when I find it so difficult to listen to a
sermon, I should never be able to write one; and a man must have means
to live on till he gets into practice or orders: in brief, black is not
the colour for me; I saw that plainly enough long ago.”

“You have told me all this before,” remarked Ernest, in a tone of
disappointment, as his brother paused, “fifty times.”

“Well, I know that,” said Henry, laughing; “but I want to impress upon
you that we are unfitted by nature and education to make money in the
pulpit, the sick room, or at the bar.”

“You do not speak reverentially of the Church, Henry; you jumble
everything together,—add all up in columns of pounds, shillings, and
pence, and——”

“Find the sum total _nil_,” interposed the younger. “You may preach if
you like, but you know as well as I do that if you thought you could
make money by becoming a parson, you would don a surplice to-morrow,
even though you had no vocation, as people call it. Now would you not?”

“I have sometimes thought if a good situation as hangman were offered to
me I would accept it,” Ernest confessed; “but it was only a thought: so
now, having settled what you are _not_ fit for, pray proceed.”

“No, I have only settled some of the callings for which I am unfitted;
there are plenty more.”

“Spare me their recital,” said Ernest; “I know them off by heart.”

“To sum up all,” began Henry, “we have not the means to be landed
gentlemen, or gentlemen who frequent clubs, or even small gentry; we
cannot become professionals of any kind, or men of business, or farmers,
or artizans, or shopkeepers: it is a living death to stay here, a
wasting of existence and strength and youth; so, as I said, or at least
implied, before, I have finally resolved to go.”

“And, for the second time, I ask you where?”

“And I answer, in all sincerity, I do not know. My present plan is
this—I wish that you also could be induced to adopt it—to start off, say
to-morrow or the next day, for London, see if there be any single thing
I am fit for there, and if not—if no other opening present itself—enter
the army.”

“You have no money to purchase a commission; how will you obtain it? to
whom do you mean to apply?”

“Friends and connections, you know we have, Ernest, possessed of
sufficient influence to obtain more than that for both of us, if they
would; but they are not the men to encourage the son in rebellion
against his parent; to offend the powers that be; to lose, by a single
false step, their chance, however remote, of a portion of the old man’s
gold. No, I mean to apply to none of them: I despise my relations. I
will gain a name by my own unassisted efforts: no man shall say ‘No’ to
me, or keep me hanging on for months, waiting for a civil or uncivil
answer to my request. It disgusts me to hear people speculating on the
chances of my father’s demise, expatiating on the folly of offending
him, on the probabilities of whether you or I shall be left the best
off. I don’t pretend to entertain any great amount of affection for my
father, but I cannot bear to think of his death as a matter of
importance and rejoicing to myself: I had rather win a fortune than wait
for one: I cannot stay here to play the part of a hypocrite, in order
that, at some remote period, wealth, which in the interim I might make
for myself, may _perhaps_ be bequeathed to me. I do not desire to bring
the sin on my soul of wishing for any man’s death—how much more that of
a parent! and I dread that if I remain here much longer, I should look
forward with impatience to even that event as to my only chance of
freedom from bondage and misery.”

There was a long pause, during which Ernest Ivraine gazed moodily into
the fire; but at length, turning abruptly towards his brother, he said,

“You have hitherto merely told me what you are neither competent, nor
intending, to do: now what is your plan? always supposing you have one.”

“I will beg favours, I have said, from no man,” returned Henry, who
apparently was incapable of giving a short direct answer to any
question; “bitter and scanty enough, Heaven knows, has seemed the bread
of dependence I have eaten under my father’s roof: how, therefore,
should I relish that doled out to me by the hands of strangers? If I win
a name, parent and friends shall hear of me again; if not, I shall never
revisit the land of my birth. I will either make a happy home for myself
_on_ the earth, or else seek a quiet one _in_ it; but I will make that
home for myself by my own exertions. I am young, healthy, and active;
why should I not rise to fame and fortune yet? I am resolved, however,
not to gain them by patronage—that fickle thing which lifts a man up one
moment far above his true position, and flings him, the next, down many
degrees below it: I will be the sole architect of my own fortunes; no
one shall ever say of me, ‘I made him what he is:’ I will do it all
myself, Ernest. What do you think?”

“That the project sounds wonderfully well; but I am still in ignorance
of how you expect to accomplish it,” replied the elder brother.

“If nothing better turn up, by entering the army,” was the response.

“But as you have neither money nor influence, how can you enter it?”
demanded Ernest.

“Simply enough: I inquire for a regiment bound for India or any other
fighting place, seek an interview with a recruiting serjeant, explain
to him that I want to go where hard knocks are more plentiful than
fine words, remark that I am six feet high, fear death in no shape,
dread no man living, desire to serve my country and myself, finally
receive from him one shilling of the current coin of the realm—and the
deed is done. I am the son of Sir Ernest Ivraine no longer; fling
overboard all useless gentility, all absurd expectations; and start,
before I am quite one-and-twenty, as plain Henry Ivraine, private in
His Majesty’s—regiment of foot.”

“Bound to serve His Majesty for years as a private, with no friend to
buy you off, no one to help you up.”

“Except God and myself,” rejoined the youth.

There was a long pause.

“And so, Henry, this is your last plan,” said his brother, at length,
with a melancholy and rather sweet smile.

“And final one,” replied the other. “Will you adopt it too, Ernest? let
us be brothers in arms as well as brothers in reality: we will enjoy
life together, we will dare death side by side, and when you come to
your title, who will ask what Sir Ernest Ivraine and his rash brother
Henry did when they were youths? We could fight our way up the rugged
steep to fortune if we were but united in soul. If you were wounded I
would nurse you tenderly, as our mother might have done had she been
living now, Ernest: if I died, you would look me out a quiet grave in
that distant land: and if it pleased God to bless our efforts, we might
return triumphantly together to our native country, and show our friends
how wisely we had acted, and let the old man leave his money to whom he
listed. We might make happy homes for ourselves in some place; in the
name of sense and manliness and independence, let us be up and doing.”

The impetuous young man had risen from his seat in the middle of his
hurried appeal, and he now laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder, as if
he would have dragged him away from that house to a more brilliant
destiny; but Ernest, sadly disengaging himself, said:

“Sit down, Henry; endeavour to be calm and rational, and look at this
matter from a reasonable point of view. Do not permit imagination to run
away with judgment; contemplate the probable consequences of the step
you are now dreaming of. You offend our father’s pride, which is second
only to his avarice; you destroy your only chance of independence by
thus irritating him; you embrace a life of hardship and misery; war is a
trade at which you can never make money; you will be thrown with low
companions. _This_ is bad I admit, but _that_ would be worse. You are
free to leave your father’s roof at any hour, upon any pretence; you
cannot quit the King’s service, were your heart breaking, without the
certainty of punishment and disgrace ensuing. You are wretched here; you
would be still more wretched there. Wait still a little longer, till we
see if nothing arise likely to better our position in any way. Will you
wait?”

“No,” said Henry, “I will not; no life, not that of a galley-slave,
could be worse than this. I tell you, Ernest, I will make a name, a
home, a fortune for myself; and, oh! how much better I could struggle if
you would come with me, were you but by my side.”

His brother only shook his head in reply.

“Do not say no, Ernest,” resumed the other; “let us go forth together
fearlessly and hopefully; let us shake the shackles of this accursed
gold from us, and see whether there be not in life something more
precious than money—liberty. How happy we should be, exploring foreign
climes together! We could seek our fortunes in some other way, if you
like not the idea of the army: the estate _must_ come to you, whether at
home or absent; our father may leave his _gold_ to his most distant
relative. Why, in plain words, brother, should we waste the best portion
of our lives here, waiting for his death—the death of him my mother
loved, whose children we are, who is the nearest, and should be the
dearest, living connection we have? I feel the guilt of the idea,
Ernest, oppress me; let us flee from the great temptation—in God’s name,
let us be gone!”

The elder turned deadly pale as his brother spoke, but gave no answer.

“It cannot be that _you_ thirst for gold,” continued Henry, “that the
epidemic of our race has smitten you also. No, no; I do not, could never
believe that: surely you love liberty. I know you do not mind privation
or hardship, or dread death: neither of us is a coward, Ernest. Oh!
bravely we could fight our way to rank and wealth; only say you will
come, brother—only say you will come.”

“To be for years a common soldier, and then a pauper baronet?” Ernest
added bitterly. “You are not aware what you are throwing away, Henry;
you do not know what you are talking about.”

“I know I am talking of throwing away a weight from my heart, a sin from
my conscience,” returned the younger, hastily; “think of it, think of
this wretched life and that dreadful guilt, of what it may all end in;
that, after waiting, watching, and enduring, when we are middle-aged men
he can leave us utterly penniless. The estate must be yours, as I said
before: staying or going, we are _sure_ of nothing else. I hear my
father coming now. Ponder upon it, Ernest, well.”




                              CHAPTER II.
                        THE WILFULNESS OF YOUTH.


Henry Ivraine had scarcely concluded, when the door of the apartment was
flung violently open, giving admittance to the tall gaunt baronet, the
“Miser Sir Ernest,” as he was universally called by all who knew him.

He resembled, and yet was dissimilar to, both his sons, having the
rapid, energetic manner of the one, and the melancholy, dissatisfied
expression of the other; his hair, which had once been black as
Ernest’s, was now grey and grizzled; his face was wrinkled, though
apparently more from temper than great age; his eyes were dark and keen,
and seemed to be perpetually darting rapid glances into remote corners
in search of any coin, no matter how insignificant; his mouth, like the
clasp of a purse, appeared to have a natural disinclination to open,
excepting with a snap; his untrimmed beard gave a wild, haggard
expression to his wasted features; his hands were long and thin, the
fingers bent like vulture’s claws. He had on an old pair of slippers,
coarse stockings, grey trousers of the commonest material, an old
tattered faded dressing gown, which, floating behind as he shuffled
rapidly towards the fire-place, gave him the appearance of a theatrical
caricature, save that the stage always lacks that of which he had the
stamp—reality.

“At it again, Henry,” he commenced, hastily removing the blazing logs
from their position and extinguishing them, as if they had been going to
set the house on fire, “at it again, haranguing and talking and wasting
the fuel; you will die in the workhouse yet, boy; you would spend a
fortune in a week. If you never can keep silent for ten minutes at a
time, why can’t you talk in the dark? you do not require to see when you
are speaking, do you? I cannot afford such fires; and that reminds
me—what’s this bill which has just come in?”

“You have not left me light sufficient to inform you,” answered the
youth angrily, gazing for a moment at his parent through the gloom, with
a look in which contempt had decidedly gained the mastery over filial
respect; but then, remembering that the questioner was his father, he
made a strong effort, and added, in a different tone, “if you tell me
the name of the sender, I shall be able to give you further
particulars.”

“It is a bill which I do not intend to pay,” remarked Sir Ernest, “from
a tailor of the name of Turner: items—a dress coat; ditto, vest; amount,
five pounds. I dare say the fellow wishes he may get it.”

“I am sure he cannot afford to lose it,” said Henry warmly; “I ordered
those articles, sir, when, at your desire, I went to Colonel Purday’s to
propose for his hideous daughter, who ran off with Lord Rondeford before
I had time to do it. I could not go to Bellefort Park in a plain
shooting jacket; and in the whole of my wardrobe, at that period, there
was not a coat innocent of the crime of being out at the elbows: I was
forced to order the clothes from some one, and, accordingly, Turner made
them.”

“And you may pay for them,” his father added, “as you would not marry
Miss Purday.”

“As Miss Purday would not marry me, you mean, sir,” retorted Henry: “on
my honour, at that time I’d have wedded Xantippe if she would only have
promised to carry me bodily out of Lincolnshire. If I had known she was
secretly engaged to that pauper, Lord Rondeford, why of course I should
not have wasted a new coat upon her; but being ignorant of that fact, I
did so, and Turner must not suffer for my over haste.”

“Or rather want of haste,” sneered his father, who had his own private
opinions on the subject. “Well, as I said before, you may pay the bill.”

“Had I possessed the means of doing so, it should never have been sent
to you,” said Henry; “as matters stand, I hope, sir, you will settle it.
I assure you it is the last account you will ever have to discharge for
me.”

“Yes, the last—and the last—and the last, for years; no, no, Henry, that
won’t do with me now; I am tired of that cry, I have no faith in that
promise. As I cannot teach you to be economical, I will prevent these
tradespeople giving you credit: let them go once or twice without their
money, and they will think half-a-dozen times before trusting you again.
I have been a most indulgent father; anything in reason I am willing
for—anything in reason, but not for bills like this: Turner will never
make coats for you again.”

“He is a poor man, sir, and has a large family,” urged Henry; “it would
not be a very great sum for you to pay, and it would be a heavy loss for
him to sustain.”

“The heavier the loss, the longer he will remember it,” the baronet said
savagely.

“He can force you to settle the account,” remarked his son.

“Ay! and how, pray?”

“He can summon you for the amount; I am under age,” Henry rejoined,
hotly.

“Just let him try it,” chuckled the baronet, “just let him try it, and I
will teach him a lesson he will never forget: but he won’t attempt it.
Go to law with Sir Ernest Ivraine! there’s not a man, noble or commoner,
in Lincolnshire who would attempt it: summon me!” and the old miser
laughed so long at the idea, that Henry had time to calm down a little
ere the baronet had concluded.

“I may have thought, and said, ere now that I would relieve you from the
burden of supporting me,” began his son, when Sir Ernest’s merriment was
fairly at an end; “but I have sworn it now: twenty-four hours more, and
I shall be off to seek my fortune, or to find a grave somewhere; for I
had rather dig the soil like the poorest labourer, than remain here.
After to-morrow we may never meet again, and as my last request, as my
only one ere I depart, I ask you to discharge this little debt; it is my
only one, and not extravagant. Will you promise me this before I go?”

Once again the baronet broke out into a sort of diabolical chuckle, as
he inquired where Henry was thinking of going.

“Out into the world, sir,” responded the young man sadly, and in a very
different tone from that which he had used during the course of his
conversation with his brother; “whither I care very little, whether
east, west, north, or south, so as it take me fairly away from this
wretched place. Father, I do not want to say anything disrespectful, or
unkind, but I have been so miserable here, that I feel I can bear it no
longer.”

“You have thriven upon it,” remarked Sir Ernest, drily, glancing at the
stalwart frame of his son; “you do not look miserable, though you talk
so much about it: probably all your grief evaporates in words. Now,
Ernest appears melancholy; perhaps it is because he never speaks.”

“There are griefs too deep for words,” murmured Ernest to the
smouldering embers, while Henry rejoined:

“How I have looked and talked, you know; how I have _felt_, I know. I
have often before said I would leave home, fully intending to carry that
intention into execution when any definite plan of support presented
itself. I am resolved to depart now: you have frequently told me I
might; that young men ought to battle and struggle for themselves. I
shall follow your advice: I shall avail myself of your permission at
last, and start to-morrow.”

“You will remain for many morrows,” sneered his parent.

“The sun of heaven shall never shine on my face here again, unless,
after the lapse of years, I return, rich and independent, to prove what
a strong will and a just purpose may accomplish for any man,” Henry
retorted. “If hereafter I should be happy and prosperous, how I would
glory just once to look upon these swamps and quagmires again, and think
of the weary life I led amongst them, and how I hated and detested the
very name of Paradise.”

“Henry!” exclaimed his brother, quickly; but the baronet merely laughed,
and said,

“Let him go on; it does me no harm, it makes Paradise none the less
valuable, it costs no money, nothing but breath, and he has plenty of
that to spare: it does him good, let him go on.”

“You are right, sir,” said Henry, vehemently; “it does do me good on
this the last evening of my sojourn under my father’s roof, to speak out
for once fully and frankly. I loathe this place; for years I have had
but one wish—to get away from it by any means. I have thought by day, I
have pondered by night, how that object might be best effected; but it
was only this morning that I took my final resolution to depart at all
hazards, and, please Heaven, I will adhere to it.”

“For how long?” the old man asked.

“Through life,” Henry answered; “some of our relatives flatter you, sir,
for their own ends. I am speaking now, not as a son to a father, not as
one who hopes or expects aught from you, either now or at any future
time, but as one man might to another, plainly and truthfully; and I say
they do flatter you for their own ends, and talk as if Ernest and I had
everything in life to be thankful for, if we would only be contented;
they trace all the misery of this wretched home of ours to those who,
instead of being the causes of unhappiness, are merely sufferers from
the evil which has made it what it is. They tell you we are murmuring,
dissatisfied, repining; and I tell you what they assert is false: that
we have borne patiently, as few young men would have done, privations
and humiliations; poverty in the midst of wealth; parsimony in the lap
of plenty——stay, Ernest, as I have begun, I will speak: our youth has
been wretched; we have been deprived of everything natural to our age;
the poorest cottager has fared better than we; the labourers on your
estate have been clad in costlier garments than the sons of its baronet
possessor; we have been debarred from society, have not been educated as
became our rank and your means, have neither the privileges of children,
nor the advantages of men; you will not give us the means to go, you
reproach us when we stay. Our relatives say all has been done for our
ultimate advantage. They may be correct; but as I never expect to derive
advantage from it, I confess it seems to me our present happiness has
been sacrificed to a mistaken system. I have been wretched, and a pauper
amidst lands and estates sufficient to have made me a being almost
without a care. I had rather go forth to encounter any fate than pass
the last few years of my existence over again.”

“Have you nearly done?” the baronet demanded, his whole frame quivering
with anger.

“Almost,” said Henry. “I have only to add that as Paradise has been a
place of torture to me, I mean to leave it in the space of a few brief
hours.”

“I will believe it when you are gone: and Ernest—”

“What he will do I know not,” the younger brother returned. “I wish he
would come with me. I trust he will be guided to a manly determination;
but whether or not, whether he decide to go forth to breast the world as
he can, or remain here, will make not the least alteration in my
purpose: nothing could turn me now.”

“Go then,” said the old man, bitterly; “I command you to go out into the
world which you think will act a kinder part to you than your father has
done; away from those relations whose counsel you despise: do what you
like. I renounce you, I cast you off; child of mine you are, heir of
mine you shall never be: go forth—see what stuff the world is made of;
learn the nature of men; discover what wins their hearts, turns their
purposes, sways the destinies of nations, shakes empires, moves the
world,—and then repent for ever that you threw from you him, who, for
your sake, struggled through years to gain the precious talisman, but
who, for your sake, will struggle no longer.”

“I know what a blessing gold can be made; I have felt what a curse it
may become,” the young man replied sadly: “the world can teach me
nothing about it I have not learnt already. Aid from you I ask not; but
lest hereafter my conscience should reproach me for having uttered some
expressions which have just escaped my lips, I request, before we part
for ever, you will say you forgive them; for, though true, I admit that,
perhaps, I should not have spoken them.”

“Always the same,” sneered the old man; “always speaking, always
repenting: always threatening, never performing; always dreaming, never
acting; always murmuring, never satisfied; always extravagant, never
reforming; always offending, always apologizing, but never amending;
always the same—always—always—till the end of time.” And as he concluded
this complimentary summary of his son’s character, the baronet turned to
leave the room.

“I am not threatening, I am not dreaming now; I mean to go: ere daybreak
to-morrow, I shall be miles from here. After to-night, we may not meet
for years again,—most likely, never: speak to me, say something before I
leave this place, which, in all human probability, I shall never see
more.”

And Henry, who was always in extreme, either of anger or sorrow, laid a
hand on the arm of the man, who, with his numerous faults and scanty
virtues, was still, and, in spite of all, his father. But the baronet,
who had come at length to regard Henry’s repinings as mere matters of
course, shook him off with a scornful laugh, and murmuring and muttering
“Always the same—always—always the same,” left the dark chamber, and
went out into the still darker corridor beyond.

How long and how earnestly the brothers remained after his departure in
that dreary apartment, conversing together, it would be impossible to
tell; they stayed there till the stars peeped forth and the moon arose;
and then Ernest, wearied and mournful, bade Henry go to rest, and sleep
upon it. Upon what? Upon the subject which was to decide his future lot;
on the step which might make or mar, elevate or destroy. “He will be
calmer in the morning,” thought the elder; and thus, after hours of
mutual expostulation, they separated for a time.

How often in after years did Ernest Ivraine remember the words and the
thoughts of that memorable night, when, sleepless and wretched, he
pondered on which path he should take, which road he would choose; when
unadorned freedom and gilded slavery were presented to his choice; when
he strove to see rightly by the dim flickering light of prudence, and
acted wrongly after all; when it was still in his power to cast the
fetters from his soul, but only bound them tighter around it; when he
called Henry rash and foolish and misguided, and strove to think him so;
when he fancied his own choice was better and more sensible, and felt in
his heart he was wrong; when he dreamed for one minute of happiness in
distant lands, and shrunk back the next, appalled by the spectre of
poverty grimly awaiting him on foreign shores; when he thought, with a
wild throb of pleasure, of leaving “Paradise” behind him, and then
resolved to remain there, lest strangers should share his parent’s gold
among them and he be left a bankrupt baronet, a beggar, an
outcast,—because of over-impatience, because he could not endure the
yoke till his father died.

Ere the faintest shade of grey coloured the eastern sky, Henry stood by
his brother’s side; he held a lighted candle in one hand, a valise in
the other.

“Have you made up your mind?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Ernest.

“And what is your decision?” Henry demanded.

“To stay,” was the reply; “as you will not remain to take care of your
own interests, I will guard them faithfully for you.”

“Guard your own,” returned his brother quickly, but not unkindly. “I
tell you I want nothing, I expect nothing, and I am starting in life—not
as the son of Sir Ernest Ivraine, but as a man without a shilling or the
hope of making one, excepting by his own exertions. If he make you his
heir, I shall say you have earned every guinea by the dreariest
servitude ever endured: no prospect of _certain_ ultimate wealth could
induce me to wait here for it. And remember, Ernest, that misers’ wills
are often strange documents: you are not sure of riches after years of
endurance: you are choosing certain misery for a mere chance. Come with
me, and we will show the world what two unassisted youths can do: will
you come?”

“No,” Ernest returned: “I will not leave unbounded wealth to the
cupidity of our relations; I will not cast such a chance from me, when,
by enduring a little longer, I may be free to shape my destiny as I
like. If I am ever rich, you shall be so too; if not, I, a titled
pauper, will then take the step I dread at present. Go out and labour,
and be happy if you can, and I will remain and try to do better for you
than you might yourself, waiting and praying and trusting for happier
times.”

“But not for _his_ death, Ernest, not for his death,” Henry said
solemnly.

“Nothing but his death can ever bring happiness to us, Henry,” his
brother responded emphatically.

“Oh! Ernest, I never wished for him to die; never even at my worst.”

“I often have,” was the elder’s brief confession, and gazing into his
brother’s face, after he had uttered the words, he saw him turn pale and
faint, as if the sentence sickened him.

“God help you from sinful thoughts and deeds, Ernest,” he murmured, as
they left the apartment together, and Ernest responded, “Amen.”

They walked along the corridor for some yards in silence; but then
Henry, pausing by a door almost at the end of it, said hurriedly,

“I cannot leave without seeing him.”

A bitter smile curled Ernest’s lip at the idea; he could not comprehend
his brother’s half-instinctive feelings of vague, changeable affection
for their parent. He had a settled hatred for the miser himself, and he
could not understand how Henry, who had suffered so much that he was
casting behind him all hope of wealth for ever, sooner than endure the
thraldom longer, could entertain any other sentiment than that of fixed
aversion towards the man who, though he was their father, had darkened
their lives, thwarted their wishes, clouded their futures, mortified
their pride through years.

“He will not thank you for disturbing him and raising all sorts of
horrors in his mind, concerning thieves and skeleton keys,” remarked the
elder brother with a sneer his parent might have envied; but Henry
called softly through the closed door, which was, as he well knew,
bolted and barred in the inside.

“Father, I want to speak to you—only one word.”

The miser was awake and up in a moment; with trembling fingers he undid
the fastenings.

“What is wrong?” he inquired; “what has happened?”

“I am going, sir,” said Henry.

“Is that all?” his father rejoined; “I thought, perhaps, some one had
broken in. When will you be back?”

“If I live, before I am grey-haired,” was the answer.

“A safe reply—time to come and go in: may mean to-morrow, or to-day, for
that matter,” the old man remarked.

“It does not mean to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after,” replied his
son; “it means years, long years, hence: when I have made a fortune:
when I am a youth no longer, but a man who has fought and struggled and
won. I—I could not leave you, perhaps for ever, without one word more—I
am sorry for what I said last night; you will bid me good-bye, sir,
won’t you?”

Perhaps the presence of his brother restrained him from asking a
parent’s blessing on his enterprise; perhaps he felt that such a word
from those thin avaricious lips would have been little but a mockery;
perhaps such an idea never crossed his mind: at all events, the brief
English honest parting phrase was all he requested, and all he received.

“Good-bye, then,” said the old man, who went through the scene as if it
had been a sort of farce—(in fact, he considered it as such; the only
serious thing he dreaded in the piece being a demand for money);
“Good-bye, then,” and he held out a long skinny hand, which his son took
mournfully.

All the past floated dimly before his eyes: his childhood, his mother,
her death, the few kindnesses his father had ever conferred upon him,
the many angry and impatient expressions he had made use of towards that
parent! He glanced wildly back into the previous years of his existence,
and at that glance all the events, and trials, and purposes, and
disappointments, and wrongs, came like spectres at a master’s bidding up
to view: he gazed forth almost fearfully into the dim, gloomy, uncertain
future, into which, without friend, or light, or rudder, or compass, he
was plunging: he was leaving a home which, though dreary, had still been
a sort of home; a father who, though a selfish, unfeeling man, was his
only surviving parent; a brother, to whom he had clung and appealed
through years; a place, which, though surrounded by swamps and marshes
and desolation, had once been tenanted by a gentle woman, his mother,
who, after having bequeathed to her children whatever of good beautified
their natures, died in that house which somehow, at that moment, her
spirit seemed to sanctify.

Leaving all—a miserable home, a miser father, a melancholy brother!
going to a foreign land to face death as a common soldier! departing,
certainly for years, possibly for ever! The whole vision of past,
present, and future swept rapidly across his soul and softened it; and
on that, the last time when he and his father ever met or parted, the
young man, forgetful or regardless of Ernest’s grave, contemptuous
smile, bent down his head over that hand, which never grasped aught
eagerly save a piece of gold, and kissed it.

There was something about the act which touched for an instant the old
miser’s iron soul; but muttering to himself the words, “He won’t go
after all; it’s all talk,” he only said, “Good-bye, then, boy, you’ll be
back soon,” and so let his son depart.

A sort of film obscured Henry’s eyes as he turned from that door to
break all ties asunder: a sentence would have made him stay then—but the
old man spoke it not—though a word might have made him depart the next
day.

Ere they reached the principal hall, however, the sound of Sir Ernest’s
voice calling to them echoed drearily through the long corridors. Henry
ran back to the foot of the stairs at the summons, his heart beating
painfully.

“No, no, it’s not you I want,” cried the miser, leaning over the
banisters as he spoke, “but Ernest; I can trust him, and you never
remember anything. Be sure to see the door is properly shut when you go
out; that is all: or stay, I will fasten it after you myself.”

And the old man, shuffling down the stairs and across the hall, closed
and locked the heavy oaken door upon the departing figure of his
youngest born, and with trembling eagerness adjusted each chain and bar,
to see all was in its place, whilst Ernest remarked, as they walked
along the terrace together,

“He could sleep if we were in our coffins, Henry, but not if a bolt in
the house were neglected to be drawn.”

A chill had fallen over the soul of the younger brother as he heard the
door bang violently behind him, and the rattling of the chains and
grating of the locks smote harshly on his ear: it was his father’s
farewell to him; it was the last sound he listened to in that house,
till, after years of exile, he returned to find his parent dead, removed
to that other world where gold and earthly treasures avail not.

The damp morning wind blew not more coldly upon his cheek than the
miser’s words struck to his soul; winter’s frosts never possessed a
bitterness of more reality than his brother’s brief sentence. Thus Henry
Ivraine passed forth, after many resolves and many struggles, as he had
said he would, “into the world;” and Sir Ernest, his father, without a
regretful or tender word, bolted the door of home behind him. When next
he beheld that house, a different hand clasped his at the open portal:
another voice bade him welcome back again, for the old man had gone from
amongst his money bags for ever, and the place he had darkened and
clouded knew him no more.

For five miles the brothers pursued their way in silence; for Henry was
too sick at heart, and vexed in spirit, to utter a syllable, and Ernest
cared not for the exertion when it could be avoided; but at length when
they reached the London road, and saw by the gloomy light of a November
morning, the coach rapidly advancing along the straight, flat,
interminable highway, the younger said,

“Now, Ernest, finally decide; will you come with me?”

“No,” was the reply; “but will you think thrice and turn?”

“Not for worlds,” Henry answered, with a shudder; and, resting his arm
on an old stump of a willow-tree which was lying by the road-side, he
looked first, sorrowfully, at the dark object coming rolling towards
them, and then wistfully at his brother. “I will never forget you,” he
said at last, in a faltering voice, “in life or in death, never; and
whatever comes, whether good fortune or evil, you, Ernest, must never
forget me.”

Without answering, the elder took the outstretched hand in his, and
pressed it in his own; then, drawing a ring off his finger—a plain
golden ring, containing a few fine threads of auburn hair—he gave it
silently to his brother, with a look which Henry interpreted rightly,
“Keep it for _her_ sake, and remember me.”

As he might have twined his arms when a child about that mother’s neck,
the departing one now flung them wildly round Ernest, his dark, stern
brother: the latter felt his breath warm on his cheek for a moment, and
the next heard him calling loudly to the coachman to stop: he saw a hand
waving to him from the top of the vehicle, and then the horses, dashing
round a curve in the road, bore all from his view, and left him standing
there alone.

The one had fairly started off into the world; and Ernest, with a
blacker shade than ever on his brow, walked back, even more solitary
than of yore, to the swamps, and marshes, and poplars of Paradise.

Henry Ivraine was indeed gone to London to “seek his fortune,” and
thither we must also proceed, though not to follow him: no—he went there
to become a soldier; and we journey thither to make acquaintance with
Mr. Alfred Westwood, and—some other people, to accomplish which laudable
purpose it is needful to close this second chapter, and commence a
third.




                              CHAPTER III.
                    INTRODUCES MR. ALFRED WESTWOOD.


One chilly day in that most depressing of all English months, November,
Mr. Merapie’s principal clerk stood in a manner at once easy and
graceful before the fire in the outer office. His right foot was firmly
planted upon an old-fashioned chair covered with hair-cloth, and thus he
was enabled to rest his elbow on his knee, and finally to place under
his chin a remarkably slender gentlemanlike hand, adorned with two
rings, and set off to greater advantage by a broad linen wristband,
white as the driven snow, and fine as Irish looms could weave it.

To attitudinize after this fashion he considered one of the especial
privileges of his situation, none of the junior clerks being ever
permitted—at least never in his presence—thus conjointly to enjoy the
luxury of thought, heat, and dignity, with one foot supported by the
crazy chair, which was giving up its stuffing by almost imperceptible
degrees.

Whenever he was in a particularly good, or a peculiarly bad, temper, he
assumed the position above indicated, and addressed by turns words of
encouragement or of rebuke to his fellow-labourers, as he exhibited his
jewellery, caressed his whiskers, and apparently reflected how handsome
he was.

For vanity was the most perceptible feature in the character of Mr.
Alfred Westwood, whose cleverness was only equalled by his impudence—his
impudence by his hypocrisy—his hypocrisy by his ambition—and his
ambition by his self-esteem. He was fond of money, not exactly for love
of it, but for love of himself. He wanted it to spend in the purchase of
expensive broadcloths, fine linens, cambric handkerchiefs, new hats,
rare perfumes, macassar oil, gold chains, signet rings, extraordinary
soaps, and endless cigars. There was no clerk, or, indeed, no young
sprig of the aristocracy, in London who dressed so well, or seemed so
confirmed and utterly hopeless a dandy, as Alfred Westwood, whose hair
was always arranged after the most becoming and approved mode; whose
speech, carriage, deportment, manners, were, as he fondly believed,
unexceptionable; who learnt privately all the new dances as they came
out; who was conversant with the appearance of every scrap of feminine
nobility that drove in the Park, or rode down Rotten Row; who saw each
new piece which was brought out at, and criticised every new actor who
crossed the boards of, any one of the theatres; who could wind his way
blindfold through the West End—thread all the intricacies of that magic
region better, perhaps, than if he had been born and brought up in
Belgravia; who, to condense all into one single sentence, desired in the
innermost recesses of his heart to be considered a fashionable man about
town; and who was, in fact, head clerk in the establishment of Mr.
Merapie, a rich, eccentric merchant, possessed of almost fabulous
wealth, and residing in the “Modern Babylon.”

No man of mortal mould was ever able to get a near sight of the history
of Mr. Westwood’s life, and read it through from beginning to end. It
was currently believed he once had parents, but no one could state the
circumstance as a fact of his own knowledge. Sisters, brothers, cousins,
relatives, friends, he had apparently none; he appeared merely to be a
stray waif, possessed of many personal attractions, floating lightly
over the sea of London society, who came of necessity in contact with,
and greeted scores of his fellow-creatures during the course of his
passage from a far distant port to some unknown destination, but who
belonged to no one, made a confidant of no one, seemed claimed by no
one, was loved by no one—save himself.

He was of what that queen of blessed memory, Elizabeth, would, perhaps,
have termed a “just height,” inasmuch as he was neither inconveniently
tall, nor yet remarkably short; somewhat slight in figure, but extremely
well-proportioned; of a fair complexion, with brown eyes, hair and
whiskers rather dark than light, and teeth so white and regular, that
from a benevolent desire not to deprive society at large of a certain
pleasure, he was perpetually smiling in a manner which, although a few
disagreeable persons considered it artificial, he himself deemed
perfectly bewitching.

But if vanity be of all human weaknesses and follies the most
contemptible and unendurable, it is also the least really hurtful to any
one, save the individual who, through its intervention, lives in an
atmosphere of perpetual self-congratulation; and, had Mr. Westwood’s
sole characteristic been an unbounded admiration for his own person, he
might daintily have walked through life, the City, and his beloved West
End, unchronicled, unheeded by me.

It was, however, his leading foible, whilst ambition appeared to be his
crying sin. He desired not only admiration, but position; he wished to
trade, to amass wealth, to retire, to have a town residence and a
country seat, servants, equipages, vineries, green-houses, paintings,
grand society; and to accomplish these few trifling desires, he at the
age of seven-and-twenty had started, as the phrase runs, “on his own
account,” with an available capital of ten pounds three and ninepence,
and a stock of assurance which, if it could only have been coined into
gold, might for years have been drawn upon _ad libitum_, with a positive
certainty that any banker in the kingdom would honour the cheque.

But impudence, unhappily, cannot by any process of alchemy be turned
into sovereigns, although it may, and frequently does, prove the means
of obtaining them; and ten pounds three and ninepence, unlike the
present fashionable swimming vests, will not expand to unheard-of
dimensions, and keep the fortunate possessor’s head above water “for
ever;” and moreover, people will sometimes weary of giving credit, and
begin to ask decidedly for a settlement. In consequence of all these
things, Alfred Westwood, at the expiration of two brief years, found
himself “unable”—so he told all whom it might concern—“to meet his
liabilities.” In plain words, his debts were just on the verge of seven
thousand pounds, and his assets not a farthing above five and twopence.

In the interim he had lived like a lord, kept a cob, hired a valet, and
lodged in St. James’s: and when in due course he passed through the
Bankruptcy Court he blandly told the commissioner his expenditure had
been most moderate—_only_ six hundred per annum; and in an extremely
genteel accent entered an indignant protest against an illiberal and
insulting demand made by his creditors (when he politely appeared, at
their desire, to answer their questions, and afford them all the
assistance in his power), that he should give up, for their benefit, his
watch, chain, rings, and eye-glass, with which articles he had adorned
himself, to the end that he might, even in ruin, look like a gentleman.

But remonstrance proving vain, with a sigh he relinquished these
unpaid-for mementoes of happier days, made a full statement of his
affairs, solemnly affirmed he and he alone was the party deserving of
commiseration, and proved to the satisfaction, though decidedly not to
the gratification, of all present, that, let him be what he might—knave,
simpleton, dupe, schemer, or fop—nothing in the shape of compensation
could be wrung out of him, whether freeman or prisoner; that he had no
friends who would “stand by him,” or, in other words, pay them; that a
merciless prosecution would do him little harm, and could not, by
possibility, benefit the sufferers in the slightest degree; that,
finally, it was worse than useless to fling good money after bad; and
therefore Mr. Westwood escaped better than a better man, and was
permitted to go on his way rejoicing.

Although he thought an immense deal on the subject, he said “never a
word” when he heard his creditors were about to insure his life, in
order to secure themselves, if possible, against total loss; but
apparently contrite, broken spirited, and broken hearted, did all that
was required of him, meekly got the requisite documents filled up and
signed, went quietly before the ruling powers “to be viewed,” and have
the probabilities of his death discussed and the consequent rate of
premium decided on; patiently held his peace for a period, and permitted
those whom he had so deliberately cheated to complete their part of the
business ere he, with a grim smile on his lips, began his.

What with actual anxiety, slight indisposition, and two or three
sleepless nights, he found himself sufficiently ill to be able to carry
his project into execution with a chance of success; and, accordingly,
discarding all useless ornaments, with a very shabby coat, hair neither
glossy nor well arranged, and a hat which he had dinged a little for the
occasion, he repaired to an insurance office, where he well knew his
life was considered a matter of some importance.

He desired to speak with the principals upon important business, he
said; and on the strength of this assertion, he was ushered forthwith
into the “presence chamber.”

“Gentlemen,” he began, in a cool, straightforward manner, “I believe you
are rather interested in my longevity; I am Alfred Westwood, formerly a
merchant, now a beggar, whose creditors have insured my life in your
office.”

The fact being accurately remembered, the individuals thus addressed
bent anxious glances on his face, scrutinized him from head to foot, and
mentally calculated how many premiums he was “good for,” whilst he
proceeded:

“I have come, therefore, to inform you, with feelings of deep
regret—regret, more of course on my own account than yours—that I fear
you will very speedily be called upon to pay the various policies which
have been effected in this case.”

It certainly was a somewhat startling announcement, and the two elderly
and one middle-aged gentlemen, to whom he so tranquilly communicated the
likelihood of his demise, exclaimed in a breath,

“Good heavens! it is not possible——”

“With all due respect,” returned Mr. Westwood, “permit me to remark, it
is not merely possible, but probable; my death _must_ take place ere
long, so far as I can see; not, indeed, from any disease that medicine
or skill is able to cure, but because of a malady, from the certainly
fatal effects of which you, and you alone, can deliver me.”

“We!” ejaculated the trio, once again in unison.

“You, gentlemen,” solemnly responded their visitor.

“And what may the malady be, and how can we avert it?” they demanded.

“The malady is starvation,” he replied, concealing, by a desperate
effort, an almost irresistible inclination to smile; “money or a
lucrative employment will save my life and your pockets. All my worldly
goods, everything, in short, I was possessed of, save a tranquil
conscience and the clothes I now wear, I made over to my creditors. What
man could do more? and yet they are not satisfied; their malice pursues
me so relentlessly that, in consequence of their evil reports, I can
obtain no situation, no matter how humble. I am not fitted, either by
education or constitution, for manual labour, even were such offered to
me: I have no friends able to assist me: I have brains, talent,
energy,—would prove invaluable to any person requiring an active,
indefatigable clerk. I desire not, indeed, to make a new character for
myself, but to demonstrate that which has been asserted of my present
one is false. I have been unfortunate and wish to repair the past; but
every office is closed before me, every mortal seems prejudiced against
me. People will not permit me to work, I cannot beg; in fine, gentlemen,
I must starve unless you, for your own interests, aid me in this
dilemma. Recollect, I do not ask you to do this for my sake, but for
your own; for I know quite enough of human nature to believe self is the
motive power that turns the world, is the mainspring of men’s actions,
is, in brief, the sole reason why, although I do stand in need of
sympathy and compassion—though I am a ruined man, though I have been
more ‘sinned against than sinning,’ you will help me.”

Westwood was right; he had studied the worst part of human nature
intently, and judged it correctly. Had he possessed the eloquence of a
Demosthenes, he could not more speedily have struck the feeling in the
hearts of his auditors, which he desired to reach, than by thus quietly
stating that, if they did not at once lay out a small amount, either of
time or money, to save his life, they would most probably have to pay,
ere long, a large amount, in consequence of his death. His tale was a
likely one enough; his haggard looks confirmed the statement; gold, they
were satisfied he had none; it might be perfectly correct that almost
insuperable obstacles precluded his obtaining employment; further, he
had not flattered them; and even business men are too apt to fall into a
trap baited with what, although a few persons term it contemptuous
rudeness, uttered either for a motive or from chagrin, most others style
frank, truthful sincerity. At all events, one thing was, as he stated,
self-evident; it was apparently their _interest_ to serve him, and
accordingly, as he was clever, shrewd, and plausible, they speedily did
so. The principals of the insurance office to which the creditors had
paid premiums, held a sort of perplexed conference together; the end of
which was, that a situation, not very lucrative indeed, but still a
“start,” was procured for Mr. Alfred Westwood. He received
five-and-twenty pounds for pressing necessities, to slightly replenish
his wardrobe and enable him once again to appear as a “gentleman.” In
short, he got, for the second time, fairly afloat; and when the
_ci-devant_ bankrupt found himself again in a position to earn money, he
gaily twisted his whiskers, passed the men he had, in plain words,
“robbed,” with a high head and confident air, and mentally murmuring, “I
was too fast before, I will be slow and sure this time,” commenced, _de
nouveau_, the struggle of existence, not as a pleasant experiment, but
as an important reality.

Years passed on: some termed Alfred Westwood a conceited fop, but others
affirmed he knew perfectly what he was about: he always dressed well,
perpetually kept up appearances, apparently denied himself no
gratification, retained one situation until he saw another likely to
suit him better, but not a moment longer; became noted for shrewd
cleverness and long-headedness; mounted fortune’s ladder cautiously,
and, with a vivid memory of his former desperate tumble, never took his
foot from one step till he was morally certain of being able to place it
on the next, and keep it there; finally, he entered, at a salary of two
hundred per annum, the counting house of Mr. John Merapie, as assistant
to the principal clerk, and in that capacity did so much more than the
above individual had ever dreamt of attempting, that, at the expiration
of one brief year, Mr. Westwood found himself next to Mr. Merapie, chief
of the establishment,—vice Roger Aymont superannuated, or, in other
words, superseded.

And thus, patient reader, it came to pass that, at the not very advanced
age of thirty-five, Mr. Alfred Westwood, possessed of a comfortable
income, tormented with no incumbrance, in the shape of invalid father,
helpless mother, insane brother, delicate sister, or tiresome child,
stood enjoying the luxury of his own happy thoughts, as previously
chronicled at the commencement of this chapter.

“Westwood” was the word which brought his foot down and his head erect
in a second of time—“Westwood.”

“Sir,” responded the individual so addressed; having elicited which mark
of attention, Mr. Merapie proceeded:

“I have to attend the Lord Mayor’s banquet this evening, and should
therefore feel glad if you could make it convenient to meet my sister,
Mrs. Frazer, who, as you have heard, is coming from the North, and see
her safely home to the Square.”

Whereupon Mr. Westwood, smiling in his sweetest manner, declared,
“Nothing could give him more pleasure.”

“Thank you—wouldn’t trouble you if I could avoid doing so,” returned Mr.
Merapie, “but necessity, you are aware——”

“Knows no law,” supplied his clerk with a deferential bow, which bow
fairly taking Mr. Merapie away from the outer office, and leaving Mr.
Westwood temporary master of the inner one, he at once repaired to the
latter, drew two chairs close together opposite the fire-place, leant
his head against the back of one and disposed his limbs in a graceful
attitude upon the other, crossed his arms majestically over his chest,
and remained thus pondering and calculating chances till the time
arrived for him to go and make acquaintance with the new comers, Mrs.
Frazer and her two children.

Carefully as he might have scanned the pages of a book wherein his
fortune was written, did Alfred Westwood scrutinize the faces of the
“widowed and the orphaned,” whom he, a stranger, thus met and greeted on
their arrival to an almost unfamiliar place.

He beheld a languid, fashionable-looking lady, a boy, in whom her very
soul seemed centred, and lastly, a slight pale child, with nothing
especially remarkable about her, save a pair of soft mellow eyes, a
perfect wilderness of dark curls, and a peculiarly quick intelligent
expression of countenance.

Alfred Westwood noted every gesture, feature, word, as he conducted the
trio “home;” and when, after having seen them and their luggage safely
deposited in Mr. Merapie’s house, situated in what that gentleman termed
“The Square,” he turned to walk to his own lodgings by the bright
gaslight through some of the countless London streets, he murmured, as
if by way of conclusion to some very knotty argument he had long been
debating within himself, “They may prove of service to me, perhaps; at
all events, I defy them to raise an obstacle in my path.”




                              CHAPTER IV.
                                 MINA.


From London to Loch Lomond! Kind reader, do not call the transition a
leap. In the alphabet it is not a step; in this book it merely involves
the turning over one page and commencing another; whilst in that
generally awful thing which we so briefly term “reality,” it is but
comfortably taking up a defensive position opposite one’s fellow
passengers in a railway carriage, eating at intervals with incredible
velocity, changing trains occasionally, being wearied to death
travelling for a certain number of hours at various rates of speed
(_vide_ Bradshaw’s inexplicable Guide), coaching, and perhaps boating a
little,—and the thing is happily accomplished. London, _pro tem._,
becomes to the tourist a dream of memory, whilst Loch Lomond gradually
assumes the character of a fact.

Would that any pen—whether plucked from the wing of a lineal descendant
of her who saved Rome, or manufactured by Gillott, or tipped with gutta
percha, or made of imperishable gold—were gifted with the same amount of
actuality as that same wonderful _chemin de fer_, which in these later
days conveys one so rapidly from amidst the ceaseless bustle and turmoil
of man’s work to the majestic grandeur and awful truth of God’s; from
the “great city” to the lonely country; from the flush of England’s
roses to the glow of Scotland’s heather; from the rich flatness and
eternal sameness of the South to the rapid streams and boiling torrents,
and mountains and moors and glorious scenery of the North,—and I would
write as I feel of that portion of this lovely world, where the waters
dance and the mountains frown, and the deer wander through trees upon
sunny islands; where history, and time, and events, and nature, have all
combined to cast strange spells over every height and hollow, every
lonely moor and narrow gloomy street, making all enchanted holy ground.

O Scotland, dear Scotland, ennobled by heroism, sanctified by religion,
great in misfortune, steadfast in principle, unparalleled in genius,
beautified with the tear-drops of sorrow, hallowed by the steps of
warriors, patriots, high-souled men, noble hearted women, authors,
poets, painters; where Bruce fought and Wallace died, and a fair queen
wept, and Rizzio sang, and myriads of the great departed sleep
tranquilly,—who ever dared to speak of thee, after him whose name were
alone enough to bear thine triumphantly down the river of time, to the
point where that river becomes merged in the ocean of eternity, that did
not waste his energies and mar his theme?

But who would not give something to be able to say he was born within
sight of Ben Nevis? who would not relinquish much to speak of that
country as “Fatherland”? who, even in these utilitarian days, would be
so commonplace and unromantic as not to desire to have a native’s right
to pluck the blooming heather, and call the place where it grows so
luxuriantly, home? who, in fine, would not, even with a very indifferent
guide, turn over the page and stand for a few minutes in imagination one
August evening in a garden rich in all rare flowers and sweet perfumes,
and richer still in commanding a view over that stern old lake, Loch
Lomond?

You, reader, I know will oblige me by doing so, when I add that the
mental journey must be performed ere you can learn some further
particulars of those so briefly and unceremoniously introduced to your
notice at the conclusion of the preceding chapter.

The setting sun was flinging a sort of glory across the lake: trees
looked brighter, and mountains grander, and islets lovelier, and waters
clearer, and ruins lonelier as the last rays of the proud lord of day
fell on and lit up them all; and upon something loftier, more
imperishable, more apparently transitory—yet millions of times more
precious in the sight of the universal Creator—did those warm beams fall
softly,—on the heads of a grey-haired man, one some ten years his
junior, and a child.

For a brief period the eyes of the two former—of those, created not for
time merely, but for eternity—dwelt with a glance of strange,
unutterable admiration, in which a mournful expression mingled also,
upon the earthly, panorama, with its ceaseless change, yet endless
sameness; but at length with a deep drawn sigh, the elder turned from
his contemplation of nature to speak to the child.

“You should have more patience, Mina,” he said, half chidingly; “the
flowers will bloom, and the seeds come up, much more rapidly without
your assistance, believe me.”

The little girl, to whom the above remark was addressed, had been busily
engaged in pushing the rich fine mould from the top of a bulbous root,
to ascertain if the same were actually sprouting; but she paused in her
employment for a moment, whilst the gardener, who completed that trio,
standing in the midst of a sort of fairy Paradise, so near to Loch
Lomond, added,

“Ye dinna gie the bits o’ things time till do onything, Miss Mina, for
ye are never but pulling them out o’ the ground althegither, or else
shoving the earth frae off them, long before they’re half ready, to see
if they’re growing.”

The child raised her head as he concluded, and casting back a profusion
of glossy curls from her face, and shading her eyes with her hand,
looked confidently into the countenance of the first speaker as she
answered,

“It’s because, uncle, they won’t be green half quick enough: when Colin
puts the seeds and roots and things in the ground, I can wait, indeed I
can, for a day or two; but it’s impossible for me to believe they are
really growing after that, unless I see them; that’s why I pull them
up.”

“And to you, Mina, it seems a very sufficient reason, I have no doubt,”
returned the old man with a sad smile; then, addressing the gardener,
who, like himself, was a sincere follower of Calvin, he added, “You see
how the want of faith comes in everywhere, Colin; we are blind
creatures, yet delude ourselves into the belief that we can alter the
current of our destinies, and compel circumstances, just as Mina here
fancies, by looting, she will make the plants grow sooner. We repine at
the trials God sends us, as if He did not see and know and order what
was best for us. There is a lamentable absence of faith throughout the
world—of trust in the breasts of all.”

“’Deed and ye may weel say that, sir,” mournfully acquiesced Colin; “the
Almighty surely has great tholing with us.”

“But I don’t think,” interposed Mina at this juncture, “that I can
_make_ them flower any quicker than they would do of themselves; only
when I cannot see them, it is quite impossible for me to believe they
ever will blow—that’s it, uncle.”

“But do you not know, Mina,” he returned, “that although the earth may,
and does, hide the seeds and bulbs from you, it cannot do so from God?
You should, therefore, leave all in his hands, and wait patiently for
the result.”

“Yes, yes,” was the response, uttered so eagerly that it bordered on the
very confines of irritability, “I know He sees them, and makes them
grow; but sometimes, too, He lets them die, and so I just push the mould
back a wee weeny bit, uncle, to see if they are living or dead.”

“And so kill half poor Colin’s annuals from overanxiety and want of
belief,” he said, looking sadly on the child, whilst the gardener
groaned forth an interjection concerning the “old Adam,” which, reaching
Mina’s ear, caused her to exclaim,

“Papa says, Colin, it is not fair for you to be always blaming him
without just cause; for that in regard of Mina and the flowers, it is
not old Adam, but young Eve that’s in fault.”

A sad smile broke for a moment over her uncle’s face, but immediately it
vanished; and bending a look full of mournful import upon his niece, he
said,

“Your papa is far too fond of you, Mina, I fear.”

“And he fears I am far too fond of you,” she returned, moving closer to
the old man’s side; then, taking one of his hands betwixt her’s, which
were covered over with mould, and looking wistfully up in his face, she
inquired in a subdued, altered voice, “When will my dear papa be well?”

“Soon,” answered her uncle, averting his glance from hers, and gazing
away, with a troubled expression of countenance, into the far
distance—“soon.”

The gardener fastened his eyes for a brief moment upon him who had
uttered the simple monosyllable, then bending towards a white moss rose
tree, that the action might remain unnoticed, he wiped something
wondrously like a tear from his cheek, with the back of a horny hand;
after which, he glanced cautiously at the child.

She had buried her face in her little palms, and tears came streaming
abundantly through the fingers, making strange long tracks amidst the
clay upon them. At first her grief was silent; but, at last, hearing a
half suppressed sob, her uncle withdrew his eyes from the spot where the
sun was setting, and bending them mournfully on the slight young figure
bowed now in the agony of its first bitter sorrow; he asked,

“Why are you weeping, Mina?”

“Because you said it—so—” she cried.

“How?” he demanded.

“As if —, as if —,” she gasped, “though you said ‘soon,’ you did not
think it.”

“Did you ever know me to say anything I did not think?” he gently
enquired.

“No,” she responded.

“Well then, Mina, dear little Mina, I did indeed mean your papa would
soon be well—in heaven—but never here.”

A sharp wild cry escaped the trembling lips, when this answer broke the
stillness of that lovely summer’s evening, and freeing herself from the
kindly hand which would have detained her, Mina sped with the fleetness
of the wind towards the house, up a flight of stairs, then along a
corridor, and finally into a room, the windows of which looked westwards
to the hills and the mountains, where the sun was setting.

In that chamber a life was ebbing away. More rapidly even than the
golden tints were fading from the sky, was consciousness retreating from
the frame of him, who, the child’s uncle said, “loved Mina too well:”
who, even in death, hearing her weep and expostulate with those who
would have denied her entrance, murmured faintly,

“Don’t make Mina cry—let her come.”

“Papa, my own papa,” she whispered in a choking voice, raining tears
over his face as she nestled close to him, “say you are not going to
die—to leave _me_.”

His lips touched hers for a brief instant, and he faintly answered,
“only for a time;” but the child, flinging her arms around him, shrieked
out in her agony, “Oh! papa, take me with you—_wherever_ you are going,
take me too.”

If he could have done it he would; he clasped her convulsively to his
heart, and even whilst he did so, ceased on this earth—to be. He had
gone to that land where troubles enter not; but she remained to breast
all sorrows as she might.

“He is dead,” said some one in a low solemn tone; and at the sound of
that brief sentence, Mina shrunk back appalled from the sight of that
which had been her father and was not. A loving friend bore her away
from the room; there was a mist before her eyes for a minute; she did
not understand—she could not tell exactly what had happened. It seemed
to her a horrible dream: time came when she _knew_ it was an awful
reality.

The widow was counting the dreary hours as they dragged on during the
course of that interminable night: her son was standing weeping by her
side; the lonely watcher by the bed of death had fallen into uneasy
slumber; the candles were burning dimly, and those who thought of Mina
at all imagined the child was sleeping also, when a little figure clad
all in white, its face pale as that of the corpse, its feet bare, and
its eyes tearless, came noiselessly stealing into that chamber, whence a
soul had but lately departed. It drew very close unto the side of the
couch; it looked long and earnestly in the stony countenance of the
dead, then timidly laid a childish hand on his.

“Lord bless me, Miss Mina, what are you doing?” cried the woman,
starting at length from sleep, and alarmed at the sight of the intruder.
“What are you doing?”

“Watching my papa,” was the response.

The person, whose employment Mina had thus, in a manner, taken from her,
gazed at the child for a moment; then said in a low earnest tone,

“Are you not afraid?”

“No,” answered Mina, “not afraid — only —” a sort of shudder shook her
frame, and she paused in her reply.

“Miss Mina,” continued the woman, “this is no place fit for you; you
ought never to have been here; you will let me take you back to bed,
won’t you?” and she arose to do so: but Mina put her arms around her
neck, and exclaimed so entreatingly and mournfully,—

“No, no; let me stay with you: I cannot bear to be alone or away from
him; it makes me far more frightened: let me stay,”—that, whether right
or wrong, she was permitted to remain.

The woman wrapped a shawl around her and took her on her knee, and held
her to her heart, and bent her head down over her, and thus they talked
in whispers about him, and how good he had been, and where he was gone;
until, finally, towards morning, perfectly exhausted with weeping, and
sorrow, and excitement, Mina dropped her head upon the breast of an
honest, though not perhaps very sensible, humble friend, and fell into a
dreamless sleep; from which, when the sun was high in heaven, she awoke
with a premature knowledge of grief in her heart, and the memory of
_that_ scene to be a sort of dreary companion through life: never again,
no, never! to seem in aught, save years, what she had actually been
twenty-four hours previously—a child!

How soon the curtain of existence rises before some! for how long nought
save its pleasant side is revealed unto others! What an utter folly it
seems to count age by years, when the heart of the boy is sometimes
older in all life’s saddest experiences than that of the gray-haired
man! What peaceful or pleasant incidents illumine most of the chapters
that make up the story of a fortunate few! what stirring or depressing
scenes form, on the other hand, the preface to the eventful book of
existence in the histories of most!

And how frequently also does the first circumstance that brings
knowledge of grief to the soul, prove a sort of type of those which
must, if life be spared, succeed thereto: from girlhood some women seem
destined to watch by the bed of sickness, tend the invalid, read to the
aged, bring with noiseless feet, and gentle words, and willing hands,
and bright sweet smiles, sunshine into dark places; whilst others again
appear born to be witnesses of, or actors in, scenes of violence, sin,
or misery—from infancy words of anger or recrimination sound incessantly
in their ears. And as thus the first solemn reality of life which Mina
Frazer ever beheld was the corpse of her father, so it was fated that
many of the incidents in her lot in after years were to be chequered
more with darkness than light.

It was perhaps a dread of this, arising from actual knowledge of the
state of his nephew’s affairs, the character of his widow, and the
nature of the child, that caused her grand-uncle, the old laird of
Craigmaver, the head of the Frazer clan, to look with such a double
portion of anxious sorrow on Mina as she twined her arms around him, and
laid her head upon his shoulder and wept there, when he came to talk a
little to her on the day of her father’s interment.

“Poor little Mina,” he said, twisting the long curls round his finger,
and speaking in a very tremulous voice. “My dear child, poor little
Mina.”

The sobs grew louder as he uttered these words; but, at length, she
murmured in a reproachful tone,

“They have taken away my dear papa: they have buried him.”

“God has taken his soul, Mina,” replied the old man; “we have only
buried his body. Don’t you like to think, dear child, when you look up,
up, away into the clear blue heavens, that he is there waiting and
watching for you?”

Mina dashed the tears from her eyes and gazed for a moment at the azure
sky, as if endeavouring to realize the idea to herself; but then she
dropped her face once again on the breast of her relative, and answered,
with a choking sob, “No.”

“No,” he echoed in some astonishment, “why not?”

“Because, I am sure,” she wept forth, “my own papa would rather I was
with him. He won’t be happy waiting and watching for me; I know he
won’t, he wanted to take me with him—but—but—he had not
time—or—something.”

And at the bare memory of _that_ farewell she cried till her hair was
damp and wet, as it fell loose and unregarded over her face. She could
not understand death. Ah! which among us can? It grew to her a stranger
mystery, a sadder thought, the more she, in her vague terrified childish
way, reflected concerning it.

“He _knows_ now what we _believe_ here, Mina; that whatever lot is
appointed for us by the Great Disposser of events, is for our good. Had
it been well for you to go to heaven with your dear father, God would
assuredly have permitted you to do so. Do you comprehend me, my little
niece? What I mean is, that He is able to order all things, and does
order all things for our ultimate happiness; if not in this world, most
certainly in the next. Do you comprehend me, Mina?”

“Yes; I know what you mean.”

“And you will be very good, and try to feel it, won’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered abstractedly, pushing back once again the curls from
her face, and gazing up at the sky beyond which he had said her father
was; but somehow the sight of the corpse had clogged both her faith and
her imagination with much of earth’s heavy clay; and the funeral and the
churchyard were to her much more tangible and frightful, than heaven
with its joys was real and beautiful.

“I wonder——” she murmured.

“What?” her uncle inquired.

“Whether, when God can do all things, he took the spiders out of my
papa’s grave;” and a shiver told the horror wherewith the things she had
lately seen and reflected upon had inspired her.

“He could do it,” answered her uncle, after a painful pause, “if it were
His will.”

The trembling little hands grasped his almost convulsively, as Mina
returned,

“Yes, but I am afraid He would not, uncle, and—and I have been thinking
about that ever since they said he was to be buried.”

“You hear and see and think about a great many things you should not,
Mina,” said her relative, half sorrowfully, half sternly; and the remark
was perfectly true, but it was not her fault that she did so. “Who puts
all these ideas into your mind, tell me, dear, who is it?”

“No one; they come of themselves, and I wish they would not,” she
answered simply, clasping both hands across her forehead, “for they make
me feel so unhappy.”

“And I wish they would not either, Mina,” he said, “for they make me
unhappy too;” and he fixed a troubled look on the young face, as if
striving to read something of her future destiny from that treacherous
index.

“I suppose,” Mina continued, “it’s because I cannot help thinking about
things that mamma calls me; ‘a strange old-fashioned child,’—my papa
never said that:” and once again a deluge of tears came streaming from
the dark eyes, and her relative had no heart to say anything more to her
then, excepting, “My dear child, my poor little Mina!”

Who could have rebuked the tender creature—the wild love she felt for,
and the strange thoughts she entertained regarding, him who had most
erroneously imagined his daughter to be perfection; who had fancied her
prettier and better than any child that had ever previously existed; who
used to take her with him everywhere—riding, driving, walking, boating,
over the mountains, across the moors, on the water—to visit his
relatives; who encouraged the wayward fancies which the lonely life, the
desolate scenery, and above all, the lack of young companions,
engendered in her; who had dreamt that life must be bright unto his
little Mina, and who had died just when a doubt of the correctness of
this idea first entered his mind.

“He spoiled the child,” every one said, “and made her too much an object
of his constant care:” and accordingly, when people heard Captain Frazer
was dead, the first question that sprung to the lips of most was, “What
will little Mina do?” for it was well known that whilst the father
lavished his affection on his daughter, the mother bestowed hers on her
son: of course she felt attachment for both, but it was by no means an
equal one; for whilst her very heart was wrapt up in the boy, who was
handsomer and gayer than Mina had ever been, she somehow always felt
that a very sufficient gulf yawned betwixt herself and her youngest
born. “That old-fashioned incomprehensible creature,” as she remarked to
her friends in private, “whom the captain is bringing up, I sadly fear
to be a perfect little oddity;” and the lady shrugged up her shoulders,
and visitors and confidants condoled with her in becoming terms upon the
dreadful misfortune that threatened the slight delicate girl: for it is
one of the most beautiful things in our most unexceptionable state of
society, that whilst affectation is cultivated as one of the graces of
life, oddity, or in other words, originality of character in either
woman or child is considered a sort of sin, a contagion to be avoided, a
monster to be smothered in its birth.

And thus it came to pass that most persons, save those who were
themselves eccentric, mourned over Mina Frazer, or else pitied her and
her misguided parent in terms which hovered much nearer the confines of
contempt than those of love; and even her uncle, who was one of those
true undemonstrative men whom in these later days we reverence and
honour with such a treble portion of respect and admiration, because we
so rarely encounter them, sorrowed over the child whilst her father
lived, because he feared he was far too fond of her; and after that
parent’s death, he grieved doubly concerning her, because she had no
relative left on earth, save himself, possessed of the capability of
bestowing on her even a tithe of the affection which had been lavished
on the strange pale child by him, whom Mina said, “would have taken her
with him, only he had not time, or—something.”




                               CHAPTER V.
                  RENDERS A CHANGE OF ABODE NECESSARY.


Death and poverty—perpetual travellers, who seem to take pleasure in
dogging each other’s footsteps from house to house—had, as too
frequently proves the case, entered the abode of the Frazers almost
simultaneously.

The husband, having invested all his fortune—ten thousand pounds—in some
absurd speculation, which was, so he once affirmed, to give him “thirty
thousand for his daughter’s portion, and plenty more besides,” was so
overwhelmed at the first mention of a possibility of failure, that he
sunk under the violence of his grief and anxiety, never to rise again;
and the very day after his demise, letters from a mighty city brought
unto that lonely nook the intelligence that, not merely were “the thirty
thousand pounds not coming, but that the ten thousand had gone.”

It is sad when death enters any door, but it is sadder still when
poverty follows the ghastly visitor through the portal the latter has
left open behind him, bringing a double portion of sorrow into that home
where sorrow enough previously abode.

To weep by the corpse of a dearly-loved friend is bitter, we have all
felt; but to be, in addition, anxious concerning the vulgar matter of
daily bread, to have to consider, almost ere the funeral train be out of
sight, how life is to be supported, creditors satisfied, a shelter
provided, children fed, clothed, and educated, is a something so
repugnant to every feeling of human nature, that it rarely carries its
burden of sorrow bravely, but too frequently sits hopelessly down in its
despair and declares the attempt utterly useless, unless friends or
relatives will lighten the load with the magic touch of gold.

Mrs. Frazer never thought of making the attempt at all, however, whether
aided in her endeavour or not; she was one of the apparently most
amiable and really most helpless amongst the innumerable descendants of
Eve; she was grateful for money, if it were given cheerfully or
obtainable readily, and could spend it, as some of her sex can, without
a thought of whether she were making a good use of it or whether, when
it was exhausted, she would be able to obtain fresh supplies: so long as
gales from those blessed islands called, in our vulgar tongue, banker’s
coffers, filled the sails of her bark, the lady floated on happily,
tranquilly; she could ask for gold, receive it, smile sweetly in return
for it, change it away for things of doubtful value and still more
questionable utility,—but make it! A pilgrimage to the moon would have
sounded to her quite as possible a proposition as for her to do aught to
increase her income. And so nobody ever did suggest such an impossible
project unto her: she was perfectly prostrated by the death of her
husband and by the loss of his fortune, but she dimly reflected, “When I
was a child, my father provided for me; when I became a wife, my husband
did the same; and now I am a widow, somebody will give me all I
require?” and consolation and encouragement came with the idea into her
mind.

Had his creditors not taken the property of the late Captain Frazer into
their own hands, she would have entreated the laird of Craigmaver to
“put matters to rights for her;” as it was, the above procedure saved
him trouble and her trouble, and left both at liberty to quit Glenfiord,
a place which had now become unendurable to her, and proceed northwards,
accompanied by Mina and her son; for the widow unhesitatingly accepted
the offer of a temporary home at Craigmaver till her future plans were
matured,—till, in plainer words, she heard whether her rich bachelor
half-brother, Mr. Merapie, were going to “act a brother’s part towards
her and make Malcolm his heir and promise Mina a fortune.”

“Take the cottage near Craigmaver and have a comfortable little farm
yard, just sufficient to provide us with milk and butter and eggs for
our own use, and send Malcolm to school, and live with Mina here on
fifty pounds a year!” she exclaimed one day, about a month after her
arrival, in answer to the laird’s remonstrance against her journeying
south. “My dear uncle, you must be dreaming; why my father allowed me
more than that for dress alone when I was a girl, and your nephew,
Allan, though not very rich, had still what made us comfortable, five
hundred a year besides his half-pay and Glenfiord; it is all very well
to talk of people being contented and coming down to their situation;
and some, perhaps, can do it, but I was not brought up to come down to
my situation, and I could not and would not even dream of doing such a
thing. John will never let me want, I know; and Malcolm, poor child, has
set his heart on entering the navy, and how could he enter the navy
here; and I should perfectly die of _ennui_ amongst these savage hills
if I had no carriage and did not visit Edinburgh every winter. No, no;
my brother is right—we ought to go to London; it is my native place, you
know, and whenever Mina is better we shall set out.”

“I think,” suggested Mr. Frazer, “that you might live comfortably here;
your expenses would be very small; my people should attend to your
poultry and garden: the house is small, I admit, but still large enough
for you; I would be always near to assist or advise in any emergency:
and surely,” he added, with a smile, “our mountain air must be as pure,
and our Highland scenery is more beautiful than any you will meet with
south of the Tweed.”

“It is very kind of you, I am sure,” she said, “to propose all this; but
I have finally determined to accept John’s offer: there are such
advantages about London, everything to be had that you want, nothing to
do but pay for things and they are with you in five minutes. London
possesses everything that a rational being can desire, excepting
beautiful scenery, and you know I never cared for that.”

Which was perfectly true, for even in her youngest and most romantic
days, Mrs. Frazer would have preferred the present of “a duck” of a new
silk dress, to the sight of the loveliest view that eye ever rested on.
But if she liked the city streets, Mr. Frazer thought he knew a little
creature who would pine amongst them; so he said:

“Well, perhaps you are right, and I confess mine was not altogether an
unselfish proposition, for I desired to keep you all near me; but I wish
greatly that, at least for the present, you would leave Mina here: she
is so delicate, so susceptible, that I fear this sudden snapping of all
old ties may prove most injurious to her; the child will break her heart
in London, pent up in the house or else sent out for stated walks, after
the liberty to which she has been accustomed.”

“Her father permitted her to run wild,” returned the lady pettishly;
“she will be a deal the better for a little restraint; she is still
young enough to be brought into training. I really sometimes tremble to
think what a strange unmanageable creature my poor dear husband was
making her,—letting her do just as she pleased—run out without bonnet or
gloves, getting her complexion ruined and her hands the colour of
rosewood—work amongst clay and sand, and even soot—and talk to servants
and poor people till she acquired all their extraordinary notions. She
told me the other day, that she was very nearly as fond of Colin
Saunders as of you: now only think of her even saying such a thing!”

“Well, I have no doubt she only spoke the truth,” responded the old man;
then, after musing for a few minutes, he said, “And I suppose you will
send the little wild mountain sprite to some fashionable London school,
where she will have to learn all sorts of lessons, and be laced up in
stays, and have to wear tight shoes, and either say what she does not
think or else keep all her thoughts to herself; and instead of the
affectionate heart she now possesses, she will grow ashamed of caring
much of anything save herself and the fripperies and follies of fashion:
she must either change her nature or break her heart. My poor little
Mina! will you leave her with me?”

“If I had no other inducement for leaving this country,” said the widow
rather angrily, “Mina would be a sufficient motive to make me do so. The
child has been perfectly ruined, and in a town and amongst other young
people, I pray she may lose that eccentricity which now distinguishes
her. She has the strangest ideas and thoughts, and the most disagreeable
way of giving expression to them: one of her convictions at present is,
that no one excepting herself, you, and Colin is really grieved at her
father’s death.” And Mrs. Frazer applied her handkerchief to her eyes as
she recorded this crowning sin, and shed a few tears in a very proper
manner, while Mr. Frazer reflected that Mina was not very far wrong; for
so long as her son lived, his nephew’s widow cared very little if all
the rest of the world died; and, besides, the idea of leaving a country
and a people she had always disliked and of returning to the joys and
bustle of England’s metropolis, had tended not a little to banish her
sorrow and make her regard the demise of her husband, who had been, as
she thought, absurdly attached to his native land, not quite so great a
misfortune as she might otherwise have considered it. Her brother, Mr.
John Merapie, would give her a handsome house, servants, equipages,
everything, in fact, she wanted; for she knew he was enormously rich,
and resided, moreover, in that mighty Babylon where everything, save
peace of mind, is to be purchased for ready-money—cash on delivery.

“I do not say,” resumed Mr. Frazer, after an unsatisfactory pause, “that
I ever considered poor Allan’s system of education, or rather of
non-education, so far as my little Mina was concerned, peculiarly
fortunate or beneficial. If you will leave her with me, I intend to try
if it be not possible to make her less a child in some ways and more a
child in others; to eradicate many strange ideas which I admit she has
acquired, and to teach her those absolutely necessary things which her
indulgent father said ‘she was far too young to be teazed learning.’ In
one word, I would endeavour to improve and enlarge her mind, without
changing her heart; only let me keep her for one year, and if, at the
expiration of that period, you do not think her considerably altered for
the better, I will resign all right and title to her. Will you permit
her to stay?”

“My dear uncle,” said the lady impressively, “I would do any one thing
in the world to oblige you except this; I know perfectly well what
Mina’s faults are and why they are: so long as Allan lived, I could not
interfere, because he thought Mina could do no wrong, and considered her
very defects virtues; but now the case is different. I am quite
persuaded that so long as she even breathes the air of Scotland she will
remain unmanageable: I wish her to associate with other girls, to be
instructed in feminine accomplishments, to be drilled into the decorums
of refined English society, to acquire a certain _retenue_ of manner,
and, above all, to be removed from vulgar associates, who, I verily
believe, would soon teach her to speak broad Scotch and eat haggiss.”

“The latter accomplishment she has become perfect in without the
advantage of masters,” remarked Mr. Frazer, with a smile; “but to return
to my petition: leave her at Craigmaver for twelve months, and I promise
to preserve her from contact with the commonalty; her accent shall be
kept as pure as any accent out of England can be; and should you make
the same a _sine quâ non_, I think that I can ensure that she shall not
acquire any dreadful penchant for our national and, by consequence,
heathenish dishes: she cannot possibly learn any harm here; and, with
the blessing of Providence, I hope to be enabled to teach her some
good.”

“I am sure,” responded Mrs. Frazer, “it is uncommonly kind of you to
take such an interest about her; I do not understand why you should do
so—if it were Malcolm I could comprehend it better—and Mina never can
feel sufficiently grateful for all the trouble you wish to have on her
account: but indeed it cannot be; it would be a most impolitic
arrangement, to say nothing of the appearance to the world. My brother
is so very rich, that it would be imprudent not to make her dependent on
him, for he can afford to educate her regardless of expense. There are
no advantages in Scotland of any kind; in fact, no one can ever,
strictly speaking, be termed a “gentlewoman,” unless she has been at a
first-class London school. Five, I think, of the very happiest years of
my life were passed at the most expensive seminary in town; for my poor
dear father never regarded money when I was concerned. It would be
almost a sin to deprive Mina of opportunities for improvement such as I
enjoyed: and in the course of a few months she will grow to like London,
and be quite a changed being.”

Mr. Frazer had been silently contemplating the lady—who, reclining
gracefully on a very comfortable sofa, with a sort of widowed and
ladylike grief on her countenance, had in a very languid tone uttered
the above sentence—and the conclusion at which he speedily and
ungallantly arrived was, that if his nephew’s wife was the result of
five years’ fashionable training, on the whole the Glenfiord system
might be deemed preferable. For the old laird had never, even in her
loveliest and best days, entertained any especial affection for her whom
Allan Frazer—then a young subaltern, with an income barely sufficient
for his own support, and a fortune of just one thousand pounds, which he
settled on her—had wedded against the advice of his friends, and the
consent of hers, for love. There was much anger, then forgiveness, then
a handsome allowance from her father, who it was expected would leave
her a considerable sum at his demise; many congratulations from military
acquaintances on the happy termination of his matrimonial speculation; a
little active service, and then, Allan Frazer, a captain on half-pay,
falling, through the death of a relative, into possession of Glenfiord
and ten thousand pounds, retired, to his wife’s inexpressible chagrin,
from the bustle and excitement of town life, and made but one single
step from the gaieties of London, balls, picnics, country quarters, to
the utter desolation and solitary grandeur of Loch Lomond!

But circumstances had lately occurred which rendered her opposition of
the slenderest and most useless description. The love, born of fancy not
of reason, which had lighted in a moment in the young Scotchman’s
imagination, and been blown into something like an intense blaze by the
breath of opposition, died out when that opposition was withdrawn almost
as rapidly as it had kindled. Since time immemorial, ill-natured people
said “the Frazers had been considered more charming in their manners,
than constant in their attachments;” but whether this assertion were
correct or not, whether the fault lay in the nature of the husband or
the character of the wife, one thing is certain,—after a few years Allan
found himself frequently smiling, in a somewhat bitter manner, at the
idea of his ever having been absolutely “in love” with the graceful and
heartless Englishwoman—so much in love, indeed, as once to have
seriously contemplated the desirability of suicide when obstacles,
apparently insurmountable, appeared to bid defiance to their union.

Thus, even whilst her father lived, even whilst backed by money,
friends, position, Mrs. Frazer at length discovered that her influence
over her husband was of the very slightest description; and when, after
the demise of her father—who had in his generation been esteemed one of
the Babylonish merchant princes—it was discovered that he had died just
at the proper time, leaving behind precisely what covered his funeral
expenses, and no more,—Captain Frazer took, as some men will take in
such cases, a much higher tone than formerly with his refractory wife,
whose resistance to aught which he wished from the day when _her_
supplies were stopped, became of that nature which is generally called
passive.

He was always kind to her,—for if the Frazers did choose wives absurdly
and rashly, and repented them of their impetuosity, when repentance was
worse than a folly, they always did treat anything connected with them
of the feminine description, whether mother, sister, wife, or daughter,
kindly—after a fashion. If they could not give love, they gave what very
frequently does just as well, courtesy: they never quarrelled and
argued, but politely expressed their desires, and expected them to be
complied with instanter. They never said, “You must, madam;” but their
quiet “You will, my dear,” had to be obeyed perhaps even more rapidly
than a more peremptory command from less determined lips. In a word,
when all the money and influence and power lay in the hands of the
_ci-devant_ captain, he carried his wife captive to Scotland, and set
her down in a very beautiful cage, surrounded by everything for which
she did not care—scenery, sterling hearts, flowers, beauty, perfume,
solitude—and the only happy portions of her life during the ten years
she spent in the land of cakes and easterly winds were those brief
periods passed in the ancient town of Edinburgh, where Allan had no
objection to take her, and go himself, for three months out of every
dreary twelve. The world was good enough to remark what an extremely
united couple Captain Frazer and his English wife appeared; and, in
truth, externally they did “get on” charmingly, for he gave her, without
hesitation, a liberal supply of money; paid her bills, and never frowned
at their amount; had a _bijou_ of a phaeton, drawn by two Shetland
ponies, made for her especial behoof; and to sum all up into a lady’s
sentence, “was an _excellent_ husband.”

For if he were not devotedly attached to her, neither was she to him;
and he permitted her to indulge and spoil Malcolm to even a greater
extent than he, as Mrs. Frazer affirmed (though not in his hearing),
“ruined” Mina; and each allowed the other to pursue his and her own
separate path, without much hindrance or molestation: and if people be
not very fond of, and most tolerant towards the faults and foibles of,
one another, believe me the wider apart their paths are—even should
those paths be matrimonial ones—the better.

And thus matters progressed peaceably and pleasantly enough, till Mr.
Frazer’s death cut the Gordian knot (which men and women are perpetually
tying in haste with their tongues to the end that they may repent at
leisure in their hearts) for ever; when, as we have seen, the
disconsolate widow left Glenfiord, and repaired to Craigmaver,
preparatory to a still longer journey home to the land of her birth, her
affections, and her hopes.

After what has been advanced concerning the manners of _all_ the
individuals composing the Frazer clan, from the laird down to the
hundred and sixty-second cousin, towards that largest half of humanity
styled so emphatically by our polite and lively allies, “_le beau
sexe_,” you, most patient reader, will readily believe that Mr. Frazer
never permitted anything like the time occupied in the above somewhat
wearisome, but most necessary, digression to elapse between the
termination of his visitor’s remark and his rather melancholy reply
thereto.

“And so you will not comply with my request, and I must part with the
child who has been more unto me than many a daughter is unto many a
parent? Well, well, perhaps I was foolish to expect a different
decision, and I hope and trust and pray the step you are now taking may
prove for her ultimate good both here and hereafter; but there is a
presentiment on my mind—which, like the vision of the seer, oppresses my
soul, and makes me speak when, perhaps, I ought not to do so—that in
that far distant city where you propose taking her, and under
fashionable instructresses, my dear little Mina will either remain just
what she is, and become perfectly miserable, or else change so
completely as to render those who love her best upon earth wretched for
her sake. There are great materials in her character to bring forth
either evil or good, according to the seed which may be sown: but I
leave all with humble trust in the hands of Him who can guide her, there
or here, and keep her always in the straight path that leads so surely
unto heaven.”

Mrs. Frazer had raised an embroidered handkerchief to her face to
conceal a yawn during the progress of this speech, and at its conclusion
answered:

“As you most justly remark, there is a Providence which overrules the
destinies of individuals dwelling in London as well as at Craigmaver. I
prefer the former; and I have no doubt but that Mina will be very good
and happy there, and when you next see her, you will admit she is
greatly improved.” And as if she considered the discussion concluded,
and desired that it should be so, she arose, and taking her relative’s
arm, led him through one of the open windows of the drawing-room into
the garden beyond; and the old man, looking around at the mountains and
the firs and the distant valleys, sighed as he wondered how any one who
_could_ stay amongst such scenery would voluntarily choose to quit it.

The autumn had completely passed ere Mina, still very pale and weak, was
pronounced by a dreadful old Highland doctor—who took snuff and called
Mrs. Frazer “My leddy,” and talked to her in Scotch so harsh, that it
excruciated her refined Saxon ears—at all fit to travel: but cold and
dreary though November might be, the widow determined to depart
immediately,—“_Anything_,” as she impressively said to her English
lady’s-maid, “being preferable to a winter at Craigmaver.”

“And so, Mina darling, we have to say good-bye in real sorrowful
earnest,” said the laird to the child, a few minutes before the time of
parting actually arrived; “in real sorrowful earnest,” he repeated,
looking mournfully upon her.

“Going away, dear good old uncle,” she cried, putting her arms about his
neck, “to the great big toun as Colin calls it, which he says is the
‘head quarters o’ Satan;’ going away from everything—far away, where I
can’t see you: nobody to love Mina there.”

Mr. Frazer kissed a large tear from the quivering eyelids, as he
answered somewhat doubtfully,

“You have your mamma, Mina.”

“And my mamma has Malcolm, uncle,” she quickly responded; “but I am to
go with cousin Allan to say ‘good-bye’ to Colin—poor Colin:” and even as
she spoke, she took the hand of the old laird’s grandson, a stripling of
some seventeen years of age, and went forth with him, quietly and
tearfully, to bid her humble friend farewell.

“I’m going, Colin,” she said, stretching out both her little palms;
“good-bye.”

The gardener gazed dimly on her through a kind of film that, spite of
all his efforts at composure, would obscure his sight.

“Ye’re goin’ hundreds o’ miles awa’ frae us a’, Miss Mina,” he said, and
the words were uttered in a harsh hollow tone, “an’ we’ll never get a
sight o’ ye again, never!”

“Yes, yes, you will,” she rejoined; “I mean to come back to Craigmaver
when I’m a young lady, and live here always.”

“Ah! you will think differently, then, Mina,” said her cousin Allan;
“you will soon forget Scotland and Craigmaver and all of us: won’t she,
Colin?”

“I’d tak’ an oath, if the like were needed, that she winna forget even a
single daisy on the moors, Maister Allan,” returned the gardener
vehemently; “but wherever ye be, or whatever ye think o’, gude go wi’
ye, an’ God tak’ care o’ ye; I could na wish ye a better wish, Miss
Mina, if I talked for a year.”

“What shall I send you from London to remember me by, Colin?” she asked.

“When ye are writing to the laird or Maister Allan, for I believe ye can
write finely, Miss Mina, send me word ye are well, and sometimes ask
‘how is Colin?’ it is all I want; I need naething to remember my dear
old master’s child by—naething!”

“But you must have something for yourself, something you can look at and
think I sent you,” she persisted: “Oh! I know now; I’ll buy you an
English mull, which you can use on Sundays; and then, when I am going to
church in London, I’ll think you are carrying it to kirk with you at
Craigmaver; won’t that do, cousin Allan? I can’t stay any longer,
Colin,” she added, hearing her mother’s maid calling for her. “Good-bye!
I’ll never forget anybody here; and when I’m old, I’ll come back to
Craigmaver to see you all: indeed I will—good-bye!”

She was gone; the gardener gazed after her as she ran towards the house:
he stood as if turned into stone. In a few minutes the noise of carriage
wheels grating on the gravelled drive aroused him, and climbing hastily
a mound which commanded an extensive view of the southern road, he
watched the receding vehicle till it became a tiny speck in the
distance, and finally was lost altogether to view.

“For goodness gracious sake,” exclaimed the lady’s-maid, who occupied a
seat in the carriage opposite her mistress’s daughter; “for goodness
gracious sake, Miss Mina, whatever ’ave you been a doing to your ’air?”

“I just cut off two curls for my uncle and Allan, and don’t torment me
about it Haswell, because I had not time to take off my bonnet again and
get at the back ones; they will grow again, and if they won’t, I don’t
care:” by way of conclusion to which ’orribly naughty speech—as that
perfect lady’s-maid, Miss Haswell, styled it—Mina relapsed into another
paroxysm of grief, and wept and sobbed so that her mother became
satisfied she was about to have some kind of a fit; and acting upon that
impression ordered the driver to stop the carriage, as though such an
act were likely to produce the least good effect under such
circumstances. If the horses’ heads had been turned back the case might
have been a little different; but as Mrs. Frazer had not the slightest
idea of doing anything of the kind, and as scolding and remonstrances,
and even stopping, proved alike useless and unavailing, Mina was at
length permitted to cry in peace, which accordingly she did till she was
so perfectly exhausted that she could cry no more.

But other tears fell that day at Craigmaver, from the eyes of a
true-hearted, and—though he did yield to the weakness which men scoff
at—sensible Highlander, who wept, as he said, “sair,” to think that his
dead master’s child was going away so young and so unwillingly, “into
the world.”




                              CHAPTER VI.
                            FANCY AND FACT.


Had Mrs. Frazer been thoroughly aware of to whom and to what she was
going, perhaps she might have delayed some considerable period weighing
the pro’s and con’s, on both sides, before she finally determined to
reject the old laird’s offer; and if, after all, she had set forth on
her Southern pilgrimage, it would have been with a much more mournful
face, and a far heavier heart than any person had ever supposed to
belong to, or dwell in the breast of, the widow of Allan Frazer, Esq.,
late Captain in His Majesty’s ——th regiment of Highlanders.

All she knew positively concerning her brother may be summed up in a
very few words. He was fifteen years older than herself—a bachelor—and
extremely rich.

Owing to the disparity of their ages, and the fact that John, disliking
parental control, especially in commercial matters, had at the early age
of eighteen “started for himself,” there was little intercourse betwixt
them before Mrs. Frazer’s marriage; and after that event, letters from
the London merchant to the Scottish gentleman’s wife came to Glenfiord
at such rare intervals, that, like the Lord Mayor’s show, they only
served to remind the fashionable lady there was such an individual in
existence—until she required help from him, until the choice lay between
“London with John Merapie,” and the “Highlands with the head of her
husband’s clan:” then quick as lightning she bethought herself how
wealthy her brother was; how delightful it would be to preside over a
grand establishment in her native city; how splendidly he could provide
for Malcolm and Mina; and how liberally, she might feel certain, he
would act towards her.

And so she wrote to say, “I am beggared;” and he, by return of post,
offered her a home and a cordial welcome,—which letter filled the poor
lady’s weak brain full of all sorts of absurd ideas concerning
“fashionable life in London;” self, children and brother, visitors,
servants, house, equipage and furniture, being the heroes, heroines, and
etceteras of the tale she so speedily imagined—but which like many
another, better and worse, fiction before and since—was never, spite of
the admiration its authoress felt for the same, destined to be
published.

How gladly she would have turned that dream into a reality, how fully
she expected it to become such, she herself and one or two others came
in time fully to understand; but she had, unhappily for her own comfort,
started on wrong data: she had taken a supposititious house for her
brother, furnished it with a vision, placed him therein with a false
character, and finally repaired to London under a delusion, in order to
see the “whirlwind from the desert come,” and level with its practical
breath all the fine airy castles she had comforted herself—since Captain
Frazer’s demise—with building.

“John is rich—of course he lives in style—of course he will do whatever
I ask him, as my poor dear father used.” So reasoned the lady, and on
this reasoning she managed to create for herself a great and most
unexpected disappointment; for nothing more different from his sister’s
mental portrait of him can be conceived, than John Merapie. He was a man
whose character might be thus briefly described:

“He liked his dinner; and he hated humbug.”

Now humbug, which was one of his pet expressions, meant in his
unrecognized dictionary, everything which he disapproved of—or rather,
everything for which he did not care. He thought marrying a humbug—but
not money; he considered fashion a humbug—but not a good fire; he deemed
it a humbug to care about where you lived—but a piece of solemn
necessity to take care where you dined; he denounced music as a
humbug—but not mince pies; he was perfectly satisfied fine ladies were
“regular humbugs;” but had a sort of reverence for a capital
housekeeper—that kind of thing, you know; he despised grand furniture,
but gloried in politics; thought tea only fit for women, but had a high
opinion of port wine; declared he detested evening parties and white kid
gloves, and all such humbug, but enjoyed a quiet rubber of whist, or a
social evening with half-a-dozen “steady-goers,” as much as mortal man
ever did. People wondered, when he had such an antipathy to affectation
and folly, that he got on so admirably with Alfred Westwood; but the
merchant mildly advised some one who ventured to propound the question
unto him—“Just try to cheat Westwood out of a sovereign, and note the
result; I don’t care, sir, what he seems, there’s no humbug in him, and
what’s better than that, there’s no deceiving him with it. He can see
further into the City than any man in London, and that is saying all I
can for him.” Which observation, it may be added, had reference, not to
the City buildings, but to the City people; Burke’s “Who’s Who” of the
West End, not being more voluminous than Westwood’s Who’s Who, of the
East—the former taking cognizance of the great at Court; the latter, of
the firm at the Bank; the one publishing volumes about landed gentry,
the other making telling concise little notes concerning merchant
princes. It was small marvel Mr. Merapie thought his clerk clever, for
he seemed to know by intuition how every man’s “book” stood; whether he
had over-drawn, or was possessed of “a balance;” if his wife had a
fortune; for how much he was “good,” whether he would stand or fall, and
if he fell who would “go” with him, and how much could be raked up out
of the ruins. It was something perfectly horrible, to the uninitiated,
to hear how Mr. Alfred Westwood had characters and capitals, and
probable bankrupts and doubtful bills at his finger’s end—and, if need
were, also on the tip of his smooth silvery tongue—for such astonishing
revelations occasionally give one the feeling, that there may be
mercantile as well as political spies; detective officers, not the less
dangerous because amateur, in the counting house as in the streets.

But this was just what John Merapie required, a clever fellow who could
tell in two minutes, “who was who,” and “what was what”—at any time, in
any place; and he liked his clerk, and forgave his vanity, and imagined
Mr. Westwood had a heart-interest in his concerns; and it never seemed
to enter the worthy merchant’s brain that his subordinate was working,
not for him, but for himself—not for John Merapie, but for Alfred
Westwood—not for a fortune to his principal, but for a partnership to
crown his own individual wishes and deserts.

And thus the shrewd merchant, who spent half his leisure-time denouncing
other people’s follies, completely succeeded in “humbugging” himself
into the belief that a man, who, for years and years, had thought of
nothing, cared for nothing, but himself, was going to turn round at the
eleventh hour, and work disinterestedly and conscientiously for his
employer. What wonder, then, that when Mr. John Merapie, through the
beautifying medium of vanity and hope, lived in London under one
delusion, his weak, foolish sister, Mrs. Frazer, should come to London
labouring under several.

It grieves me to be at length reluctantly compelled to disclose that the
“Square” to which, in the brief conversation recorded in Chapter III.,
between Mr. John Merapie and his clerk, the former so familiarly yet
mysteriously alluded, was none other than Belerma—without exception the
dreariest, dingiest, and most depressing four-angled place of at all
respectable habitation to be met with in the whole of the vast
metropolis.

Fashionable readers may, perhaps, deem this name a fictitious one, and I
admit it is not discernible amongst any of the West End Squares
composing what may be termed a “genteel set” in society; yet, no doubt,
if we only traced back its history far enough, there would be found in
its annals—as in the pedigrees of many people who now are low and poor
enough—sufficient proofs of former grandeur to fling a sort of dim
aristocratic halo over the now desolate and deserted Square, where no
one ever penetrates who can avoid doing so, which is approached by a few
narrow twisted streets, which seems lonely and silent as the grave,
though hardly ten minutes’ walk from some of the noisiest London
thoroughfares.

Like the poor and the reduced, whose day of pride and glory has passed
away for ever, Belerma Square could tell its tale of former gentility,
were speech but vouchsafed unto the stones of its pavement, or the walls
of its mansions: perhaps the feet of nobles once crossed the thresholds
of those dingy tenements; treason may there have been hatched; beauty
has graced the now empty apartments; lights have there sparkled, glad
voices made melody; music has floated through open casements over the
now stunted blackened trees and shrubs, that make a sort of mockery of a
pleasure ground in the centre; existence was there entered on, death
encountered, sorrows endured; tears have there flowed, laughter echoed;
men and women, the great, and fair, and good, and noble of the land once
lived, rejoiced, and suffered there; and yet, in spite of its having at
one period been something more than respectable, “select,” the very name
of Belerma Square is blotted out from the memories of the descendants of
those who once resided there—the present aristocrats of Belgravia. Stone
walls may be possessed of ears, but, as a general rule, the power of
speech hath been denied unto them; and partly because of this, greatly
because of the whims and vagaries and changes of fashion, Belerma
Square, like a corpse wherefrom breath and spirit have departed, has
been left to moulder away into the dust of antiquity by the vast human
tide which, in these later days—growing broader, stronger, and more
unruly—has swept, with common consent, towards the West, and settled
temporarily in those regions which, though now deemed unexceptionable,
some future chronicler of high life in London will, in due course,
assuredly scoff at as being too far East for the sun of fashionable
society to shine on; for it may not be altogether out of place here to
remark that the luminary which irradiates genteel people dwelling in
England’s metropolis, unlike other and commoner suns, rises in the West,
and sets there also, without flinging even a solitary beam of light upon
the East.

New things have become old, and old have disappeared from view; and
strange events have varied the history and altered the apparent
destinies of kingdoms and races, since the noble of the land raised
mansions in that now neglected corner of the metropolis, and dwelt
therein; and its name, like that of Moore’s heroine, “is never heard”
spoken by anybody who is anybody, in any place that is any place.
Therefore I regret to confess the merchant tenanted—stay, he did more,
he owned one of the dreary-looking brick houses forming the southern
side of the quadrangle called Belerma; and it can scarcely be marvelled
at if it went unto the very soul of the newly-made widow to discover
that _her_ brother was actually dwelling in such a locality. For, owing
to his having for years flitted about from lodging to lodging, seeking
rest and finding none; his being one of the briefest, and driest, and
most uncommunicative of correspondents, and his requesting all missives,
whether business or private, to be addressed to his office, situate (as
no letters can be forwarded to him now, there is no necessity to be very
precise) between London Bridge and Wapping, the overwhelming fact of his
having, in default of a better tenant, installed himself in one of three
houses he had bought—of course, a “dead bargain,” but which turned out
almost a “dead loss”—remained an unsuspected mystery at Craigmaver.

When he wrote kindly and shortly, offering his sister a home, he merely
said, “My house in the ‘Square’ is large enough for us all, and, if you
think you will be more comfortable here than in Scotland, pray come
immediately, only let me know what day to expect you:” in consequence of
which extreme brevity he left Mrs. Frazer in a state of happy ignorance
concerning the exact distance from Belgravia at which his home might be;
or what number of hundreds per annum he paid—as she felt sure he did—for
liberty to set himself down a West End man, who made all his money in
the East.

She hoped for Grovesnor; she would have been content with Berkeley; she
could not urge any particular objection to Cavendish; but aught on the
other side of Regent street, the lady had obstinately discarded from her
imaginings. True, time had been, when she considered Gower-street—where
her worthy father, removing himself and money bags out of the city,
retired to spend a fortune after he had made one—something perfectly
unexceptionable, quite grand enough for any peer in the realm; but
school had speedily opened her eyes in this particular, school and
(after her marriage) genteel society: so during the whole of her wedded
life, when any inquisitive acquaintance enquired in what part of London
her juvenile lot had been cast, she answered vaguely and carelessly—“Oh!
the West End”—and calmed her conscience, which asserted she had told a
fib, by thinking,—“comparatively it was so.” “Comparatively” with the
City or St. Luke’s, perhaps!

“Belerma Square,” she gasped forth on the evening of her arrival, when
Mr. Westwood, in his most silvery accents, assured her that was indeed
the goal towards which the cab’s snail’s pace was tending: “Belerma
Square! my dear sir, you _must_ be mistaken; my brother could never
dream of inviting me to such a place.”

“It is his present home,” was the emphatic rejoiner.

There was a pause, during which the widow swallowed her chagrin and
amazement as best she might: then she drawled forth, as if to account
for the phenomenon—

“Bachelors do live in such strange places; and after all it does not
much matter where they reside”—

“As we must be miserable even in palaces,” added Mr. Westwood; which
speech, as it was intended it should, showed the lady _he_ was a
bachelor, though the smile that accompanied it implied, a tolerably
happy one.

“Oh! I did not mean that,” returned Mrs. Frazer, “what I intended to
remark was, they are not obliged to keep up appearances in the same way
as if heads of families.”

“We are not, indeed,” assented Mr. Westwood, still resolutely adhering
to the first person plural.

“No one ever enquires where an unmarried man lives,” resumed the widow,
pursuing her own train of thought without reference to his, “excepting
some bachelor friend, who likewise resides in an extraordinary locality;
but when there are ladies, of course matters must be differently
arranged: I shall speak to my brother on the subject directly.”

“I believe,” remarked Mr. Westwood, in his most soothing tones, “I
believe Mr. Merapie has purchased the house to which I have the honor of
conducting you.”

“That can make no difference,” rejoined Mrs. Frazer: “he must let it for
a shop, or a warehouse, or something. In fact, I mean to tell him he
must discard all his bachelor modes of life at once, and take a house in
a genteel neighbourhood, and give me what I have been since infancy
accustomed to. I never should have left Craigmaver or Glenfiord, to live
in Belerma Square; and of that my brother is perfectly well aware. He
can merely intend this as a temporary home, and it will do remarkably
well for that, till we can select a more suitable one. We must have a
long conversation about these matters; I know he will do precisely as I
wish.”

Mr. Westwood politely said,

“He felt satisfied no one could do otherwise,” and civilly thought:
“Well, how this woman can be even half-sister to John Merapie is a
mystery I cannot solve; but, if she think to drag him into fashionable
life, or to persuade him to do any one thing he does not feel inclined
to do himself, she will find herself most miserably mistaken.”

Having finished which mental soliloquy, complimentary both to the
merchant and his sister, the clerk handed Mrs. Frazer to the door of Mr.
Merapie’s house, they having at length arrived there; and, after giving
her and her children “in charge,” as it were, of a grim old housekeeper,
and declining to enter the drawing-room and sit down, though specially
invited to do so, and saying “Good night!” to the trio, individually and
collectively, Mr. Westwood went quietly home to his lodgings, murmuring,
as he walked, the sentence duly chronicled at the conclusion of Chapter
III.

Very wearily and very discontentedly did Mrs. Frazer survey the
furniture and appointments of her brother’s house, on that, the night of
her return to the City where she had been born—to the place she had
pined for years to see.

“This will never do,” she murmured, as she glanced around at moth-eaten
carpets, and faded curtains, and antique chairs, and dingy mirrors; all
of which articles John Merapie—who, to do him justice, cared as little
for what he called “frippery” as any man in existence—had picked up at
auctions and old furniture stalls, either personally, or through the
instrumentality of an agent. “Not a particle of taste, or fashion, or
refinement, or comfort, or even cleanliness; this will never
do—never—never:” and having, after a mournful scrutiny, arrived at this
conclusion, the widow first partook of tea and toast and muffins with
what appetite she might, and then ascended the broad creaking and, after
the first flight, carpetless stairs, and went drearily to bed; where she
lay awake half the night, thinking what she should say to her brother on
the subject of his _ménage_, and where she would like to ask him to take
a house, and of what coloured damask the drawing-room curtains should
be. Having decided which latter point in favour of amber, she fell
asleep and dreamt they were dwelling in Hyde Park Terrace, with only a
brick wall and French satin paper dividing them to right and left from a
dowager Duchess and a spendthrift Earl.

Ostensibly in honour of his sister’s advent, but more probably in
consequence of the Lord Mayor’s banquet—which, by the way, Mr. Westwood
had informed the widow his principal was _compelled_ to attend—Mr. John
Merapie permitted the day to be “thoroughly aired” before he descended
to the breakfast parlour, where he discovered Mina and Malcolm sitting
very peaceably together on the hearth rug, discoursing, as they looked
into the bright blazing fire, about Craigmaver, their journey, and their
new home.

The children arose at the entrance of their uncle, who, laying a hand on
the head of each, welcomed them kindly. He gazed first with something
wonderfully like admiration at the boy, whose personal beauty, bold
carriage, graceful movements, and gay laughter-loving temperament, more
than half excused his mother’s excessive partiality for her first-born;
but, then, the merchant casting a more attentive glance on Mina, was so
struck by the delicacy of her appearance, that he involuntarily
exclaimed,—

“How ghastly pale the child is, to be sure!”

“Poor Mina has been very ill, you know,” explained her brother.

“Ah! true. I had forgotten that,” said Mr. Merapie (which, indeed, was
perfectly correct). “What made you so ill, Mina.”

A bright flush coloured her cheek for a minute, and the dark eyes became
moistened as Malcolm answered, in a low hushed voice,

“Crying for her papa.”

The merchant looked from one to the other, from the bright healthy boy
to the little fragile girl; then stooping, he abruptly kissed her
forehead, after the fashion of a man to whom such an exertion was a
rarity, and saying almost tenderly, “She must get better here;” placed a
chair for her close beside his own at the breakfast table, and added
that, as their mamma was going to take coffee in her own room, there was
no necessity to delay the morning meal any longer.

And whilst engaged in the pleasant task of despatching that which, next
to his dinner, an Englishman considers the most important business of
life, Mr. John Merapie remained happily unconscious of the storm which
was raging in the bosom of his sole female dependant—to wit, the grim
housekeeper afore honourably mentioned.

“New lights shining through old windows, indeed,” she angrily muttered,
wending her way up the interminable stairs conducting from the kitchen
to Mrs. Frazer’s apartment on the second floor. The widow’s own servant
being, as she said, “so hoverdone with that ’orrid journey from that
’eathen place,” as to be incapable of eating any breakfast herself, and,
consequently, of procuring the same for her disconsolate mistress. “New
lights shining through old windows, indeed, when ladies can’t come down
to breakfast, but must have it trailed up three flights of stairs to
them. Mr. Merapie may get another servant to attend to the children, and
keep this grand lady’s-maid to wait on his sister, or else take my
warning; and that I shall tell him before I am two hours older. Fine
work, truly, fires lighted in bed rooms and dressing rooms; I suppose
one will be wanted in the drawing-room next; and coffee carried in
cupfuls up sixty-six steps—neither more nor less, many a time I’ve
counted them. And John Merapie’s sister taking her breakfast at eleven
o’clock in the day, as if it were second nature to her, and may be so it
is.”

Which soliloquy terminating at the door of the lady’s chamber, the
housekeeper flung it fiercely open and deposited the tray she carried
with such a bang on the table, that a portion of the contents of the
coffee cup was jerked over into the saucer.

“Gently, gently,” gasped Mrs. Frazer, withdrawing her eyes from a wrapt
contemplation of the ceiling, upon which she had been writing out a
mental inventory of the furniture needful to make a house “habitable.”
“There, that will do, thank you: pray stay for a moment till I see if it
be sweet enough. Ah! scarcely, it requires a _little_ more sugar.”

“Will it not do?” demanded the housekeeper in a tone that surprised Mrs.
Frazer into asking,

“Why?”

“Because it’s sixty-six steps down to the sugar from here, and sixty-six
up again, and it’s not a journey I’m fond of taking if I can help it,”
was the response.

“You will have to go, even before we remove to another house,” thought
the widow; but she merely responded, “In that case you can bring it with
my next cup—and—if you have a little, cream also.”

“Cream,” repeated the woman, “we London folks makes milk do us; cream is
not to be had for nothing here, ma’am.”

“It is not to be had for nothing anywhere,” responded Mrs. Frazer with
wonderful temper; “but, still, as it is obtainable for money, and as I
have been accustomed to it, we must get a little; that is all. However,
you need not mind it at present. I shall speak to my brother about a
number of things I wish attended to. Will you tell him, when he has
quite finished breakfast, I should like to see him here.”

And the widow sinking back on the sofa, waved her hand, after the manner
of a queen, unto the incensed housekeeper, and languidly commenced
sipping her coffee with the air of an amiable martyr, whilst the
dethroned potentate went grumbling down the stairs, humming a tune, the
purport whereof Mr. Merapie’s sister little suspected.

“Cream, indeed! less might do her father’s daughter, I think: a better
man than she is a woman—and that’s John Merapie, my master—never put up
to airs like that; you never would have heard his voice in the house; he
never said yet to me, ‘Crooked was a bias.’ Ay! there are very few like
him, very; and she thinks she will be able to lead him about with a
silken thread; get him to make a fine lady of her; and leave all his
money to her children, ha, ha! I know something she does not, and that
Westwood does not, but that Westwood would give gold to hear; but he
won’t hear it from me yet, may be, never—may be, never.” And so she went
on, muttering and mumbling, and shaking her head and clenching her hand,
till she reached the hall, where, encountering Mr. Merapie, she
delivered unto him, first his sister’s message, and then added,

“And, sir, I think it’s just as well for me to tell you I do not intend
to stay here any longer than you can well suit yourself; but, if you
have no objection to my still staying on in your service, sir, I have
none to the country;” and the expression of the woman’s face became
perfectly diabolical as she spoke, so full was it of cunning, and
mystery, and meaning.

The merchant flung a hurried glance behind him, as if fearful of being
overheard, then answered in a low tone, slipping, at the same time, a
golden coin into her hand,

“We will speak of this another day; meanwhile, I rely on your
discretion.”

“You may, sir,” she replied, nodding her head, partly over the money,
partly at him, “you may, sir, and that you know.”

Upon the strength of which assurance, Mr. Merapie repaired, though not
with an unclouded brow, to the room where his sister awaited his advent.




                              CHAPTER VII.
                          BROTHER AND SISTER.


Nothing more undemonstrative can possibly be conceived than the meeting
betwixt Mr. John Merapie and his sister, Mrs. Frazer. With even less
appearance of his ever having done such a thing in his life before, than
that which characterized his salutation to Mina, the merchant, having a
vague idea that such things were usual upon similar occasions, and
inwardly mourning that they were so, gravely kissed his sister; having
accomplished which feat, to his immense relief, he drew a chair beside
her sofa and inquired, “If she felt better.”

“Still very much fatigued,” was the response, “I did not get to sleep
last night until long after you returned home, thinking about how very
miserable you must have been.”

The merchant started, and enquired somewhat nervously what she meant.

“Oh! living all alone in this dreary house, and having no one to look
after your wants excepting that dreadful old woman (John, I cannot
pretend to tolerate her), and being buried in this out of the way place;
and having no lady’s taste to furnish your house properly for you.”

“I am sorry,” returned her brother with a smile, “you have so
unnecessarily sacrificed your night’s rest to my concerns: I have, like
most other people, had my share of trials, but certainly never dreamed
of classing my house, furniture, and servant amongst them. I expect, of
course, that now we have actually got you here, this place will look a
little more like home: I trust you and yours will be happy, Eliza; they
appear remarkably fine children.”

“Oh! Malcolm is the very best, cleverest, dearest boy that ever existed;
but as for Mina——”

“Why what is wrong about Mina,” demanded the merchant, finding that a
dead blank was intended to express volumes in the child’s disfavor;
“what is wrong about Mina?”

“Everything,” responded the lady, “mind, manners, ideas, appearance,
everything.”

“Excepting her excessive pallor, and the extraordinary way in which she
has cropped her hair on one side, I see nothing greatly amiss with her
appearance,” he returned; “and Malcolm tells me the latter was done in
great haste, before leaving Craigmaver, that she might give the curls to
her uncle and cousin: and as for the paleness, we both know the cause of
that, Eliza.”

“Yes, but it seems so unnatural in a child to keep pining and crying,
for months, when we were all doing what we could for her; she is far too
old-fashioned; her father perfectly spoiled her, she never cared for the
things other children do, never enjoyed herself like them, and her
sorrow more resembles that of some strange-tempered old woman, than a
little girl’s transient trouble. I do not comprehend her; I never
could.”

“But surely Eliza,” exclaimed her brother sternly, “you, who are her
father’s widow, do not mean to blame Mina for weeping so bitterly for
him?”

“Not if she would have done it like a child,” retorted the lady angrily,
“but she did not. After I had worn myself to a perfect skeleton, nursing
her through the low fever which detained us so long in Scotland, the
first thing she said, when consciousness returned was, “Where is my dear
papa? I had rather have him than anybody else in the world—where is he?”
and when I told her “she must lie very quiet and not ask for him as he
could not come to her any more, but that I would stay near her if she
chose;” she said, “Oh! I remember now; but I care for nobody except
him,” and began crying and sobbing so violently that she brought on a
relapse, which had almost proved fatal.

Mr. Merapie answered not, but gazed earnestly at her who uttered the
above sentence. Worn to a skeleton she was not, either by grief or
watching—that fact was self-evident, and the small place Mina occupied
in her heart was no less apparent. “Poor little creature,” mentally
exclaimed the merchant, recalling the pale, thoughtful face to memory;
and, albeit by no means given to feel much concern about the sentiments
and trials of his neighbours in general and the sentiments and trials of
children in particular, on the present occasion something marvellously
like compassion came swelling up in his bosom on behalf of the fragile
girl, whose mother loved her so very little.

After a pause, devoted to useless expectation of an answer of some kind
from her brother’s lips, Mrs. Frazer proceeded.

“But why talk of Mina? she will improve now she is away from those
horrid Highland mountains and vulgar Scotch people, and thrown more
amongst children and associates of her own rank in life! I know she
will, I wanted to speak to you of our future plans.”

“I thought,” remarked Mr. Merapie, “they were quite settled,—that you
were to reside with me.”

“Of course,” returned his sister, coloring a little, “but I presume you
do not propose continuing to live in Belerma Square.”

“And why not?” demanded Mr. Merapie.

“Why not?” she echoed; “it is so dreadfully unfashionable.”

“And, my dear Eliza, of what earthly consequence is fashion either to
you or to me; will it support, clothe, educate your children? Can it
contribute one iota to our happiness? Fashion is a word which has
destroyed more domestic peace, wasted more fortunes, made more homes
desolate, and finally, caused less real joy to mortals, than any other
in our language; it is a perfect humbug.”

“But you don’t mean to say,” began Mrs. Frazer, her astonishment
mastering for once her indolence, and inducing her to speak not merely
rapidly, but loudly; “but you don’t mean to say you brought me from
Craigmaver to _live_ here?”

“I had certainly no intention of bringing you from Craigmaver to _die_
here,” responded her brother somewhat pettishly; “but, if such be your
desire, pray consult your own inclinations on the subject; I have no
wish to fetter them in anyway:” and Mr. Merapie, having delivered
himself of this obliging permission, arose, and taking up a sort of
vantage position on the hearth rug, prepared himself to “go through” the
remainder of the interview with what patience he might.

Mrs. Frazer, upon hearing the above reply, burst into a passion of
tears, and buried her head in the sofa pillow: “It would have been well
for her had she died at the same time as her poor dear Allan, and been
laid in the quiet grave with him; she was wretched—she was miserable—she
had expected different treatment from her brother; but all men were
alike—heartless—unfeeling—selfish. Still the laird of Craigmaver would
never have so wantonly lacerated her heart. _He_ offered her a beautiful
house, and servants, and everything; but she had said, she would go to
her brother, and this was the result of it: to be brought to a low,
horrid locality, into a dingy dirty house, the very name and sight of
which had, in addition to the fatigue of their hurried journey, made her
own maid so ill, that she was unable to rise and attend to her mistress;
who consequently was thrown, for even sugarless supplies of coffee, upon
the mercies of one of the most hideous and dreadful amongst old women:
brought to a place like this, and when, after having patiently borne
all, she suggested the propriety of seeking another home, she was
cruelly told, ‘that if she could not live there, she might die.’”

From that species of dais whence the gentlemen of England love to
deliver the law unto their wives and children, the merchant gazed,—first
at the dull November sky, then at his sister, finally around the room.
Calmly as he might have waited for the termination of an April shower,
no portion of which was falling upon his head, did he watch till Mrs.
Frazer’s indignant feelings should have subsided, or at least till there
should come a lull; and, when the sobs became less frequent, and the
lamentations and reproaches grew neither so doleful nor vehement, in a
voice of quiet decision he said—

“I never thought Eliza, you were especially overburdened with sense, and
now I am sure of it. It is one of those things, indeed, which no lapse
of time, or change of place, or afflictions, or teaching, can implant in
the character of any individual, and therefore I was intensely foolish
to expect you to have acquired it with the lapse of years and a great
misfortune. Had I not understood from your letters that you most
earnestly desired to leave Scotland, I never should have dreamed of
asking you here: but now, as you are here; as the only home I can offer
you does not appear to satisfy you; as you cannot come down to your
position; and as you will not understand that I, though rich, and
willing and anxious to render you and yours happy, am neither a
millionaire, nor your over indulgent father, the next best thing I can
think of is, to allow you an income of—say one hundred pounds per annum,
and pay for the education of your children at some good school. If you
consider an arrangement of this kind would prove more conducive to your
comfort and well-being than our present one, I am willing to pay over
the first instalment to-morrow: I like people to be happy in their way,
providing that way does not throw me altogether out of mine.”

Here was a come down! a miserable awakening from dreams of Berkeley
Square, endless upholsterer’s bills, amber-colored curtains, luxurious
furniture, a carriage, possibly, servants certainly, money _ad libitum_;
and an awful reality of an alternative offered between Belerma Square
and shabby genteel lodgings, and a ridiculous income of one hundred per
annum;—twenty-five pounds per quarter, not quite two per week.

“I could not think of such a proposition,” began the bewildered lady;
but John Merapie, cutting it short with an emphatic “You had better
reflect upon it,” left her to her own meditations.

Unsatisfactory enough they assuredly proved, but time and hope poured,
as they generally do, a sort of balm into her cup of bitterness; and, by
almost imperceptible degrees, the lady arrived at the pleasant
conclusion that men are not invulnerable. Even Achilles, of whom she
remembered once to have heard something, had one susceptible spot: and,
if Achilles, why not John Merapie.

Perhaps she had been too abrupt; had not flattered him sufficiently, had
seemed to desire too much. She would appear to give in,—would actually
do so for the present; and probably in time he might be led to adopt her
views and agree to her wishes. At all events, leave his house, quarrel
with him, lose the chance of his making Malcolm his heir, she would not;
in brief, ere two hours had elapsed, Mrs. Frazer had once again arrived
at the conclusion that she could induce her brother to do anything, if
she only took the proper plan with—and managed him.

But, unhappily, to quote Moore’s simile, “hope” proved in this instance,
as it generally does, “like the bird in the story,” and accordingly
lured the lady, with its brilliant plumage, on into perfect labyrinth of
imagination, from whence, when rudely told she was on the wrong path,
she had to flounder back to the safe, though uninviting, ground of fact,
with what celerity she might. She had formed her ideas of the lords of
the creation in general from her minute juvenile observation of her
worthy papa, who was so excessively kind and sensible that, if she only
cried long enough for anything, she got it: she considered it was their
duty to make money as they could, and give it unhesitatingly to women,
to spend as they liked. Captain Frazer had been in her former opinion, a
sort of tyrannical, obstinate wonder, an exception to every rule, unlike
any other man in the world; but ere long Mr. John Merapie taught her
there was another being in creation, besides Allan Frazer, who not
merely liked to have his own way, but would have it: upon whom tears had
less effect than on sticks and stones; whom flattery could not reach, or
persuasion turn, or anger move, or vague feminine hints and threats
intimidate.

“He and Allan might have been brothers,” she frequently sighed, “they
are so alike;” and in some points, perhaps, they did resemble each
other; only, where the English merchant said plumply, fairly, and
straightforwardly, “I will not, so there is no use in wasting further
tears or arguments upon the matter,” the Scotch officer had been wont to
remark—“Of course, my dear, it grieves me to see you weep, but as your
wishes are impracticable, it is not in my power to comply with them.”
The one frequently implied a refusal—the other always gave it point
blank; the real point of resemblance between the two, was a perfectly
genuine, sincere, and settled resolution never, under any circumstances,
to say “Yes” to any proposition to which they had ever felt inclined to
answer “No.” And as John Merapie would as soon have dreamt of putting
his hand into the fire, as of making himself and his sister fashionable
West End people; as all he cared for in life, was to get through it
quietly, and to invite a few steady-going city men, with bald heads and
grey whiskers, at certain intervals to eat roast beef and drink port
wine with him, which invitation they had not the smallest objection to
accept and to reciprocate; as Belerma Square suited him as well, or
better, for a residence, than any other place in London; and, as in
brief, he had firmly resolved not to leave it; his widowed sister soon
discovered, that she was but wasting time in seeking to melt adamant:
wherefore, with many sighs and groans, she swallowed her disappointment,
and scattered her visions to the four winds of heaven, with what
complacence was possible under the circumstances; and moved about the
house with the air and manner of a suffering saint, who, if not too good
for this world, was a million times too genteel and ladylike for the
society and locality into which she was thrown: and her brother went in
an omnibus every morning, away into mysterious regions, lying on the
Tower side of London Bridge, regions commanding water and street and
warehouse views, where he made any amount of money; and whence he
returned each evening, at about six o’clock, once again viâ omnibus to
the Square, in which his sister was “buried alive”—to borrow one of her
own figurative expressions—and where he owned three houses, two of
which, to his no small chagrin, lacked tenants.

Thus Mrs. Frazer was conquered; she had to submit,—there was no
alternative for it; and thus, so far as she was concerned, he triumphed:
but ere long, the worthy merchant discovered there was nothing on earth
so difficult to tame or manage as a child, and that of all children,
Mina was the hardest to deal with; insomuch as that, no matter what she
did, he found it impossible to be seriously angry with her, in addition
to which, Mina’s will being considerably stronger than her uncle’s,
whenever his inclinations and hers chanced to clash, he invariably had
to give up, after having held out just long enough to teach the little
girl her power.

And as it chanced that, upon the very first time of her being sent,
not to a select seminary, as her mother had planned, before quitting
the Highlands, should be the case, but to a somewhat large
day-school,—chosen by Mr. Merapie, perhaps for no better motive than
because the principal thereof wore calico dresses, and persisted, for
a reason known to herself and a few intimate friends, in teaching her
pupils solely useful things, or rather, things which she called
useful, but which were not actually so. Mina, when asked by her
_gouvernante_ a very absurd question, that might puzzle wiser heads
than her’s to answer, viz: “Which is the finest country in the world?”
replied, without a moment’s hesitation, “Scotland;” and in spite of
explanation, entreaty, threats, and punishment, adhered so obstinately
to her text, adding thereto, first, that her uncle was the best man in
it, and secondly, that London was the worst place in the universe, and
that she hated it, and wished she might go back to Craigmaver—that she
did; that the superintendent, who had a perfect horror of Scotland and
the Scotch, and dreaded, moreover, the effect such an example might
have on the other pupils, requested her assistant, Miss Caldera, to
put on her bonnet, take Miss Frazer home, and report the matter to the
authorities in that quarter. Upon receipt of which order, Miss
Caldera, one of the most patient amongst teachers, sorrowfully holding
the little rebel by the hand, set forth upon a mission that she had
much rather have left unaccomplished.

There had been a hope of pardon held out to Mina, if at any stage of her
journey towards Belerma Square, she repented, and would return meekly
into the school-room, and say to the superintendent, in the presence of
all the children, “England is the finest country in the world, and I am
very sorry ma’am, and hope you will forgive me for being so naughty;”
but, at the bare suggestion, the concentrated Highland blood of the
whole Frazer clan rushed indignantly into the child’s cheeks, and she
said so many evil things about England and the English, all of which, I
regret to add, she had heard from the lips of Colin Saunders, that the
schoolmistress, in very horror, banged the hall door behind the
refractory importation from the “Land of the Leal,” as she might have
closed the gates of Paradise upon a hardened, hopeless, sinner.

“Are not you sorry, dear?” asked Miss Caldera, after they had proceeded
in silence for some distance.

“No, I am not,” was the prompt reply; “I’d say it again, if she asked me
again, and if she didn’t I’d think it.”

“What will your dear mamma say to you?” enquired the lady.

“Nothing,” responded Mina.

“Why, won’t she be angry?” demanded Miss Caldera, rapidly jumping to the
conclusion that, if she would not, the mystery of her daughter’s
stubbornness explained itself; “won’t she be angry?”

“Perhaps she may, indeed I’m sure she will, but I don’t care,” replied
her charge valiantly.

“Not care about your mamma being angry? oh! fie!” said the governess,
becoming more mystified than ever; in answer to which she received a
determined “No,” into which Mina somehow contrived to fling a tone,
implying that the anger of the whole world signified very little unto
her.

There was a pause, and then Miss Caldera, in a soothing voice, began:

“Now should you not like to come back with me like a good little girl,
and—”

“No, I shouldn’t;” interrupted Mina, “and what’s more, I wouldn’t; I’ll
never go back to school again as long as I live, for that ugly old woman
struck me, and I never was struck by anybody in my life before; papa
never allowed me to be struck—oh! I wish my own dear papa was here
now.”—Whether the mention of his name carried her away from the place
where she stood, or whether a sudden rush of old griefs caused her to
forget she was in a veritable London street, one thing is
indisputable—that, at the conclusion of the above sentence, she burst
into such a perfect agony of tears, that Miss Caldera, utterly shocked
and confounded, stood mutely regarding her, whilst Mina sobbed and cried
to her heart’s content.

“What is the matter?” demanded one of two gentlemen, who chanced to be
passing; “is the child hurt?”

“Only naughty, I fear,” responded Miss Caldera, against which assertion,
Mina forthwith entered an indignant protest.

“I am not, but I want my papa, and he’s dead; and I wanted to stay in
Scotland and they would not let me.”

“Good gracious! why it is Mina Frazer, Mr. Merapie’s niece,” exclaimed
the companion of him who had first spoken; upon making which discovery,
Mr. Alfred Westwood, for he it was, turned and walked with Miss Caldera
and her charge, to the door of his principal’s house in the “Square;”
and, having thus obtained full particulars, he took an opportunity of
recounting the whole history to Mr. Merapie, ere that gentleman returned
home, and heard a rather exaggerated report thereof from the lips of his
sister.

“What shall I do with her, poor little thing?” asked Mr. Merapie of his
clerk, who had latterly become, in some sort, his confidential adviser;
“she is more trouble to me than the whole of my business. I never felt
so sorry for, and anxious about, a human being before. I wish from my
soul her mother had left her at Craigmaver, as old Mr. Frazer wanted her
to do. From their cradles to their graves women are sources of perpetual
annoyance.”

Mr. Westwood laughed, and so, in spite of his perplexity, did Mr.
Merapie, but the next moment added,

“Aye! but indeed the matter is beyond a jest, for there is no one at
home fit to manage her, and Mrs. Frazer will not let her go to Scotland;
and, if she have determined not to return to school, why, I cannot make
her, that is all.”

“I can manage her; she does whatever I ask her,” remarked Mr. Westwood.

“Indeed!” ejaculated the merchant, fixing a glance of incredulous wonder
on the speaker; “and how the deuce do you proceed? it would be a secret
worth knowing.”

“Why you see,” returned his _employé_, “I let her talk as much as she
likes about ‘home,’ as she calls that heathenish Highland place, and
never contradict her, no matter what she says; and tell her I have been
in Scotland myself: all of which makes her so wonderfully tractable,
that if I say, ‘Will you not do so and so for me?’ she answers, ‘Yes,’
instanter.”

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” remarked Mr. Merapie with a dissatisfied air, as
if he were as far off his end as ever, “but does not she bore you to
death; she would talk for hours about that confounded Glenfiord, and an
old Calvinistic gardener who has inducted her into some wonderful
theological mysteries; do you not get very tired of her? I feel fond
enough of the child, and am, moreover, her uncle,—but still _I_ do,
often.”

“Frank, at all events,” thought the clerk; then answered aloud, “No; I
never weary of anything when I have any object, no matter how trifling,
in view; and, besides, you know I am fond of children, which you, sir, I
believe, are not.”

“No, no, I am fond of nothing but business. I understand how to keep
books and make money tolerably well; but as for ever comprehending human
nature, and more especially that portion of it called woman’s nature, I
give up the study as hopeless.”

“I was not aware you had ever commenced it,” said Mr. Westwood simply,
whereupon Mr. Merapie quickly demanded,

“But what am I to do with this niece of mine? That is the present
question; for back to school I think she would scarcely go for her
father, even if he were now alive, and there is no use asking her mother
anything about it.”

“Mrs. Frazer wishes her to go to a fashionable boarding-school, does she
not?” enquired Mr. Westwood.

“Yes,” responded his principal, “but I have resolved she shall not go.”

“Well, then, the only other plan I can suggest is, that you have a
visiting governess for her; a person like this Miss Caldera, for
instance: an amiable sensible woman might make almost what she chose of
your niece. That lady told me, to-day, she felt sure much might be done
with her.”

Which simple plan never having previously entered the brain of the
worthy but puzzled merchant, he caught at it instantly, and cordially
thanking Mr. Westwood for his suggestion, informed him he was the most
useful fellow in the world, and that he really did not know what he
should do without him. In reply to which, Mr. Westwood smiled in his
blandest manner, mentally adding thereto the words, “I believe you.”

And Mr. Westwood took an early opportunity of informing Mrs. Frazer how
he had spoken to Mr. Merapie concerning sending her daughter to a
boarding-school, to which idea he found him so decidedly opposed, that
merely as a _pis aller_ he had suggested the propriety of having some
sort of governess for her.

“Of course, my dear madam,” he continued in an impressive manner,
“nothing short of an aristocratical school could render her _all_ you
wish, but (you understand me, I am speaking in strict confidence to
you,) my excellent principal—as worthy and kind-hearted a man as ever
existed—has some peculiarities (we are all a little eccentric, you
know), and his aversion to what you and I should call genteel, agreeable
society is so insurmountable, that I found it perfectly useless to
contend further. The plan proposed is, at all events, better than having
her thrown among common acquaintances, as she would have been at that
day-school, where she made her first appearance and her final exit
within the space of about three hours or so: was that not it?”

Mrs. Frazer believed he was correct, and assured him she considered he
was one of the kindest, truest, most sensible of friends; but that, as
regarded her brother, he was hopeless; and, in reference to Mina, the
least said the better; it was a painful topic: for years she had proved
the greatest trial ever experienced by mortal;—and Mrs. Frazer wept, and
Mr. Westwood condoled and consoled; and the relict of Captain Frazer
considered he was a most agreeable person, and hoped her brother would
soon take him into partnership: and perhaps, in course of time, if he
had promised her a house at the West End and a carriage, she might have
done so too. But whatever Mr. Westwood’s views might be, they certainly
appeared anti-matrimonial: all he apparently desired was to keep on good
terms with every member of his principal’s family, from the head
thereof, John Merapie, to wit, down to little Mina,—Mrs. Frazer and
Malcolm of course inclusive.




                             CHAPTER VIII.
                         TREATS OF MANY THINGS.


Acting upon the suggestion his invaluable clerk had thrown out, Mr.
Merapie inquired of Mina whether she would let Miss Caldera teach her at
home, and receiving, after some hesitation, a conditional answer in the
affirmative, he proceeded to that lady and demanded if she would be
willing to instruct his niece.

Poor Miss Caldera would have jumped at the proposition of taming even a
cannibal, had a few pounds been promised as the result of her efforts;
for she was poor—poorer even than the church mouse alluded to in the old
saw, inasmuch as that little animal enjoys comparative freedom, a thing
the governess had never known for years, excepting perhaps occasionally
in dreams.

She was the daughter of a country clergyman; had been brought up in a
pretty village rectory; had been educated solidly, but not inducted into
the mysteries of any of those lighter accomplishments generally deemed
so essential to young ladies. She was learned in Latin, had dabbled in
Greek, knew a little of German, and was mistress of French and Italian;
had studied mathematics till somehow she grew herself like a problem in
Euclid, full of harsh unbending lines and angles; algebra, to her,
presented no more difficulties than the rule-of-three; and as for the
derivation of words, only let any person ask the meaning of one, and she
poured down upon the devoted head of the questioner hosts of Latin and
Greek direct ancestors, with collateral Gallic and old Saxon relatives,
thick as dust from the backs of antique black letter volumes which
almost suffocated him. And whilst her father thus crammed her with
useless learning, her mother instructed her in some more needful and
feminine arts—to wit, the making of pies, and concocting of puddings,
and stitching of shirts, and mending of stockings. And, if nature had
not bestowed upon her a kind heart, a placid temper, and a love of the
beautiful so intense as to be almost painful, she would have been in
reality as in appearance, as crisp, and short, and good, as one of her
own pie crusts, which had been perhaps a little overdone in the ovening;
but she was possessed of, and retained, in spite of circumstances, a
fondness for flowers, and poetry, and quiet scenery, which added still a
bitter drop unto a cup which time and change and death and misfortune
soon made bitter enough.

Parents died, money was lost, friends grew cold, relatives careless, all
save one—the strong minded schoolmistress previously referred to, who,
hearing that her cousin, the rector’s daughter, was in absolute want and
could not get a situation, wrote to ask her up to town, to the end that
she might assist in her matter of fact seminary and receive no
remuneration.

She supported her; and Miss Caldera, after school hours, occasionally
obtaining a French or Italian tuition, contrived by dint of economy and
patching, to clothe herself, and sometimes, purchase a new book and a
bunch of flowers: the two latter were all her luxuries. Toiling,
pinching, saving, she could make no more than kept her from the parish,
and enabled her to buy, at rare intervals, a volume of poetry and a few
half-faded lilies. And this was she who once had affectionate parents,
pleasant acquaintances, a cheerful home; whose birth had been welcomed
with smiles, whose mother had thanked God because a daughter was given
unto her, who once had been admired,—loved perhaps: this was she.
Wonderful are the ways of this world, and of the people in it; but most
wonderful of all things unto me seems the mode in which assistance and
pity, and sympathy and affection, are accorded,—frequently gratuitously
and unnecessarily to the young and to the pretty, the _almost_ happy and
the wealthy; whilst those, on whose faces care has set its unmistakeable
mark,—whose feet are weary with the toilsome journey of years, who
require a double portion of kindness, friendship, and happiness, to
console them for the misery of the past,—are permitted to pass solitary
on their way, unquestioned, unheeded, unloved.

Miss Caldera’s cousin—a bustling, determined, energetic woman—declared
she was a good enough creature, but a great oddity; and the governess
who, though she would have liked her own way as well as any body living,
never got it, subsided in the course of years, into a silent, reserved,
angular old maid, who never opened her heart unto mortal, and never
spoke energetically on any subject unless she were exhorting a child to
be good, or a girl to marry; and who was thought to be just fit for her
position.

And oh! how she detested that position, how uselessly she had striven to
master fate a little, and better her condition, she knew; and how, at
night, when she laid down to rest, sick and dispirited, the tears
trickled down her cheeks as she thought of her old home, and her dead
parents; her past, and her present,—the cold moonbeams that fell upon
her face alone took cognizance.

Had any one told any of her London acquaintances, that Mary Caldera wept
in secret, because, at thirty-two, she was an orphan and a dependant,
the thing would have been first discredited, and then laughed at; but
people will not even smile at my recording the fact here, as it is the
custom to extend compassion to individuals where it can do them no good,
viz., in books; and to withhold the same where it might prove
beneficial, to wit, in actual life.

And though Miss Caldera had a kind true heart, and was, moreover, only
two and thirty, her pupils, even those who liked her best, persisted in
calling her a plain, strange old maid; and she cared very little for
anybody on earth, and nobody in the world really cared one straw for
her.

Such, then, was the individual who was selected to instruct Mina Frazer
for two hours per diem, and to bring the rebellious Scotch child up “in
the way she should go.” Her cousin, indeed, to whom, of course, no
profit was to accrue from the arrangement, and who entertained a sort of
horror of the “first pupil who had ever mastered her,” and whom in
consequence she had summarily dismissed home, “hoping that the ruling
powers there would send her back penitent and acquiescent;” seriously
advised Miss Caldera to have nothing to do with the obstinate,
over-indulged, deceitful looking little creature, who had promised to be
so easily managed, and who turned out such a miniature virago. “But the
governess had a vague faith in Mina, and moreover wanted the money; for
both of which reasons she undertook the task of teaching the child, so
far as in her lay, the lore of books, the love of man, and the fear of
God.”

What other persons disliked in Mina, viz., her perpetual allusions to
her father, and her ceaseless regret for her native land and the friends
who dwelt there, proved a sort of link of communication betwixt the girl
and the woman; between her whose future was yet unrevealed to mortal
ken, and her whose lot was, to all human appearance, cast, and settled
for ever; between the child of the Scotch officer and the daughter of
the village rector. For years, it is true, they never exactly understood
each other; for the dry formal manner acquired during a kind of eternity
of tuition, cannot be cast aside at once; and Mina never could
comprehend any one being _very_ fond of her who did not say so; but
still, after a time, they got on remarkably well together; and so did
the little girl with her lessons.

At the first she rebelled considerably, having a dim idea that Miss
Caldera had been in some way accessary to the insults and injuries
heaped upon her Highland head upon the occasion of her first and only
visit to Mrs. Meredith’s establishment for young ladies; but Miss
Caldera, having an intuitive feeling that her charge might be subdued by
kindness, said so calmly, “You would not wish to make me unhappy I
_know_;” that Mina, quite astonished at this view of the question,
answered, “She would not;” and, therefore, did what she was told, as
quietly as if she had been brought up under the iron rule of
“discipline.”

Still there was always, even in her best moments, something so
unsettled, dissatisfied, and melancholy about the pupil, that the soul
of the governess was frequently disturbed about her. “I do not quite
understand her,” she generally thought: “I wonder if her father, who was
so fond of her, did; and dear me! how fond I am growing of the child
too.”

But whether loved in England or not; whether new friends liked or
disliked, praised or blamed, it seemed much the same to Mina: her heart
like that of Campbell was in the Highlands; it stuck there tenaciously,
let her body be where it might. She had been transplanted somewhat
rudely to English ground, and though she lived there, she never for
years and years took root in, or looked kindly on, the soil.

The country of old—the looks of old—the friends of old, were to the
young child what they frequently do not prove even to much older
people—things to be remembered and grieved over, not for a day, but for
years: never to be forgotten till Mina Frazer should have forgotten her
own identity too, and passed from the sight of heather and roses for
ever.

Colin Saunders had done her merely justice when he affirmed so
vehemently, on the morning of her departure, that “she would not forget
even a daisy on the moors;” and when Allan, the old laird’s grandson,
who delighted in tormenting the gardener, remarked, as he frequently
did:

“I told you, Colin, she would not remember us for more than a few days;
we have not had a letter for an immense time, and your ‘mull’ seems to
me like what Prince Charlie was, ‘long o’ comin’,—’”

Saunders, looking up into heaven as if to implore it to corroborate the
truth of his assertion, would respond—

“If I never heard tell of her; if I never saw her; if there never was
word from her again; I would know her heart was wi’ us a’—the places and
the people she cared so much for: the child of my dear old master never
could but care for the land he ‘lo’ed sae weel.’”

“But my cousin, Malcolm, is the son of Captain Frazer, too; and—”

“Ay! but Miss Mina strained after her father’s side of the house; and
he, got from his mother the English nature that cares not so much for
country or clan, as for gold, and ease, and comfort, and the things o’
this wicked world.”

“I am sure our neighbours would be flattered by your opinion of them,
Colin.”

“Flattered or no’, it’s nae concern o’ mine,” retorted the man warmly;
“I’d say it to their king if he were standing where you are now,—that no
people in the world cares so much for home when they’re in it, or pines
as much for it when absent, as the true old Highlanders that fought so
nobly for their own prince,—fought, and fell, and died for him: ay! and
would do it again, if need were.”

“Hush! hush!” cried Allen, laughing, “or although the Jacobite days are
over, I shall have to report you to our friend the sheriff.”

“I said, Master Allan, I would speak it to the king, and I don’t mind
telling it to the sheriff; it’s not treason but truth; the minister says
it is so; and if he says it——”

“I may swear it,” supplied the laird’s grandson; “and does he assert
also that Mina will not forget us?”

“I never heard him speak of her, in regard of that,” responded the
gardener; “but I assert it Master Allan, and if she does not send the
‘mull’ to me, I know she wants to send it, which is just the same.”

Colin was quite correct, as the subsequent advent of his snuff box
proved, the sole cause of the delay having arisen from the fact that
even in London things cannot be purchased without money, of which
valuable commodity, when Mina made her generous proposal, she was
lamentably in want. But a present from her uncle, who discovered in
course of time, perhaps through the medium of Mr. Westwood, the desire
of his niece’s heart, at length enabling her to fulfil her promise, she
dispatched to Craigmaver the very ugliest snuff box eye of mortal ever
lighted on. She thought it beautiful, however, and so did Colin
Saunders, who regularly carried it to “Kirk” with him, though he would
have died rather than have taken a pinch out of it in the sacred
edifice; and when the old man, long long afterwards, closed his eyes on
earth’s pleasures and sorrows for ever, that snuff box was found,
preserved as a precious relic, beside the two other treasures of his
life—his mother’s Bible and his father’s spectacles.

And that wonderful chariot of time, pursuing its ceaseless course just
the same along the London streets as over the Scottish moors, gradually
added some inches to Mina Frazer’s height; gave a different expression
to her face, and by an imperceptible, inexplicable—and, if not noted day
by day, almost alarming—process, transformed Mina Frazer from a child
into something bordering upon, if not quite, a young lady.

But time, rarely, as we know, missing an opportunity of altering aught
upon which it is possible for him to lay either a beautifying or a
withering finger, had effected other changes besides that of making Mina
older; he had sent Malcolm, as a midshipman, into the navy; brought a
tenant to one of Mr. Merapie’s houses; and, almost immediately after
Mrs. Frazer’s arrival in the mansion the merchant had chosen for his own
abode, installed Miss Haswell as efficient housekeeper, in lieu of Mrs.
Coleford, abdicated.

For these events, of course, there were a multitude of reasons; but, not
to be tedious, suffice it to say that in reference to Malcolm, Mr.
Merapie had wished the boy to enter his counting-house; which idea was
strongly opposed by Mrs. Frazer, by her son, and finally, by Mr.
Westwood, as he _said_, in consequence of their strong objections to the
project.

“Let him take his own way for a while,” he said; “and he will then
either quietly settle down to business, or else stick to the profession
he has chosen for himself. If you _force_ him now to the desk, he will
never become either a clever merchant or a brave officer; give him his
wish and you will speedily see whether it be not a mere boyish fancy:
theoretically liking the navy is one thing, and practical knowledge of
it another; let him eat of the fruit and find if it be most sweet or
most bitter.” And, as usual, Mr. Merapie followed his clerk’s advice;
nothing loth, if the truth must be told; for Englishmen in general,
albeit ours is not a military nation, are by no means averse to talk of
“my nephew, the captain,” serving his country either by land or by
water: wherefore he speedily fitted Malcolm out for sea, and, as if the
one step were the natural consequence of the other, almost immediately
afterwards took, as Mrs. Frazer had often wished he would, his clever
clerk Mr. Alfred Westwood, into partnership.

And, as “one event makes many,” this new business arrangement brought,
in the person of that gentleman, a tenant into one of Mr. Merapie’s
dreary mansions; for, with clerkship, Mr. Westwood discarded lodgings,
and commenced that wretched trade called “housekeeping,” on his own
account. Thus it naturally came to pass that many, or rather most of his
evenings, were spent in the drawing-room of his senior partner,
conversing with his sister; and, when Miss Caldera was there,
insinuating himself into her good graces, and endeavouring to regain,
what somehow he had lately lost, his power over Mina—whose reserve, and
strangeness, and eccentricity, her mother said, increased every day;
but, latterly, Mrs. Frazer, after this mournful declaration, was in the
habit of adding: “And it is such a pity, for every one says she is such
a clever creature;” appealing to Mr. Westwood for confirmation of this
opinion,—which confirmation, he gave in a manner that made Mina feel
desperately angry whenever she chanced to be in the room whilst he was
delivering his complimentary impression of her.

And Mr. Westwood had not the most remote intention of marrying Mrs.
Frazer, as Mr. Merapie had once expected he would: to be sure, the
advisability of such a course had once presented itself to him, and he
had argued the matter in his own mind—as the newspapers say about
lawyers—with considerable ability and much clearness on both sides, but
he finally shook his head and said “no.”

“What would fifty pounds a year do towards maintaining her and her
children, and I can get a partnership without marrying for it; and it is
not by any means likely John Merapie would both give me a share of the
profits and portion his sister. No, no! I won’t marry her at any rate.”

But it very soon occurred to the busy and practical imagination of
Alfred Westwood, that, though John Merapie might not “give him a share
of the profits and portion his sister,” yet he most probably would “give
him a share of the profits and portion his niece.” And he then began to
consider what an uncommonly nice little creature that niece was—quite
pretty enough to fall in love with; quite clever enough, though by no
means accomplished, to adorn his West End home—when he got it—and,
therefore, before the partnership was even spoken of, he made up his
mind that, sometime or other, he would marry Mina Frazer, her consent to
such an arrangement being taken by the worthy clerk as quite a matter of
course.

“She liked me when she was a child, and continues to do so; at least, I
do not see why she should not,” he reasoned; “her uncle will give her a
large fortune, and it will all suit admirably.” Acting upon which
conclusion he began to make himself “particularly agreeable” to Mina,
who, strange to say, seemed so wonderfully insensible to his
fascinations that, finally, Mr. Westwood grew quite provoked, and
resolved, as he expressed it, just “to see how matters really stood.”

And, accordingly, chancing on his way up to the drawing-room one evening
to encounter her, the _ci-devant_ clerk abruptly demanded—

“Oh! Mina, I have been intending to ask you something for a long time:
should you have any objection to marry me?”

“The greatest objection possible,” she briefly returned. Whereupon he
laughed as if it were a capital jest; but Mina knew it was not so on his
side; and he, clearly understanding her words were spoken in solemn
earnest, felt angry and irritated accordingly.




                              CHAPTER IX.
                     ADVANCES THE STORY BUT LITTLE.


Mr. John Merapie never got any coat-of-arms, or crest, or motto, or
anything from the Herald’s office, because he averred “he hated humbug;”
but in lieu of the above aristocratical “absurdities,” as he termed
them, he took for his text the three words just mentioned, and not
merely preached but acted upon them perpetually.

He was in the main, not only a kind but a just man; most respected him,
many grew to like him; but he said he did not profess to be capable of
“loving particularly,” and we all know that, when people do not “love
particularly,” they seldom are loved “especially.”

Mr. Westwood believed his principal was as fond of Mina as it was
possible for him to be of mortal being, and assuredly he treated her
with a something as nearly approaching tenderness as he ever exhibited,
or ever had exhibited to any one.

When in a peculiarly happy temper, he called her, “My little niece,” or,
“Mina, my dear;” he liked to see her handsomely dressed; he was most
liberal in money matters towards the trio generally; but perhaps, though
Malcolm made the heaviest claims on his purse, his heart really went
more with the presents he occasionally gave to Mina. He thought her a
model of prudence, and cleverness, and sense: most probably because she
spoke little, could make pies and puddings, do all sorts of needle work,
understood Latin, a little Greek, French, and Italian; was learned in
Euclid, and competent to find an answer to any algebraic supposition
without the key to the same being given unto her: finally, she was
economical; did not care for visiting, never murmured in his presence
about anything, was innocent as a Hottentot of accomplishments, and had
an affection for no “frippery,” save flowers.

Here was a perfect woman; one after John Merapie’s own heart, who could
not play, or dance, or draw flowers, or nett (crochet was not then in
vogue), or braid, or do anything more sinful than sing in a strange low
voice ballads old as the hills, and almost as beautiful,—and work a pair
of slippers for her uncle or Malcolm occasionally. He had superintended
her education himself,—that is, he had made up his mind what she should
learn, and she had learnt it; and in what she should not be instructed,
and of course that was left alone; and here was the result—a girl with
no nonsense, or affectation, or humbug about her. “Mina,” her uncle
said, “was solid like one of his houses in Belerma Square, which would
last for a hundred years or more.”

“It is earnestly to be hoped she will not do that,” remarked Miss
Caldera, who had a sort of humour, not witty, but dry; whereupon Mr.
Merapie responded,

“Her mind would, though her body might not; I am satisfied her faculties
will never desert her, she has been properly educated, Miss Caldera, and
she may thank you and me for it.”

Miss Caldera had very quiet doubts as to whether thankfulness was a
strongly developed trait in the character of her emancipated charge;
indeed Mina, who talked freely and perpetually to her, frankly said,

“She thought she had little to be especially thankful for, as she had
many things she did not want, and very few that she did.” And, in truth,
her position was neither a cheering nor a natural one:—a young girl pent
up from year to year in a dreary house in Belerma Square, surrounded by
old persons; ceaselessly longing for a glimpse of her former home; her
mind growing morbid and almost contracted for want of society, light,
air, sunshine, freedom; no music, no companions, no paintings, nothing
lively to hear or see, nothing to think of but stern reality, unless she
pondered on the beauty of that land which had stamped its vision of
loveliness on her soul for ever; no fixed employment, no pleasant
conversation, for no one visited at her uncle’s, save a few staid city
merchants and Alfred Westwood, to whom she now never spoke, if she could
help it. Her mother’s society was not particularly agreeable, as she did
little but bemoan her fate and wonder when Malcolm would write, and why
Mina was so odd. “I should die,” said the latter to Miss Caldera, “if it
were not for you.”

And it was true, they had a strange sort of attachment for each
other—the weary girl and the world-tired woman. The governess was
perpetually rebuking her pupil, and the pupil was in the habit of
retorting rather sharply; but there was enough genuine love between them
to have put half-a-dozen so-called friendships to shame, to have
withstood the lapse of time, and breath of calumny, and hand of change,
and test of separation.

Mina’s temper was not of the meekest, her mood of the serenest; and
frequently the governess told her so, and the girl, by way of rejoinder,
said Miss Caldera never felt for, nor had the least sympathy with her:
still the tie, whatever it was, which joined the two hearts, somehow
bore these perpetual jerks without even a thought of breaking; and, at
sixteen, Mina Frazer was far fonder of her quaint instructress than she
had been as a child, and when the bond of teacher and taught ceased to
unite them, that of friend and friend proved quite as strong to draw
them almost daily together. But still a perpetual difference of opinion
caused a sort of ceaseless war to range between them: they never met
without a kind of tilt, for whatever Miss Caldera’s private idea might
be, her generally expressed one was that Mina was the most fortunate
creature in the universe, who would only come to a knowledge of the
blessings she enjoyed, if by any mischance she were at a future period
deprived of them.

She considered Mina too much inclined to self pity to indulge her with
even an atom of compassion on any subject: she conscientiously talked to
her in a general way, sensibly and rationally enough; but the sense and
reasoning coming from the mind, and not from her heart, they usually
sounded dry, and cold, and formal; and annoyed Mina into making sundry
irritable answers, which bettered her cause not in the least, and
confirmed Miss Caldera in her opinion that the girl ought not to be
encouraged to murmur by any unwise sympathy or words of commiseration.

Thus, whenever Mina was inclined to yearn a little for a sight of the
land of her birth, and the relatives who dwelt there, the _gouvernante_
treated her to that very questionable kind of consolation derivable from
considering that some other person had no friends at all, no home, no
money, and no advantages. Mina, who perhaps in her heart never greatly
desired society, occasionally suggested that something of the kind would
be suitable to her years, and agreeable to her character; whereupon Miss
Caldera remarked, she “ought to be thankful she had so kind an uncle, so
amiable a brother, and a mother who—”

“What?” demanded the girl once, as her friend paused.

“Never interferes with, and thinks you so clever,” was the somewhat
embarrassed response.

Then, again, Mina frequently expressed an opinion to the effect that
Belerma Square was not the very pleasantest locality in London, or her
uncle’s house the most cheerful residence in that city; and so surely as
she did so, Miss Caldera promptly informed her she might be much worse
off,—might be forced to live in some dreadful neighbourhood, and that it
was the height of ingratitude to be repining about such a trifle, when
she was surrounded by luxuries and blessings innumerable.

“Well, suppose,” said Mina, one afternoon, in answer to some such
comment as the above,—resting both elbows on a little square table in
the room where she had been wont in former days to inquire into the
mysteries of other tongues, but where, latterly, she came merely to give
free scope to her own,—resting both elbows on the table, and supporting
her chin with the backs of her hands in a most unfashionable,
discontented, and unladylike manner,—“Well, suppose we just see what
those luxuries and blessings are, concerning which you are eternally
talking. I admit that my uncle is most kind; that Malcolm, when at home,
is amiable; that my mother never speaks to me except to say I am clever
and odd; that Belerma Square is not Smithfield; that this house is not a
five-roomed cottage; and that in every way I might be, as you
perpetually say, ‘much worse off.’ I have shelter, food, and clothing;
am, in short, ‘provided for,’ without being compelled to do anything for
myself. If I want money my uncle gives it to me: I admit I have all
these causes, as you remark, for thankfulness; and yet——”

“You are dissatisfied,” promptly interposed Miss Caldera.

“Not absolutely dissatisfied,” returned Mina. “I was going to add—and
yet I wish for something more: but whenever I express a desire for aught
further than I now possess, you appear to imagine I am discontented and
ungrateful. Happy here, I tell you candidly, I have never been: no time
has reconciled me to this place: no circumstances have here occurred to
make me cordially like it: I do not value the ‘luxuries and blessings’
you speak of so highly as many might, simply because food, dress, and
money, are not to my mind the things a human being should prize the most
in existence.”

“You could not do without any one of them at all events,” drily remarked
Miss Caldera.

“Only try me,” returned Mina with eagerness; “only say to me, Which will
you do,—remain in Belerma Square and retain all you now possess, or live
on the humblest fare, and dress in the simplest manner at Craigmaver?
and you shall see how speedily I will choose the latter. Oh, dear
friend! you have never been in my country; you have never seen anything
like it, I know: but still, try to imagine the difference between a ride
over the breezy moors, and a stiff dreary walk through these suffocating
London streets: think of sunrises on the hills, and noons among flowers
and perfumes and scenery; of evenings on the water, with the clear moon
shining above, and mountains around, and the voices of sweet singers
floating over the lake, as in a dream of romance. If you had looked
once, only once, at the view from Glenfiord over Loch Lomond; or stood
for ten minutes on the lawn at Craigmaver; you would never marvel again
that I cannot become naturalized here. How I think of those places!” she
added with a sigh: “I try not, but they will return back and back to my
memory,—‘A thing of beauty is a _grief_ for ever.’ I wish, I wish, you
could just get one peep of my old home; and then you would understand
one of the things for which I pine.”

“And do you think, Mina,” said Miss Caldera, earnestly,—a sort of
half-strangled memory swelling up in her heart at the sound of the
girl’s regretful murmur; “that I cannot sympathize with your feelings
from experience: that I never pined to revisit any place; never wished
for anything? Do not believe it, for though I have not sighed for the
sight of lakes, and hills, and mountains, I have wept for the loss of
things more precious, in my eyes, than these can possibly be in yours—a
happy home, an independence, parents, friends, enjoyment.

“After I first came to London, the perfume of a familiar flower, the
words of a song, the sound of a melody, used to have power sufficient to
make me feel faint and sick: but I knew then what I tell you now, that
it is wrong to be discontented with the lot which hath been appointed
for us—to be always looking gloomily back, thinking of what might have
been: so I floated along with the frequently muddy stream, and tried
with my whole soul to be thankful I was enabled to do it.”

“But you were not happy,” cried Mina. “I would not believe it if you
said you were: you might feel resigned; you might think you were quite
contented: but completely happy——”

“Who is so, on earth, Mina?” demanded the lady.

“Oh! I do not know; plenty, I dare say;” was the response.

“Are you acquainted with any individual who can truly state that he, or
she, feels so?” asked Miss Caldera.

“No;” confessed Mina: “but then you see I am acquainted with only a very
few persons. If I were back at Craigmaver; if uncle John, and you, and
we, all were living there, with my dear old other uncle, I should not
have a thought of care,—a wish on earth ungratified.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as I can be of anything in the world, that I should feel
completely happy there.”

“Indeed you would not, Mina.”

“And why not?” she inquired, “I was perfectly happy at Glenfiord; oh!
supremely so, until papa died.”

“But you were a child then; you are one no longer. You cannot return to
that state again, Mina—ever——”

There was a something almost mournful in the tone in which these words
were spoken; it struck sadly to the young girl’s heart, and, after
musing for a moment, she said—

“Then you think that nowhere—in England—in Scotland—in this world, I
shall ever be happy again?”

“Comparatively you may be; completely so, never,” was the rejoinder.
“_That_ time comes but once in the lives of any—not at all in the lives
of some: it passes away like a dream of the morning; its transitory
brightness is remembered always, but never can be felt again.”

“Yet I have a wish——” commenced Mina.

“To try the experiment,” finished Miss Caldera; “better not—far, far
better not. Keep the ‘thing of beauty’ as it is, not a grief, Mina, but
‘a joy for ever.’ Long not too much to see it again; for believe me that
which we desire most frequently proves our heaviest trial when granted
to our importunity.”

“Then ought we to wish for nothing?” was the impatient question.

“If we could avoid it,—but human nature is rebellious.”

“And do you never wish?” persisted Mina.

“Often,” confessed her friend, “but still I am aware it is, to say the
least, foolish and useless.”

“And what is it for?” demanded her former pupil; “do tell me—I should
like to know—what _you_ desire.”

“What I never expect to get,” replied the lady with a sad smile; “a
small independence, a little cottage, no matter how humble if I could
call it mine; flowers, green fields and nature about me; these are my
wishes, extravagant enough, no doubt: on this side of the grave I have
none other.”

“I wish I were rich, and they should soon be realities,” said the girl;
then after a pause she added, “Do you know, if you would just always
talk to me as you have talked to me now, I do not think I should ever
snap at you.”

“_Id est_, if I encouraged you to discontent by showing you how very far
from perfect I am; if I seconded your every foolish fancy, and praised
and flattered and complimented you for not being a simpleton or a dunce;
you would perhaps not get out of temper quite so frequently as is the
case at present,” remarked Miss Caldera.

“If you would only acknowledge occasionally, that you are not perfectly
satisfied and supremely happy, and cease telling me how thankful I ought
to be for a whole host of things I could be quite contented without, I
would never ask you to praise, or flatter, or compliment.”

“For a sufficient reason,” said her friend with a smile.

“And what may that be?” asked Mina.

“Because you know I would not do it.”

“No,” was the reply, “but because I shouldn’t like you half so well, if
you were in the habit of saying such things. I believe half the
compliments in the world are merely civil sneers, that delight some and
provoke others. Now, when my mother or uncle praise and extol me, I know
they are quite sincere, though, as you imagine, perhaps not judicious;
but Mr. Westwood——”

“Well, Mina, I am all attention, what of Mr. Westwood?”

“If he ever flatter, be sure he is inwardly laughing at the folly of
those who listen to him; for he really admires nothing, cares for
nothing, thinks of nothing, but himself——”

“And you,” quietly added Miss Caldera.

“I do not believe he does,” said Mina quickly. “I think he is the most
conceited, disagreeable, selfish being in existence—I perfectly detest
him.”

“Times are changed,” remarked the lady; “I remember when you were very
fond of him.”

“Yes, when I was a child, perhaps,” returned Mina vehemently; “ere that
time had passed away which, as you say, never can return,—before I had
sense, or knowledge, or understanding,—_then_ I know I did like him, but
now——”

“You do not.”

“I despise him,” said the girl. “I cannot endure to see him, to hear him
speak, to speak to him. If there were no other reason in the world to
make me wish to leave London, _he_ would be quite sufficient.”

“And yet he loves you. Oh! Mina.”

“And yet he loves me, oh! Miss Caldera,” pettishly echoed that young
lady, “and what in the world do I care whether he do or not. To begin
with, I believe he can love nothing but himself; and next, I think, if
he entertain the slightest shadow of affection for me, it is solely
because he fancies Uncle John will give me a large fortune.”

“So you have got to the portion already,” laughed Miss Caldera, “well,
although you think so little of him, I wish from my heart it were come
to that.”

“I know you do,” retorted Mina; “but it never shall—never. I had rather
go to live in Seven Dials, upon bread and water, and learn to beg or
steal, or do anything of that kind, than marry a detestable, vain,
self-sufficient being, who would be continually sneering at me, and
saying the most cutting things in the most polite manner.”

“I should like to see you begging, Mina,” said Miss Caldera; “and dear
me child, how soon you would tire of the bread and water, and try to
make a little variety by boiling them up together, or exchanging your
allowance for a turnip, or perhaps a carrot: and what a respectable
locality you have selected for the scene of your penance. I wonder if
you ever will learn to reflect, for one moment, before you speak.”

“You may laugh if you like, and you may think it folly, or sense, or
whatever else you choose, but I repeat it is _truth_,” returned Mina,
laying a vigorous emphasis on the last word. “I had rather live
anywhere, or with any person, than with your prime favorite, Alfred
Westwood. I cannot bear to see him even for an hour; only imagine
therefore what it would be to have to admire him always.”

“Your affections and your distastes are equally strong, and, I must add,
Mina, equally unreasonable,” was the response. “Have you a single good
reason for your aversion to Mr. Westwood, because if you could tell me
one, I might change my opinion on the subject.”

“I have fifty good reasons that satisfy me I am right, not one of which,
however, would convince you,” answered Mina. “To begin with, he is the
vainest——”

“Well, I admit he is a little vain,” interposed Miss Caldera; “and you,
Mina, are so free from the weakness yourself, that you have a perfect
right to throw the first stone!”

“No, no, I am not vain,” cried the other eagerly; “I _know_ I am not
pretty: no one but papa ever thought me so. You know I am not vain.”

“Personally, perhaps not, but there are other kinds of vanity even more
objectionable and dangerous: however, to return to Mr. Westwood, what is
his next crime?”

“He is a hypocrite,” promptly responded Mina.

“Indeed, make that out clearly to my satisfaction, and I am mute,”
replied Miss Caldera.

“Unless you can find it out for yourself,” said Mina, “it is useless for
me to attempt to prove it to you; if you had not once told me ‘there are
none so blind as those who won’t see,’ I should have said—watch him as
closely as I have done; only notice him talking to mamma, and agreeing
with everything she advances; listen to how he humours and cautiously
flatters my poor uncle: he appears honest and straightforward to you,
but he is not so, _I_ know.”

“How do you know?”

“He says what he does not think: he compliments me and sneers at me; and
he imagines, because I am a girl, he can deceive and blind me, but he
cannot.”

“We have now got two of his faults settled,” said Miss Caldera; “what is
his third? I hope and trust you spoke, as usual, in a rather exaggerated
style, when you stated you had fifty reasons; if not, it will be morning
again before we get through them all: now Mina, the third!”

“He has a bad temper,” she answered.

“That is unfortunate,” remarked Miss Caldera, “as we know ‘two of a
trade cannot agree.’”

“I do wish you would forget some of those detestable old proverbs,”
exclaimed Mina; “they are just like yourself, dry and provoking, and
express the most disagreeable ideas in the fewest number of words: I do
not pretend to have a good temper, but it is better than _his_,—I am
sure of that, at any rate.”

“Entirely a matter of opinion,” said Miss Caldera, with a smile.

“Well, we can leave it so, and I will retain mine,” retorted Mina; “and,
besides, nobody knows anything about who he was, or what his relations
are; and there is a quarter of a century between us.”

“Perhaps,” was the rejoinder; “but at all events you have ancestors
enough on your father’s side to suffice for both: and if his relatives,
supposing he have any, do not cross your path, why in the world, child,
need you step out of it to discover their’s. With regard to age, I
remember once merely casually remarking to you, that Mr. Awrill was an
agreeable young man, and you answered, quite tartly,—‘that he might be
after a little while, when he grew older, and had learned to talk
properly.’”

“Young, or old, he was worth a million Mr. Westwoods,” said Mina; “and
there are a great many on the earth a vast deal better than he, after
all; but to end this discussion, I am not going to marry your
friend,—not for my mother, not for my uncle, not for Malcolm, not for
you.”

“And pray, my dear, did anybody ever ask you to marry him?” enquired
Miss Caldera.

The angry blood came mounting into Mina’s face, as she answered,

“I do not know what it is makes me care for you; for I do believe of all
the tormenting unaccountable beings mortal ever beheld, you are the
strangest. My mother has not the most remote notion this man entertains,
what you call, ‘a regard for me;’ nor has my uncle, at least he never
said so to me; and Malcolm, I am sure, would be quite provoked about it,
if he were told; but you—why you know as well as I do, that you have
been praising him, and telling me how foolish I should be to reject such
affection (as if I wanted affection from him), and what an excellent
husband he would make (it shall never be to me though); and a number of
such things, for the last five weeks: if you never said in so many plain
words, ‘Mina, I wish you would marry that Adonis;’ you have given me
pretty clearly to understand that you desired I should do so.”

“Dear me, Mina, what a deal you do say about nothing,” observed her
friend, when she stopped literally for want of breath; “if you would
just take things a little more reasonably and quietly——”

“But I cannot be quiet or reasonable,” interrupted Mina, “when I am
worried out of my life by that creature, smiling, and simpering, and
sighing, and sneering, and complimenting. Will you oblige me by saying
why you wish me to marry him?”

“Briefly—because I think, and am sure, you might ‘go further and fare
worse;’” was the reply.

“Another of those horrid saws,” said Mina; “why will you annoy me with
them—why will you do it, dear old friend?”

“Partly, because I know nothing could please you at this minute;
chiefly, because they express my meaning much better than I could for
myself.”

“I wish, notwithstanding,” said Mina, “that you would explain it a
little more fully to me.”

“Well then, Mina, I think Mr. Westwood will make you quite as good a
husband as you are likely to meet with: he is kind, sufficiently rich,
fond of you, very clever, agreeable, well-informed.”

“Anything else?” inquired the girl, when her friend paused: “anything
else?”

“No!” answered Miss Caldera, rising, “as you prohibit proverbs; let me
however, suggest, that there are two, the consideration of which might
be beneficial to you at present: one relates to the best time for making
hay; and the other is about a word to the wise.”

“Heaven grant me patience!” murmured the young lady devoutly.

“I trust it may,” said Miss Caldera; “for believe me it is a virtue of
which you are lamentably deficient.”

To which truism Mina made no answer, but walked silently off to her
embroidery frame, behind which she was in the habit of taking refuge
when either annoyed by any reference to Mr. Westwood, or by his
unwelcome presence; and there she would sit for hours, working
generally, at an interminable pair of slippers with the rapidity of
lightning; musing and thinking and pondering—about what? no person,
perhaps not even she herself, had a perfectly accurate idea.

Others in the world, however, had apparently more patience, and greater
occasion for its exercise, than Mina Frazer; and, though, had any friend
told her so, she most probably would have justly enough replied “that
was no comfort to her,” there may be some who would willingly turn from
the enumeration of her slight trials, to the heavier and more hopeless
troubles of the miser’s eldest born.




                               CHAPTER X.
                           DEAD MEN’S SHOES.


There are some persons, living in agreeable town or country localities,
who contend that “place” has nought to do with happiness, just as others
who have never felt the want of money, gravely assert that gold is the
“least good, and the greatest care in life.” To disprove, however, the
truth of both these ingenious theories, I apprehend it would be merely
necessary to strip the one class of persons of a little superfluous
gilding, and to transplant the other to a less agreeable habitation,
when, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, their views, feelings,
and expressions would undergo a wonderful, and not altogether desirable,
alteration. It is a something really beautiful and cheering and
strengthening to hear how people preach; that is, it would be so if one
were not occasionally treated to a sight of how they practise. It is one
of the easiest and commonest thing in life to tell your neighbour to
carry his heavy burden in silence, but one of the most difficult to bear
a much lighter load without grumbling considerably yourself.

All think their own sorrows the greatest; and, considering that the
music of their lament must be, or at least ought to be, quite as
acceptable to others as it proves to themselves, go through the world
humming it complacently; and, when another person sets up an opposition
murmur, indignantly endeavour to silence him by exclaiming “Pray cease
your pitiful song, listen to mine,”—never thinking he may deem his
melody far more full of pathos than theirs, and that, at all events, he
has quite as good a right as they to annoy every mortal in creation with
the melancholy dirge which he has composed in honour of his wrongs and
trials and misfortunes.

Which brings me to what I intended to advance at starting, namely, that
although it is edifying to hear people talk about the duty of being
contented, and saying how resignedly _they_ could live anywhere—on
anything; still, those who feel what others have never more than
imagined, may surely be forgiven if they strive to revenge themselves on
fate by repining a little at her decrees.

It were better and nobler policy, I admit, either to bend patiently, or
to rebel valiantly; but there are some who cannot exactly shape their
destinies as they would, and yet who find it impossible not to fret and
murmur occasionally: and it is no small aggravation of their grief to be
perpetually told “you should” by those, who, were they in a similar
situation, would lose no opportunity of informing the world “We are
suffering saints and long-enduring martyrs;” “See ye not the terrible
disasters which have befallen the ‘salt of the earth;’” “Behold our
misfortunes, and how we bear them.” “Solely because,” they might
generally add, “we are compelled to do so, whether we like it or not.”

There never was man of mortal mould who bore his griefs more
uncomplainingly than Ernest Ivraine, or who looked more miserable upon
them; there never existed any one who asked less sympathy, or received a
smaller portion of it; there never was a human being who walked more
silently and mournfully through life; nor in the length and breadth of
England could there have been discovered an individual, who, having an
equally heavy burden to bear, not for days merely, but for years, did
bear it externally with such exemplary patience, and made so little
noise about its weight.

“Constant dropping wears the stone,” however; and, though the hourly
fall of vexatious tormenting pebbles produced apparently no ill effects
on the temper of the miser’s eldest born, there was—furrowed by the
weary untiring stream of annoying events—a deep channel in his heart,
through which sullen angry feelings and evil thoughts and many
disappointments flowed always and ever ceaselessly.

Hatred and ignoble wishes are the darkest demons which can dwell in the
heart of man. Affection and generous purposes are the guardian angels of
the soul. And it was these most antagonistic principles that made and
marred, and threatened and preserved, the peace and the well-being of
Ernest Ivraine.

Hatred to his father, love to his brother; hatred to the man who
blighted his life, and doled out with scanty hand the barest necessaries
of existence; who, denying himself and family all those comforts and
luxuries so usual in, and essential for, respectability in their
station, shut the high wooden gates of “Paradise” on the world at large,
and lived within the enclosure of brick walls—bounding to the east,
south, north, and west, his swampy domain—a miser amongst his money
bags, most utterly alone. Hatred to the man who would not die, who
starved on and maintained, by some inexplicable process, the mysterious
connection between soul and body; whilst better and stronger and
healthier and more useful men sickened, day by day, sunk—some slowly,
some rapidly—and expired. Everywhere death journeyed; at every door he
occasionally knocked, save through the morasses and at the gate of
“Paradise.” The old miser kept every other creditor at bay, why not the
universal one? he never paid a debt he could avoid; and, when payment
was inevitable, he delayed the act of justice as long as possible. Why
should he, therefore, not contrive to evade for years the liquidation of
that debt which compassionate nature exacts at length from every one of
her weary, or grateful, or haughty, or disobedient children?

It was with a species of mute despair that Ernest Ivraine beheld how
resolutely the old baronet stuck to his money chests; how each new
mortgage deed, which he locked up in his _escritoire_, seemed to remove
a wrinkle from his furrowed brow; how every shilling of interest he
received infused a drop of warm fresh blood into his veins; how every
guinea he could wring from any one, by law, or fraud, or intimidation,
brought strength into his gaunt spare frame, new lustre to his hollow
gleaming eye, additional force and harshness to his voice, and a greater
thirst for gold, and a firmer purpose to live for its possession.

Day by day Ernest Ivraine saw that which, as Henry once had said, _must_
come to him, decrease in value. Every hour his father’s speedy death or
his father’s favourable will became of more importance to the impatient
watcher for death’s tardy approach: the gloom on the young man’s brow
grew deeper, and the anxiety of his soul more intense, as he beheld
fresh mortgages piled on the entailed estate, and the money thus raised,
either lent out at higher rates of interest, or else invested in houses
and lands and properties, in which, unless he could induce his parent to
bequeath them to him, he had no interest or claim, direct or indirect.

Some said he was resigned, others that he was mercenary; his relatives,
that he was only constitutionally melancholy, habitually discontented:
Ernest Ivraine himself knew what a dark vampire-like thought was tearing
his heart to pieces, whilst he was merely dimly conscious that affection
for Henry was the bright star that shone on steadily amidst all the
gloom of surrounding objects; that it was the soft spot of his soul, the
green oasis in the wilderness, which prevented the whole of his present
and future becoming a dreary unprofitable waste.

Love for the brother who had gone forth so nobly and bravely to battle
with and in the world; who had done what _he_ could not do,—cast the
accursed thing far from him and fled, as a good man may flee from the
temptation he feels he would be impotent to withstand, came it but near
enough him. Love for the youth who, when a child, had been dear unto the
heart of her who was now an angel in heaven; for him who had been his
companion as a boy, his friend as a man: who was so full of courage and
gentleness, of soldier-like bravery and womanly tenderness: who had
despised and spurned the vague promise of future wealth: who had urged,
in accents which rung through life in Ernest’s ears, his brother to
choose the nobler and the better part: who had suffered, because of his
parent’s cruel partiality for the metal that lures men on to perdition,
equally with Ernest, and yet who had prayed him not to hope for _their_
parent’s death: who could not go without bidding that parent farewell:
who had wept to leave, not Paradise and its riches, but home and his
stern dark brother behind him.

There was good in both,—there must have been, else Ernest had never been
loved by Henry; good to be preserved or eradicated; good to be developed
or to be crushed; good that had come to both, not from father or
grandfather, not from any Ivraine, Baronet or Mister, who ever walked
over the earth and darkened it with his shadow,—but from a gentle woman,
who, in default of houses and lands, great wealth and noble lineage,
left to those two—her only children—something of her own tender, honest
nature, which sent the younger out a resolute wanderer into the world,
and preserved the elder from utter ruin during years haunted by dark
thoughts and dark wishes and dark everything, save deeds.

Often in the winter evenings, when the white wood ashes strewed the
hearth, and an almost extinguished log smouldered dimly away to powder,
Ernest sat with his face buried in his hands, pondering on that last
interview with his brother, thinking and considering and pondering, till
at length, forgetful of all save the dreary present and the bright free
world beyond, he started up to go forth, then and there, an humble
follower in Henry’s footsteps. But the old doubts, the old fears, the
old plans, the constant expectations, came sweeping the next moment
through his mind; and, sinking down again, he murmured, “Not now, it
cannot be,” and surrendered himself captive once more to the demon who
kept him chained for ever in that house, listening with intense longing
and gloomy impatience for the solemn measured footfalls of him who came
so tardily—Death.

That numerous class of would-be consolers and real afflicters, whom we
briefly term “Job’s comforters,” have a custom of telling those whose
griefs are so severe and self-evident as to preclude the present
possibility of doubt or mitigation, that, if they will only have
patience, time must soothe their sorrows or perhaps remove them
altogether; and it was a firm idea of this kind which enabled Ernest
Ivraine to bend, with an outward semblance of melancholy resignation to
his—fate, for so he was pleased to term that weary servitude which he
could have left any day, as Henry had done, proud and strong in noble
self-reliance.

But, feeling thoroughly satisfied that the lapse of time would
ultimately end all by removing his father to eternity, he waited and
endured for years, and never made an effort to follow his brother, who
had just written him one brief line before leaving England.

“Nothing else presenting itself,” he said, “I have fairly enlisted;
before this reaches you, I shall be on my way to Portsmouth, thence to
India. Dear Ernest, my brother, will you not come and do likewise?”

No, Ernest would not. When he refused to listen to Henry’s entreaties,
whilst his feelings were excited and his mind irritated, it was scarcely
probable he would take what he considered a step bordering almost on
insanity, when cold prudence had resumed her dominion over the impulses
of his soul, and stood pointing for ever with one chill hand towards the
desolate struggling world, and with the other fixedly at his father’s
money chests.

He remained, therefore, a dark, solitary, almost sordid misanthrope
amongst the dreary swamps of Paradise, striving to humour the miser’s
temper in all things, agreeing without question to his slightest wish,
and yielding to his lightest fancy with the weakness of a woman,—but
still, after the sulky manner of an obstinate child: bearing all taunts
with the meekness of a saint; maintaining that profound silence which
had come to be one of his distinguishing characteristics; lounging
listlessly about the grounds; eternally pondering on when this would
end, and striving with all his soul to advance not merely himself in the
old man’s good graces, but also his foolish brother Henry, who, being
the miser’s favourite son, and having almost a hand certain on the
golden coffer, had chosen to fling the key from him in disgust, because
he lacked the patience and the calculating nature necessary to enable
him to wait till death, entering the mansion, should give him leave to
turn the same in the wards and take possession of the guineas and
title-deeds and mortgages of Sir Ernest Claude Ivraine, Baronet,
deceased.

There were many men (even amongst those who termed the elder son
mercenary) who would have seized the opportunity afforded by Henry’s
rashness, to insinuate themselves into the old miser’s good graces by
speaking harshly and unjustly of the absent one; but Ernest was not such
as these. It might have won esteem from any one whose esteem was worth
possessing to see how carefully Ernest, for months after his brother’s
departure, strove to conceal from the baronet knowledge of the step he
had so decidedly taken: but the young man had no confidant; he never
spoke of his thoughts or actions to human being: the wrong he did all
men were at liberty to note if they would, for the wrong is frequently
far too apparent, and is generally seized and remarked upon with
avidity; but his virtues and his good deeds were fully revealed unto the
eye of Him alone, Who seeth all things, and Who knew the deep
disinterested love Ernest Ivraine bore towards his absent brother, whom
never, even in thought, did he dream of striving to supplant in the
affections, or rather in the will, of his parent. No; if Henry were left
well off, he knew wealth abundant would come to him; if, on the
contrary, fortune smiled for once on his own dark gloomy brow, he would
share all equally with the fair-haired youth who so resembled his
mother. He remained at Paradise to keep his other relatives at bay, to
detect their schemes, defeat their plans, guard the castle of the old
man’s understanding from being undermined by their ingenious stratagems
and devices; but rivalry of Henry, his own brother! Ernest, though he
had confessed so openly to desiring his father’s death, would have hated
himself had such an idea ever entered into his brain; nay more, had any
one presented it to him, he would have loathed the heart that suggested,
and the tongue that spoke, the insinuation which mind and feeling and
affection all alike indignantly rejected.

For weeks and weeks the miser never inquired about Henry; but, at last,
whatever of love dwelt in his soul for mortal being, yearning towards
his younger born, he became vaguely uneasy at his protracted absence,
and accordingly asked Ernest casually “when his brother would be home?”

“Not for a long time I fear, sir,” he answered.

“Why, what is he doing? where has he gone?” demanded the baronet, a
touch of anxiety softening his usually harsh tone.

“He has gone to India,” was Ernest’s reply; and, as the answer grated on
his ear, the old man walked towards a window like one struck with some
sudden pain. He gazed with vacant wandering eye over swamps and fields
and trees, but his mental vision took no cognizance of these things; at
the moment he forgot even his hoards of useless treasure, for Henry, his
youngest son, the only being on earth for whom he had, since boyhood,
entertained a shadow of unselfish affection, it seemed had uttered
_that_ night no idle threat when he said he “was going away for years,
perhaps for ever.”

Now he had actually departed; deserts and oceans, forests, mountains,
plains, waters, stretched between the baronet and the ever murmuring,
ever repenting, always noble, high spirited youth. Henry had passed
forth from the home of his childhood; his father’s hand had securely
closed the gates behind him, and the old familiar places (desolate and
forlorn though they might be,—still once familiar) knew him “no more.”

And, as Longfellow says that the sound of those two words resembles the
moaning of winter winds through ancient pine forests, so the rapid
reflection that on earth they might never meet again, sent a chill cold
feeling to the miser’s soul.

“I thought nothing, save the loss of a sovereign, could have so moved
him,” reflected Ernest; but Ernest was wrong. God is good and great;
there is no land, however barren, that hath not some verdant spot, some
oasis shining in the midst of the desert; and, even in this most sordid,
selfish world there never yet existed any mortal being who did not love
something—child, father, brother, wife—well, after his fashion.

Now that knowledge of Henry’s being more dear than aught save gold could
be to the baronet’s heart entered into the comprehension of Ernest
Ivraine, he strove more sedulously than ever to keep the old man in
darkness concerning _how_ his son had gone forth to breast the storms of
fate; to prevent his learning that an Ivraine, one of _his_ mean, proud,
haughty, contemptible race, was serving his God, his king, his country,
and himself in the ranks,—a common soldier; that Henry had chosen to
bind the long chain of scarlet slavery round his neck, sooner than
submit to the more unendurable, inactive slavery of home; that, amongst
those whom Sir Ernest had always considered the lowest of the low—the
sons of the tillers of the earth, the paid defenders of their native
land, the poor, the uneducated, the strong-handed, the bone and sinew of
Britain—one of his blood was living. The elder son endeavoured, with
paternal zeal and tenderness, to keep such dreadful knowledge from his
father. But the winds of heaven bear secrets to the minds of those from
whom mortals vainly hope to bar them out; and thus at length, somehow,
through the officiousness of some meddling friend or evil-disposed
relative, the baronet at length heard truth which, if disagreeable, is
always sure to rise out of the bottom of her well and to float
conspicuous on every surface bubble.

“How has your brother gone out to India, sir?” broke forth Sir Ernest
one day, immediately on his return from the nearest large town.

“He really did not precisely inform me,” said the elder son, fervently
trusting that that and many another equivocation he had uttered on the
same topic would be forgiven him.

“Don’t tell me falsehoods,” thundered out his father, “I know perfectly
well how he has gone, and what he has done: disgraced his name and his
house, himself and myself, his connections in every part of the kingdom.
Heavens! grant me patience to think of it! Henry Ivraine, my son—yes,
_my_ son, a common private—a vagabond soldier!”

“That he has entered the army, I believe,” said Ernest, the blood
rushing for once up into his sallow cheek; “but how, in what rank,
whether as officer or as private, no person save some one in his fullest
confidence can exactly tell; nor has any one a right to surmise without
accurate information on the subject. Thus much I do know, however, sir,
positively, no matter who may strive to turn your heart against him,
that, let his position in the service be high or low, inferior or
exalted, Henry Ivraine, _your_ son, _my_ brother, will never disgrace
one of us: he would not be a vagabond, if he were a beggar; I should
believe in his truth and integrity and honour if I saw him stand before
me an accused felon to-morrow, and I have faith and hope that whatever
he may be now, he will rise to name and station and fortune yet.”

“He will,” angrily repeated the baronet, with a horrible distortion of
face; then, suddenly checking the remainder of the sentence, he said,
sneering bitterly, “You grow eloquent,” and abruptly left the apartment.

And Ernest, seeing that _their_ chances were lessened by one half,—that
on him alone depended their hopes of wealth, or even a bare competency,
braved more resolutely and gloomily than ever the depressing swamps and
vapours of Paradise from day to day, week to week, year to year,
guarding and striving to advance his brother’s interests and his own,
longing, dreading, hoping, fearing for the approach of him who alone
could fully reveal and finally decide their destinies—Death.




                              CHAPTER XI.
                       THE BARONET’S FIRST-BORN.


But as the mariner, tossing on the bosom of the ever-restless, always
treacherous, ocean, clings with might and main to the quivering mast,
though aloft storms surround, and tempests howl about him, whilst below
lies the sure, certain calm of the grave, so the miser baronet
resolutely grasped the volume of life, perhaps with even a firmer clutch
than he might have done, had its numerous pages contained the story of
an existence devoted to the good and well-being of his fellow-creatures.
As the slave strives for freedom, as the wretched do for peace, as the
weary pine for rest, as the drowning catch at straws, as the sailor
seizes the saving spar,—so, with similar eagerness, Sir Ernest kept an
unrelaxing hand on that which many an one would gladly relinquish any
day; for more than mothers love their children and some men love fame,
than others love station, than the young love pleasure, or the old
repose, the miser loved gold: dearer was it unto his soul than mortal
affection or immortal expectations; than comfort, or ease, or luxury, or
virtue, or principle: the hope of adding the merest trifle to his hoard
seemed more in his eyes than the hope of salvation; the dread of letting
one sixpence pass by his greedy hand swallowed up all fear or horror of
perdition.

Though life was to him a mere sordid existence, he resolved to “take the
most out of it,” as he did out of everything else: gold was the only
thing he cared for, and, to go on acquiring it, life was necessary; and
so he clung to the latter and amassed the former with a perseverance
which, if employed in a better cause, would have made him an unspeakable
benefactor to his species.

The wrinkles on his withered face grew daily deeper; the lines below his
eyes and round his mouth became marked and fixed, as if they had been
chiselled there; the twisted veins on his high narrow forehead looked,
spite of the sallow skin that only partially concealed them, like
crawling reptiles wandering through his flesh; his hands seemed to get
more like talons—the long colourless nails like claws; his tone grew
shriller and harsher; his step more uncertain and rapid than ever; his
temper more unbearable; his mood more changeable; his spirit more
litigious: but still the bright light of former times gleamed in his
eyes; there was purpose in his thought, command in his voice, energy in
his mind: age might do its worst upon him, but Sir Ernest defied it to
kill him; he shook one trembling hand undauntedly in the face of time,
and, laying the other firmly on the principle of vitality, refused to
die. Men, with no business, no purpose, no plan, might lie down in their
narrow graves if it so pleased them any day; but the miser had work to
do, which, if properly carried out, would last him for ever: and so he
lived on, faithfully serving _his_ God as few men serve _their_ God. He
never attempted the impossible task of serving two masters; but, taking
Mammon for his, worked and slaved and toiled at his bidding with fifty
times more vigour and determination than those do who profess to be
laying up treasures for themselves in that land “where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.” He
lived on—and Ernest waited.

As men do wait who wish for what they dared not speak of—with outward
patience, with intense irritability, with feverish thirst, and dark
heart, and darker reveries; saved from utter ruin by one good purpose,
by one unselfish object which he strove to gain, not for his own sake,
but for that of Henry.

He had formed a resolution the day of his brother’s departure, about
which he never said a syllable to any one, which was to scrape together,
by some indefinite means, an amount sufficient to buy Henry a
commission. Many amiable persons, as they are usually termed, constantly
plan generous and philanthropic projects, but never carry them out; and
others, who are charmed by their wordy benevolence, take the will for
the deed, and think better of such empty talkers than of their silenter
fellows, who talk not at all and act much. With Ernest, however, to
think was not to speak, but to do; to resolve was to perform, not
brilliantly or rapidly, but silently and probably tardily.

He neither possessed the hope nor the talents of his brother; but he had
a kind of invincible obstinacy, or adhesiveness, of disposition, which
caused him, whenever he had once made up his mind on any point, to stick
thereto with unswerving tenacity. It might be years after,—it might be
towards the close of life,—other and brighter prospects might arise
before him, obstacles might present themselves, difficulties appear, but
it was much the same to him: he walked aside, or round, or over; he
stood still, or strode on; but whichever course he pursued, it was _in
his character_ to keep his eye ever steadily fixed on the object he had
once determined to reach, and never for one moment to remove his gaze
from the contemplation thereof. To a nature like this, it was a matter
of no small importance what he decided was worth striving or waiting for
in life. As weak characters change their ideas every hour, it follows,
_par consequence_, that what they resolve to do to-day signifies not in
the least, as it is quite certain not to be carried out to-morrow: but,
with a man whose resolves are not to be shaken, it becomes almost an
affair of temporal and eternal welfare that he shall resolve well, or
else not at all; for, if the bad be chosen, it cannot, in the hands of
one blessed or cursed with such a temperament, work for aught else than
evil; and, if the good be embraced, it can never, even by a mischance,
turn out completely ill.

Thus it was fortunate that, while much of wrong entered Ernest’s mind,
right had obtained part possession of his soul too; wherefore the one,
guided, and the other clouded, his life: his heart resembled the briny
ocean, filled to suffocation with unhealthy thoughts and dangerous
wishes; but, affection for Henry, dashing like the rapid mountain
torrent through the flood, kept still a portion of his nature pure and
undefiled. As in the natural world, so in the moral; the two waters
ebbed and flowed ceaselessly, but never mingled—a drop of the salt never
mixed with the other: the brine never became fresh, nor the fresh,
brine. Living a life so lonely and retired, neither passion ever got so
far from land as to be swallowed up in that larger ocean which cools
hatreds, quenches loves, tears the magnifying glass—self-pity—from the
eye and reveals wrongs, as they frequently are, mere bubbles on the
surface; which divides friends, reconciles enemies, makes some better,
many worse, mends a few, mars more; which most pant to enter; which all
are loath to leave; that busy, ever-varying, ever-deceitful,
ever-inviting ocean, on which all sigh to try their frail barks; whose
characteristic is turmoil, whose mandate is toil, whose boundary is
eternity; over whose surface keeps ever sailing the grim pilot,
Death,—who takes one from his pleasure boat and another from his
merchant vessel; the child from his little skiff; the fisherman from his
tarry yawl; the officer from the man of war; the pirate from his
ill-gotten prize; the traveller from his comfortless ship: who picks off
a man from the crew of every bark, and removes them from that mighty
ocean, the World, for ever.

In that bustling arena Ernest Ivraine, though he might have lost
something, would assuredly have gained much; but he had determined to
sit out the drama of his father’s existence till the curtain finally
dropped on the last act of the interminable piece. And whilst he wearied
over scene after scene of that which some deem a comedy, and others a
tragedy—life,—he strove to diversify the incidents of his own existence
a little, by working earnestly at the plan he had formed for Henry’s
advancement that morning when they parted. Often, when sleep—that
heaven-sent angel which visits millions of the poor and needy, and
passes by the couches of those who toil not with their bodies for their
daily bread—refused to fall either lightly or heavily, or, in fact, at
all on his weary eyelids, Ernest began to reflect about his brother, so
refined in his tastes, so striking in appearance, so tender of heart,
living as a common soldier amongst rude companions, far away from any
friend, prevented by rank and circumstances from forming a single
acquaintance in his own grade of society. He thought of his dead mother
and his surviving parent; of his home and its occupants; of the trifling
sum which could raise Henry and emancipate both; and, knowing how
hopeless it would be to expect to wring even a guinea from the miser’s
chest, he vowed firmly to work out his brother’s deliverance by some
means, and wait patiently himself till destiny should do the same good
generous turn by him.

Most amongst us feel wonderfully inclined to believe in the assertion of
“where there’s a will there’s a way;” but no one blessed by that worthy
dame, whom we call our mother—Nature—with half an ounce of the
invaluable commodity, rarely to be met with, always to be devoutly
prayed for,—yclept common sense, can deny that same way often proves a
most desperately tedious and round-about one. So at least Ernest Ivraine
found: there was not a device or an expedient which he did not think of
to gain money; he spared no time, nor thought, nor fatigue, to become
the possessor of so many hundred pounds in hard cash. But, though he did
make some way, he discovered his crippled efforts so mightily resembled
trying to cut through a log of timber with an oyster knife, that fifty
times he would have abandoned his effort in disgust and despair had
something stronger than love of self not held him to his weary,
money-getting, sterile post.

About a large property, barren though it may be, there are many
perfectly legitimate openings for a son to gain a little of the precious
metal, even though his parent be lord and master of the estate and
entitled to the revenues derivable therefrom. So soon as Ernest
perceived this fact, he wondered it had never revealed itself to his
understanding before, and became, not like Nimrod, a mighty hunter, but
an amateur farmer, who grew learned in all sorts of agricultural
mysteries, who came to know the value of a sheep, the weight of that
Jewish horror—the pig, the market value of a cow, and, above all, the
intrinsic beauty and worth of that finest amongst animals—a horse.

It is not, perhaps, very desirable for any gentleman to become
“professionally versed” in this latter point, since knowledge of racers
and acquaintance with that numerous and ill-reputed class, called
“jobbers,” generally brings individuals into company where, to say the
least of it, they had best not be, and not unfrequently conducts them to
that disagreeable finale, the Court of Bankruptcy. But Ernest Ivraine
was too proud and reserved ever to make friends, or rather familiars, of
his inferiors: no one could assert his acquaintances were ostlers, that
his drawing-room was the stable, his associates men who at “Tattersalls
do congregate.” He had no taste for races,—no propensity to, or
predilection for, gambling; he never entered a horse for a “Cup”
anywhere, he made no bets, took no odds: he reared and sold for
employment and for—Henry.

There were not wanting those amongst his connections, who had formerly
termed him a mercenary though indolent hanger-on for the crumbs that
might fall to his greedy hand from death’s table, who now termed him, in
angry contempt, “a gentleman horse-jockey:” but, if he did lay himself
in the slightest degree open to such an imputation, surely the deed, in
this instance, justified the means; for nothing could be nobler than to
aid a struggling brother; and if trading in black and grey and brown and
chesnut quadrupeds be not the most respectable profession in the world,
it is no worse than many another, if followed fairly and honestly.

Sir Ernest laughed in his most diabolical manner at those who
represented that his son had fairly started in the race on that road
which is universally admitted to lead to ruin. “There is more in that
fellow than I ever thought,” he said; “he is making Paradise of real
value: he gives me the whole of the profits, and I let him, now and
then, have an animal to rear and get what he can out of it. He wants a
small sum of money, he says, for something or other; and, as he improves
my property, I humour his whim: he adds, he is “happier” employed about
the place, seeing after the labourers, and so forth, than in doing
nothing; and as, though he looks no happier than before, he benefits my
purse, I agree to his fancy. Mutual accommodation, reciprocal
advantages! father and son, owner and heir, pulling the same way—for
once working disinterestedly together! ha! ha!” and the old man chuckled
at the idea till the veins in his forehead became more conspicuous, and
the expression of his countenance less human than ever.

And, in truth, as years rolled on, the father and the son did seem to
agree so admirably, and to become so communicative, after their
extraordinary fashion, that relatives, far and near, trembled for their
respective interests in the old man’s will, and silently struck an all
important nought from the sum they had once fondly hoped he would leave
them; whilst Ernest first made shillings pounds, and pounds twenties,
and twenties hundreds, and silently gathered together the sum needful to
make Henry a lieutenant, and began to feel his hope of a favourable
bequest strengthen, and to rejoice he had not, like his brother, cast
fortune from him, and to yearn more sinfully and eagerly than ever for
his father’s death, ere a change came.

Meantime letters arrived from Henry, at long intervals and uncertain
periods, as they always do from the proud but unsuccessful; they were
short, though affectionate; the high confident tone soon vanished from
the sheet. True, he had, occasionally, little scraps of good fortune and
approving notice to recount: he was a corporal, had gained a stripe, two
stripes, three—he was a sergeant: his officer, a hard, stern, Waterloo
hero, had said he was as brave a fellow as ever lived, and prophesied
great things for him; but Henry wrote all this in a manner which spoke
quite as much of mortification as of pleasure; of a heart that was
despairing,—as of one which strove still to hope.

“He was climbing,” he once briefly said. “Yes,” thought Ernest, “but it
is as the tortoise climbs up the weary hill to fame; so slowly that life
will be finished before he reach the summit, or even a pleasant halting
place half-way.”

The awful gulf that separates the ranks from the mess table, which
birth, unassisted by influence, cannot cross; which money can only pass
with a golden bridge; which valour dyes crimson with its best blood in
its frantic endeavours to stem,—yawned between Henry and success. It had
not seemed so wide or impracticable at a distance; but now, when the
impetuous young man stood on the brink, he saw how almost impossible he
should find it to reach the other side, without a helping hand stretched
forth to aid his endeavour. “No one to help you,” Ernest had said ere he
left his home behind him. “No one to help you?”

“Except God and myself,” Henry had then promptly replied; and should he
who, amidst the depressing swamps of Paradise had firm faith in the
power of God, and humble confidence in the abilities and energies with
which his Creator had gifted him, doubt now?

Ah! it is easy for men always to be brave in action; but who, on the
surface of this wide earth, is constantly so in thought? Not Henry
Ivraine, who grew sick, and faint, and hopeless, even whilst he
presented a cheerful face against adverse circumstances, and prepared
him sternly, day by day, to meet the weary struggle men call life.

He said he never repented; and it was true, for his motive now for
exertion was an honest one; whilst the former, spoken of as the reason
for endurance, seemed to his good manly heart, mean and sinful. But he
was disappointed, as others have been, and others must be,—as it seems
to be the will of the Universal Disposer of all events that, at some
time or other in their careers, most shall be. He strove to conceal
knowledge of this from Ernest; strove to smother the feeling, even as it
arose in his breast; and so for years he continued trying to wait
patiently for that which he had long begun to fear never would arrive
unto him—success.

Ernest grieved for the blight which he saw had fallen on the once
hopeful spirit; but he comforted himself by thinking how proudly, after
this severe probation, his brother would wear his epaulettes; how nobly
he had deserved that which merit seemed impotent to win: he felt glad to
reflect that Henry would be made happy by him, and he longed to tell his
father that the “vagabond soldier” was at length a respected officer.
Dearer to him, oh, far dearer, was Henry the disappointed, than Henry
the sanguine. He had possessed love for the latter, it is true; but he
had love and sympathy to give to the former, who required both,—yet
would fain have concealed that his impetuous daring heart, and
unfortunate position, made him stand so wofully in need of two of the
best gifts bountiful Heaven has placed in the hands of man to bestow on
his stricken and struggling fellow—assistance and compassion.

Years had rolled away since they two parted; since that night when, by
the blazing wood fire, Henry told his final resolution to his brother;
since that night when, in semi-darkness, with the half-extinguished logs
smouldering on the hearth, he confronted his parent and spoke bitterly,
impetuously, but truthfully to him for the last time; since that night
when Ernest dissuaded and he persisted; when it was free to both to go,
or both to stay; when the elder tossed restlessly on his couch, as the
hours given, not to repose, but to mental strife and sad deliberation,
hurried, as such hours do, rapidly away, leaving, however, a vivid
memory of every painful minute behind them; since that morning when the
younger came to the bedside of his brother to hear his choice; when he
roused the miser from slumber to say, with his pale, troubled, youthful,
noble face confronting the old man’s withered, sunken, sordid visage,
that earnest word which comes in stifled tones from the heart when it is
almost breaking,—good-bye; since that morning when his father closed the
portals of home so securely behind him; when he and Ernest walked
through the dense chill darkness preceding dawn for five dreary miles;
when he saw the vehicle which was to take him a few stages on his long
vague journey; when he hung for a moment like a child upon his brother’s
neck; and still, though tears blinded his eyes, rushed resolutely to his
fate: years had rolled away since then, changed the hopeful stripling
into a disappointed man, and his gloomy desponding brother into a
scarcely less gloomy hoper; had bronzed the fair cheek and subdued the
high spirit of the one, and given a sort of purpose and one or two
pleasant thoughts to the other. The first had been boyishly flinging
stones at fortune’s apples during all that period, and missed the mark
for which he aimed; whilst the second perseveringly climbed the tree, at
the top of which hung the inviting cluster he desired to grasp; and, as
he ascended, he traded and bartered, to the end that he might fling
Henry some of the heavy metal—gold—which, more sure in its operation
than those unpolished gems, worth and merit, deemed by most, till seen
in precious settings, common worthless stones of no account, was certain
to bring down at the first throw the prize he had so long desired.

Years of care, of weariness, of anxiety, of sorrow, had passed over the
heads of both men,—for men they were in every thought and feeling
now,—and altered them in mind, appearance, hope, expectation, in almost
everything, save the old sensations, hate and love; for these two
passions of the soul render the heart which hath been tried in the evil
or the good fire of aversion or affection, invulnerable to change. As
steel, thrice tempered, resists the strength of iron, so that portion of
man’s nature which hath once really passed through either of the glowing
furnaces, lighted by wrongs or kindled by regard, defies the withering,
chilling hand of time for ever, and remains through time loving or
hating always.

And thus, after the lapse of all those years, Ernest was enabled to
remit to Henry the sum needful to raise him from the ranks; and having,
as he fondly hoped, after immense difficulty, thrown him the first broad
stepping-stone leading to fortune, he turned him with more zeal and
interest than ever to watch the progress he himself was making along the
road to wealth.

For he had now a sort of double prize in view; he had two to please
instead of one: he had not merely an avaricious father, but a widowed
aunt, to humour. Wealth, treble what Henry had spurned in those far away
days, treble what Ernest had then deemed worth trying for, was now in
the house, ready to be taken possession of by _some one_, whenever the
last breath struggled slowly through the thin lips of the miser baronet
and his still more sordid sister, who, having wedded in girlhood a man
rich as some are in this mighty England, had saved and hoarded and made
a private purse for herself during his lifetime, and finally induced him
at death to bequeath everything which he could will away from his next
kin to his childless widow; then fleeing, on the one hand, from the
wrath of his relatives and the needy importunities of many of her own,
she took refuge in Paradise, where she and Sir Ernest watched each
other, as two dogs with bones a-piece watch, lest, by any lack of
vigilance, a sovereign or a sixpence should be stolen from the hoard of
either to find its way by an unaccountable process called, in vulgar
language—thieving, into a money-chest in which it had never previously
been locked.

The house that had formerly only been haunted by a tall, lean, meagre,
sneering old man, was now also the abode of a little, sharp, vindictive,
restless woman, who stole about on tiptoe and caught up everything that
her brother overlooked, and pinched the limited establishment more than
ever, and looked at morsels of meat and fragments of bread and atoms of
wood and little pieces of soap with the eye of a woman who had only one
aim and object in life, to save and hoard money as her brother did, only
with double eagerness, with a double zest, if that were possible.

“Close” was the name which heaven, in the person of her husband, had
decreed she should be known by; and assuredly it was not an altogether
inappropriate one, for she was so close of hand and heart, that Paradise
grew more dreary every day after her arrival. And Ernest felt how
insupportable this second chain would have made home, had it not been so
beautifully gilded. He waited on now for them both to die, but neither
felt inclined to do so at his bidding; he sometimes grew tired of the
never-ending delay, but the prize had now become so great that it was
better worth striving for than ever; besides which, after lingering so
long, he was not going to give up now: and, beyond the gates of
Paradise, no treasure lay within his reach; and the treasure within its
gates he had at last grown to fancy himself certain of, if he only had
patience and never despaired.

For his father was now most confidential and communicative: he consulted
him about investments, legal cases, disputed points, contested
questions; got him occasionally to transact such business for him as
required no money to pass through the hands of his eldest born, who had
come to be regarded by almost every one as his heir. And Mrs. Close also
was, comparatively speaking, gracious to the grave, dark, stern young
man, who never crossed her inclinations, who appeared so careful and
fond of money-making, and who, above all, valued society so very little,
and avoided, as if it had been a pestilence, all intercourse with his
kind.

She liked him for his sins and faults; his father had never entertained
any particular regard for him, but he had begun lately to feel he was of
use to him, and to believe he would keep the guineas and acres of
Paradise and the residue of his land and tenements “better together”
than any other relative he was so fortunate as to possess. And neither,
seeing further than the silent gloomy surface, knew aught of the
character which lay beneath, and thought there was “nothing more” in
Ernest, of any kind, good, bad, or indifferent.




                              CHAPTER XII.
                         A BONE OF CONTENTION.


Ernest Ivraine was just beginning to look with no ordinary impatience
for an answer to his latest Indian despatch, when his father gave a sort
of finishing stroke to the unusual confidence he had, for a little time
previously, been reposing in his heir apparent, by sending that
melancholy individual to London to consult a lawyer concerning the
rights of him, Sir Ernest Claude Ivraine, in regard to a certain bridge,
situate upon a certain road, which road passed through one portion of
his domain of Paradise, and had been a thorn in the miser baronet’s
flesh, and a bone of contention betwixt him and four of his neighbours
for years; ever since, in fact, by virtue of the death of his uncle, the
last bad owner, he had succeeded to the swamps and poplars and house and
domains of Paradise.

For the individuals above referred to contended that it was a public
road which they traversed, no thanks to him or anybody else, whilst Sir
Ernest declared that it was merely because the matter was not worth the
expense of a lawsuit that he permitted them to drive or walk or ride
along it at all; but whether or not it had originally been public or
private, one thing the baronet knew, and his opponents were conscious
of, namely, that time and custom had taken from the former the power,
though not the will, to close it up; and that, accordingly, common
property it had to all intents and purposes become.

Great, therefore, was his rejoicing, when one winter night the torpid
river, growing strong for once, swept down a bridge which spanned the
road midway, leaving a gap that an extraordinarily well-mounted man
might, perhaps, have cleared, but which, to ordinary mortals, carts,
carriages, and gigs, presented an impassable barrier: the waters had
done what he, with wealth and sense and cunning, had been impotent to
effect, stopped the progress of his adversaries through his lands; and
the baronet, who required the road but little himself, laughed and
chuckled and rubbed his hands in a state of the utmost delight when
Ernest informed him of the accident, and added an account of how carts
and horsemen and pedestrians, when they got so far, had been compelled
to turn.

“I have them now,” said Sir Ernest, all the wrinkles in his face growing
more long and deep, as if to aid the expression of diabolical glee which
lighted up his eyes; “I have them now!” and though his son was possessed
of such discretion, and so little curiosity, as never to ask how his
father “had” them, yet time made Ernest Ivraine fully understand the
meaning of his worthy father’s speech.

Great were the deliberations which ensued after the breaking down of the
bridge in the little parish of Lorton, and in many another parish for
miles round: the road was so essential to many landed proprietors; the
amount of traffic along it was so great that the stopping of the mails
could scarcely have occasioned a greater public sensation than the
sweeping down of the three ancient arches: planks were thrown across, as
temporary substitutes for honest stone and lime; but a stream, which
occasionally laughs at key-stones and foundations, disdains timber, and
almost perpetually, during the course of that most severe winter,
intelligence was conveyed to Sir Ernest Ivraine, “that the bridge was
down again;” on receipt of which gratifying intelligence the baronet
laughed horribly, as he had nothing to pay for the tidings, and took
pleasure in the misfortunes of his neighbours; and we all know, and
firmly believe, that “those may laugh who win.”

Squires held solemn conclave as to “what was to be done,” over their
port and around their mahogany tables; farmers talked mournfully at
markets about “them ere seven miles” they had been forced to drive
round, in consequence of that “wexing voden bridge” having been carried
off again; a sort of aristocratic and democratic landlord and tenant
meeting was convened to discuss the matter, when one genteel landed
proprietor said Sir Ernest ought to rebuild the bridge; and an immensely
rich grazier said he “knowed the baronet wouldn’t do no such thing no
how;” and one of the auditors, a village blacksmith, remarked
confidentially to his friend, he thought “the old screw would see them
all sunk in it first.” There was much speaking and contradicting,
immense diversity of opinion, talking, arguing, some laughing; but at
length the assemblage came to one desperate conclusion, after three
hours bawling and listening, namely, to send a deputation to Sir Ernest
Ivraine, stating the fact of the said bridge having fallen, and the
inconvenience it occasioned, and requesting him accordingly to repair it
with all convenient speed; which “deputation,” in the person of Mr.
Medill, the baronet’s attorney, and the attorney of most of his
neighbours, waited on his client at Paradise, and communicated the
“fact” and conveyed the wish of the late meeting held at Lorton.

“Do they acknowledge the road to be private property?” demanded Sir
Ernest, when Mr. Medill had concluded.

That gentleman answered, he believed that was not a question which had
been taken into consideration.

“Well, then let it be taken into consideration, and then I will give my
reply,” responded the baronet. The result of which response was that for
one month he kept his enemies arguing and debating whether to admit his
rights or maintain their own; and the subject was only at length brought
to a conclusion by a speech of the baronet’s, to the effect that, “if
they acknowledged it to be a private road he would not rebuild the
bridge, and if they could prove it to be a public one they might do it
themselves.”

Then ensued a talk of _making_ the baronet yield; but Sir Ernest dared
them to do it: then came a hope that the county would repair the bridge;
but the question being one of merely local interest, the county declined
to interfere. So, at length, the squires and graziers came to the
melancholy conclusion that, if the business were to be accomplished at
all, it must be done by themselves; wherefore plans were drawn and
tenders advertised for, and tenders received, and meetings held, and
cost estimated, and designs proposed, and architects consulted.

“Let them build away,” said Sir Ernest; “the road don’t do me much harm,
only I like them to have to pay for the privilege:” which Christian
speech was occasioned by the recent purchase of some hundred acres of
land that could only be reached by crossing the bridge the baronet
intended his neighbours should build for him, unless, indeed, a _détour_
of several miles were made. The road, being a public one, increased if
anything the value of this, his last “bargain;” but the old man was too
prudent to say so to any one, excepting his son, to whom confiding a
secret was—as his father frequently affirmed—better than burying it, as
it might be dug out of the earth, but never out of Ernest. Wherefore the
only thing Mr. Medill could get from the miser, even in his most
communicative mood, was,

“I won’t give a penny towards it; they may think themselves very safe
that I do not serve them with notice not to build on my premises: they
had best not torment me, or I may give them trouble yet. Let them build
and be thankful.”

But, as few men care to lay out money in a great hurry, midsummer came,
with its bloom and its roses, and still the “bridge” was only on the
tapis, not over the river. The latter ran slowly and quietly on its
course, never dreaming, at that scorching season, of interfering with
the beams and planks and supports which it had swept away at regular
intervals during the previous winter; and the “select committee” of
landed and other proprietors, who had taken on their brains and pockets
the planning and building of the bridge, paused to reflect how their
object might be happily accomplished, and still their purses be rendered
none the lighter.

Two difficult points to be united; but what cannot time and thought
effect, and enough of both assuredly the Lincolnshire sages expended on
the subject. Autumn passed; there was no use beginning to build at that
period of the year, so they took a month or two longer to debate the
question, and when it would ever have been settled, or when the bridge
would ever have been commenced, is uncertain, had not fresh floods swept
the wooden substitute off to some unknown bourne, and left the farmers
lamenting.

They came in great force, and told the committee that a passage _must_
be permanently made for them the moment spring permitted workmen to
commence the undertaking; and, heaven having sent light to the
understandings of the gentlemen composing the committee, and earthly
agents having made that light still clearer, they all at once, to the
astonishment of everybody, and ecstasy of themselves, stumbled on and
printed a series of resolutions to the following effect:

“1st. That Mr. Jones’s tender should be accepted; 2nd. That they, the
four proprietors, would defray all expenses incurred about the business;
3rd. That they would consider themselves sole owners of the bridge; and
4th. That a gate should be erected, and a trifling toll exacted from the
owner of each vehicle passing over it.”

There was a something perfectly demoniacal in the fury that shook Sir
Ernest Ivraine when the above resolutions were repeated to him: he
stamped and swore with an intensity which alarmed even his sister,
though the storm moved Ernest no more than if it had been the sighing of
a summer breeze.

Have a toll on his property; charge his tenants for drawing their
produce over their confounded bridge; lessen his estate in value; make
money by taking it out of his pockets! He would teach them they were
miserably mistaken in their ideas; he would make them repent their
insolence to him—a set of beggarly speculators. No, he would not consult
Mr. Medill, or permit him to be sent for; he was good enough and clever
enough, and, for an attorney, might be honest enough; but he was Sir
Hugh Xifer’s solicitor, and he should not, at least not in this
instance, be his, because Sir Hugh (a paltry knight) he knew had held
long conversations with him on the subject. Ernest should go to London
and take the very best legal advice; and, if he had an inch of ground to
stand on—if there were half a straw to split in the business—if he had a
shadow of claim—he would give them (the whole committee, collectively
and individually) such a dose of law as should be remembered by their
great grandchildren, and teach all Lincolnshire to beware how an Ivraine
was tempted to bite; he would have his rights, and his son should travel
to London forthwith and ascertain them.

Whereupon Ernest, nothing loath, did proceed to the metropolis, armed
with a little money and papers and deeds and instruments innumerable;
and, immediately on his arrival there, one chill afternoon in January,
he went to the office of the gentlemen to whom his father had given him
a letter, directed in a hand as crabbed and contracted as the temper and
the soul of the miser, to Messrs. Scott and Smeek, solicitors, 18, Arras
Street, Belerma Square.

And, as one event worthy of note had taken place in the house of Mr.
John Merapie, situated in the above-named square, since last it was
mentioned in this story, it may perhaps be well, ere speaking of the
result of Ernest’s conference, whilst he enters the solicitor’s dingy
office, to walk from Arras Street, to number 12, Belerma Square, and see
what had happened there in the interim. It was just about the period
when the magnificent Lorton idea, which had so roused the ire of the
owner of Paradise, was struggling to maturity in the muddy brains of his
sworn enemy, Sir Hugh Xifer, that Mr. John Merapie entered his
drawing-room with a peculiarly ominous expression of countenance, very
different from his usual one of heavy good nature, which always conveyed
to the minds of those who beheld him the correct impression that his
business, whatever it might be, was perpetually “looking up.”

Mrs. Frazer never noticing anything, excepting perhaps a satin dress or
a fashionable bonnet, unless the same were specially pointed out unto
her, it would have been vain to expect her to observe the shadow resting
on her brother’s face; but Mina, from her quiet corner, saw it
immediately, and a vague anxiety crept over her mind as she did so.

“Are you not well, uncle?” she demanded, as he stood moodily
contemplating the fire.

He started at the question, and, hastily snatching up the poker,
commenced a savage assault on the coals, whilst he answered,

“Quite well; why did you ask?”

“Because I thought you looked ill,” she said.

“Ill!” exclaimed Mrs. Frazer; “oh! John is never ill. What strange
things you do say, Mina: you are always thinking something.”

“A deuced deal better than acting something, at any rate,” retorted the
merchant, turning with anything rather than an agreeable expression
towards his sister. “I wish from my soul, Eliza, _your_ favourite child
were one half so good as this,” and he pointed to Mina, who, growing
very pale at his words, arose and, laying a hand on his arm, said
earnestly,

“What _has_ Malcolm been doing, uncle?”

“What has he not been doing excepting his duty for the last two years?
that were nearer the mark! He has been disobeying orders and promoting
insubordination and spending a fortune and running in debt; he has been
acting as, one might conclude, the head-strong, over-indulged,
passionate son of an absurd foolish mother would, so well that he is
finally dismissed the navy;” and, as he concluded, Mr. Merapie fiercely
grasped the poker once again, whilst Mrs. Frazer sank back half fainting
in the easy chair which she usually occupied.

“What is the matter?” demanded Mr. Westwood, at this crisis entering the
room; and John Merapie, who had received letters containing the
unwelcome intelligence just as he quitted his office, answered,

“Only my nephew’s finishing performance,—bearding his officers, being
insolent to them, disobeying orders, giving anxiety and annoyance to all
his relatives, and, finally, casting himself adrift on the world without
a profession or a shilling.”

“Bad enough,” remarked Mr. Westwood, drily; “but not so bad, let us
hope, as it sounds. Poor Mrs. Frazer! the news has upset her. Let me
assist you, Mina,” he added; and, pretending not to notice her quiet,
“thank you—it is not necessary,” he sprinkled a little more water over
the lady’s face, and applied some perfumes to her forehead, as she
slowly opened her eyes and said,

“Ah! is it you? I think they told me something dreadful about Malcolm;
he is not dead, is he?”

“No, my dear madam, he is not; pray compose yourself,” answered Mr.
Westwood, whilst his partner muttered, in confidence, to the fire,

“Better that he were; what we shall do with him alive it is impossible
for me to tell.”

“But what has happened?” she inquired; “John said something, but I do
not exactly remember.”

“It is nothing,” replied Mr. Westwood; “your son has merely left the
navy, that is all.”

“He has been put out of it, Eliza, in plain English,” explained her
brother, too much incensed to be melted into pity, either by swooning or
fine feelings. “I have been expecting this for some time past, though I
never said anything to you, for I knew you were fond of him and had no
sense, and there was no use annoying you; but the money I have paid for
that boy, since I fitted him out for sea, would almost have given Mina a
fortune. I warned, threatened, implored, commanded, all to no purpose. I
suppose the fellow lighted his cigars with my letters; at all events,
the crash has come at last: he is finally dismissed the service, and you
will very shortly have the unutterable gratification of seeing him.”

“I never liked the idea of the sea,” faintly began his mother.

“Good heavens, madam!” interposed Mr. Merapie, “you never rested night
nor day till you got me to promise he should follow the bent of his and
your inclinations to their fullest extent. _I_ wanted him to enter my
office and wash his absurd Highland pride off with some sensible English
business habits; but you, whose connections, from time immemorial, were
common tradespeople, set your face against my proposition: if there be
one thing on earth I hate more than another, it’s folly. That is a
capital joke, to be sure! You never liked the idea of the sea, indeed!
Humbug!”

“I do so dislike the smell of pitch,” explained the lady; but whether
this observation had reference to the navy or to the classic locality
where her brother’s warehouse was situated, never accurately transpired,
Mr. Merapie asking no questions, but merely declaring, “There were worse
things in the world than pitch,” which vague assertion implied volumes,
as Mina felt.

“But what has he done?” inquired Mr. Westwood, in his most soothing
accents; “we must not judge him hastily or harshly, particularly when he
is not here to defend himself. What are the facts of the case?” and Mr.
Merapie’s partner flung himself back in the chair, to the end that he
might hear at his ease and at his leisure all the evidence which could
be adduced against Malcolm. But, as that young gentleman’s uncle was
much too angry to be able to tell anything connectedly, it may be as
well to give it in his nephew’s own words, for he subsequently narrated
the finishing exploit of his new career tolerably briefly, and, to do
him justice, perfectly truthfully to his sister when she asked him
concerning it.

“You see, Mina,” he said, “there is not one bit of use denying it; I did
go through a deal of money and I was very extravagant, and my uncle bore
all wonderfully, and came out with the needful like a lord; and, before
we set off on this last confounded Indian cruise, I resolved—indeed I
did—to turn over a new leaf, and be economical, and give up smoking, and
keep my temper when the officers were tyrannical, and, in brief, do what
England, my uncle, and you all expected me to do—my duty.

“Well, I turned over the leaf as I had intended; but, unhappily, it
proved worse even than its predecessor, for about ten lines or so from
the top, just when I was getting into easy reading, I found—as a kind of
marginal note—a pair of, what coloured eyes? grey, I believe; but
whatever they may have been, I never saw anything like them before, and
pray I never may again, for they, with one glance, effectually settled
my chances of naval prize money.

“I had never been ‘in love’ but the moment I saw them I said, like an
idiot as I was, ‘my hour is come.’ I’d have walked the plank cheerfully
for her; therefore you need not be surprised to hear it was solely on
her account I relinquished for ever my hope of a commission. At last,
there was to be a ball on shore (’twas at Calcutta the thing occurred, I
should inform you) to which I was invited, and to which she was going.
The captain, always off amusing himself, hated to see us stir out of the
vessel, and consequently I felt there was little use in asking his
permission; still, just for the form, I did ask it, and he in answer,
said ‘No,’ like an upstart sprig of mushroom nobility as he was.

“That ‘no’ I knew to be as unchangeable as if pronounced by the Medes
and Persians; so I betook myself to the ship’s side and looked sulkily
down at the dirty river, and thought about my father having been an
officer, and all our ancestors for generations having been exactly what
they should have been, and considered how they would have borne a point
blank refusal to a civil request from the great grandson of a pedlar;
and I reflected that, if any one of them could have risen from his
grave, he would have said, ‘Prove yourself worthy of your name and of
your birth place, and do what you wish as you wish, in spite of all the
captains in the English navy.’ Moreover, the eyes I told you of just now
arose before my imagination; and, to cut all my ruminations short, I
exclaimed, striking my clenched hand on the hardest object near me—it
tingled for an hour afterwards,—

“‘I _will_ go, let the arch-fiend himself try to prevent me.’

“But if all accounts of his Satanic majesty be true, he is rather fond
of luring thoughtless youths on to destruction by presenting means for
them to gratify their inclinations. I had a dim idea of swimming ashore
when it got a little dark, for the captain and some of the principal
officers were going to dine with one of the great magnates of the place,
and I knew I could elude the others; but, suddenly it occurred to me
that it would be easier and altogether more comfortable to go in the
boat with them, a feat I accomplished, thanks to the dusk, and a whole
lot of bags and packages of one kind and another, which were piled over
me by the sailors, who were, of course, unconscious that anybody lay
underneath these articles. Well, I never stirred till my captain was out
of sight; but, after he and the rest had departed, the men saw me
standing on the landing-place, at which they were not at all surprised,
as it was merely what they had witnessed twenty times before when I was
absent on leave; and it was agreed that, as the captain’s party was not
to return in the boat that night, I should; which arrangement quashing
all difficulties, I started off quite happy to the ball.”

She was there, and we danced and we talked, and I imagined she would
have gone to Kamtschatka with me, only I was mistaken, and all went
merry as a marriage bell; and, in a perfect ecstasy of delight, I at
length tore myself away, and, with her parting words ringing like music
in my ears, started off for the boat. Had I only gone straight to it, I
should have been in H.M.S. Sunflower till now; but, fate flinging across
my path some of the crew, countrymen of my own, sterling fellows to the
back bone, my evil genius whispered that, as they had done much for me,
it was incumbent on me to do some little for them.

“‘Are you ready, my lads?’ said I.

“‘Quite, sir,’ was the response.

“‘Should you feel inclined to drink my health, and that of my uncle, the
laird of Craigmayer?’

“When a Scotchman asked, how could Scotchmen refuse? in short, Mina, to
get quickly over a disagreeable story, I was so liberal that they got
tipsy, became unmanageable, quarrelled with the people of the house, and
turned the master out of doors.

“He raised a mob of the natives, who came howling like demons about the
place: meanwhile time pressed; it was needful for us to reach the ship
by some means, and every moment the crowd increased, the din became
greater.

“‘If I just had a gude thorn cudgel,’ said one of the sailors, ‘I would
na fear a reegiment o’ the tawny faced deevils.’

“‘Well’ I replied, ‘in default of the thorn, take a leg off that table,’
pointing to one which the next moment was in pieces; and thus splendidly
armed, out we sallied. To have heard the cowards so long as a door
separated us, you would have imagined murder, at the least, was what
they contemplated; but when I cried ‘We’ll make you remember the
Highlanders,’ and commenced, with the sailors, striking right and left,
they fled like chaff before the wind, yelling horribly.

“We walked quietly on to the boat, till a shrewd, cautious old fellow,
from Aberdeen, called out, ‘Dinna study the manners o’ rinnin’, but rin
like brownies, for here they come wi’ the chokadars, as they ca’ them,
and there’ll be English music the morn if they get a grip o’ us.’

“We did not ‘stand on the order of going,’ you may depend, Mina, but
showed them that night what Highland legs as well as Highland arms could
do: they ran, and we ran; it was a sort of second Canobie Lea affair,
only without horses; and, as we pulled off, we laughed back a defiance
to them over the waters: but I knew all was up with me; I felt it so
surely, that I hardened myself for the result, which, like all evil
events, was not very long of coming. First thing next morning, or rather
_that_ morning, off came a party to inquire which of the midshipmen and
sailors of the Sunflower had been concerned in the _fracas_; and, whilst
they were haranguing, a boat, which had been sent ashore for the
captain, hove in sight.

“The minute he appeared, my last hope of escape vanished; I could not
let the men suffer for what had been actually my folly, and so confessed
to having been on shore, though to this hour, I believe, he has only a
dim idea how I got there.

“I need not tell you all that followed. What he said to me, and what I
said to him, sounded a vast deal better at the time than it would do on
repetition. He was rude, and I—the officers thought—insolent: so, by way
of preventing my ever turning over a third leaf in the navy, and to get
rid of a very troublesome individual, they finally decided on dismissing
me the service; and so, Mina, to end all, here am I, whilst she of the
grey eyes married, four weeks afterwards, a commander of a battery, or
something of that sort, with whom heaven send she may live happily. And,
talking of these subjects, I’d be very glad, indeed, to know what that
low upstart fellow, Westwood, whom my uncle has thought fit to take into
partnership, means by calling you ‘Mina,’ and walking about this house
as if it were his own.”

“You remember, Malcolm, he used to call me so when I was a child.”

“Well, but you are not a child now, and I do not like it, Mina, and I do
not like him, and I do not intend to bear his confounded patronizing
airs any longer.”

“You had better, Malcolm,” she said.

“Better! and why, pray?” he demanded.

“Because,” she answered earnestly, “he can make my uncle believe
anything and do anything; and you know how disappointed he is about your
being dismissed, and——”

“Looks upon my breach of discipline quite as severely as if I had
murdered my superior officer, or stolen money from him, or committed
some other dreadful crime. Yes, I see all that; and how savagely he
glances at me, and how rarely he speaks a syllable directly to his
dutiful nephew when he can help it; but I am not one bit afraid of Uncle
John: he will come round in good time and do what is right and just, no
matter who tries to influence him. He will never cut us out, depend upon
that; and, if he die without a will, why, we are his nearest and only
relatives.”

“Dear Malcolm, he is not going to die,” said Mina, as if the suggestion
and the way it was made pained her.

“I am sure I hope not,” he responded; “for I will say this much for
Uncle John, that a kinder and better man never breathed; and that is
just what makes me feel so certain he will always give us a share of his
money whilst he lives, and when he dies—which, I trust, may not be till
we are grey-haired, Mina—he will bequeath it to us; and, because I know
his heart so well, I say I neither fear Westwood nor any man living, and
I shall, therefore, take an early opportunity of showing him that my
sister is not going to marry every promoted clerk who thinks fit to
imagine himself a suitable husband for her.”

“Malcolm, are not you very fond of me?”

“Yes, sister mine; but, as a consequence of that, I hope you are not
going to inform me you are very fond of him.”

“I dislike and despise him,” she answered; “but latterly, I have also
grown to fear him. What it may be, I do not know; but I am positive
there is something wrong somewhere: latterly, Mr. Westwood’s manner has
changed completely; he used to be polite, almost to servility, and
cautious and prudent to a degree; but now you would think he was master
of our destinies. Oh! Malcolm, take care that he be not really so.”

“What has put that idea into your mind?” he demanded.

“My own observation and——”

“Miss Caldera,” interposed Malcolm, “who wants to settle you as she does
every other girl in London, if she could; but she sha’n’t in this
instance, at any rate. I do not choose that you should marry this man,
and I am determined to bring affairs to a crisis by some means. Ever
since my uncle went to Holland, I, too, have noticed the change in Mr.
Westwood’s manner, from extraordinary civility to a sort of triumphant
insolence. There is no use asking my mother to make a stand against his
visits, for she likes them, and he amuses her; and, besides, she could
not understand: but, whenever Uncle John returns, I will have a stop put
to his partner’s assumptions. Before I entered the navy, I remember
thinking him a pleasant good-natured sort of fellow; but I declare to
you, Mina, upon my honour, I could have flung him out of the window
fifty times during the course of this last week with the greatest
pleasure.”

“You may do foolishly to quarrel with this man,” she said.

“Do you want to marry him?” he fiercely demanded; “because, if you wish
to disgrace yourself and your connections by wedding an upstart without
birth, or position, or anything, that alters the question.”

Almost for the first time in her life, Mina checked an angry reply,
which had nearly escaped her lips.

“Do not let us quarrel, Malcolm,” she said; “if you think I could care
for him, you are mistaken; but that, at present, is not the point at
issue: I feel we may do wrong to offend him, and you know you ought to
be doubly careful in your conduct now, as——”

“As I am in disgrace with the powers that be,” finished Malcolm, seeing
her hesitate; “thank you, Mina, for your amiable consideration.”

“As you are in disgrace,” she continued boldly, “you ought to be most
prudent; and it might be well for you, dear brother, to reflect, as I
have lately been doing, that, although my uncle is rich and generous and
half brother to our mother, and has brought us up and educated us,
still, when all is said, he is not bound to provide for us, and,
Malcolm, he may not do it.”

“And for these reasons it is extremely desirable for you to be
‘settled;’ and Mr. Alfred Westwood being the only eligible, or
ineligible, opening you and Miss Caldera can see at present, you want to
be polite to him yourself, and desire that I should be so too: is not
that it, Mina?”

Once again the angry blood mounted to her face, and she vehemently
asked,

“Did you ever see me polite to him, ever since I grew up, ever since I
was a child, ever since I began to comprehend his character and aims and
views and wishes? only speak the truth, it is all I ask.”

“Well, no,” Malcolm confessed; “but then, you see, politeness was never
considered your forte, and your manner has always been much the same to
him as to everybody else. If I did not know you were Captain Frazer’s
daughter and my sister, I confess I should be at a loss to determine the
exact nature of your feelings towards Mr. Westwood.”

“You are very unjust, Malcolm,” she cried.

“Well, perhaps I am,” he laughed; “but promise me one thing, and I will
doubt you no more. Do not be influenced by Miss Caldera or anybody else;
but, if this man ever asks you to marry him, will you say ‘No’ to him,
as you can and frequently do say it to other people, promptly and
decisively; let there be no mistake about the matter: what say you,
sister; will you promise?”

“Faithfully,” she answered; “and, on the other hand, will you be
cautious how you offend him; will you, at least, be civil till my uncle
returns home?”

“Agreed,” responded Malcolm; “and then I will talk the matter over with
him, for it shall never be said, never! that a sister of mine married a
man of no birth.”

Having delivered which decisive blow to the matrimonial projects of
Alfred Westwood, Esq., the _ci-devant_ midshipman, who had lately
acquired some wonderful and most erroneous ideas on the subject of his
own and his family’s importance, put on his hat and strode off to Regent
Street, wondering when he should be rich enough to subscribe to a club
and have horses and servants and be independent of everybody; for, in
the length and breadth of England, there was not a prouder, nor more
extravagant, nor more ridiculous young fellow than clever, thoughtless,
good-natured Malcolm Frazer, late of H. M. S. Sunflower, who had a
remarkably tenacious memory concerning his Highland ancestors, and an
equally remarkable facility for forgetting that his mother had been
simply the daughter of a business man, who made a deal of money—nobody
knew how—and spent it in the same manner, and left her nothing.




                             CHAPTER XIII.
                        THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.


Malcolm Frazer was quite correct in his supposition that Miss Caldera
was the cause of the sage advice Mina had been pleased to give him; and
had his own reason not told him there was some sense in it, he would
have valued it accordingly.

For it is a fact that Malcolm, so good-natured, and Miss Caldera, so
prudent, could not, for some sufficient cause, contrive to “get on
together;” and for every little disagreement which Mina and she were
wont to have, he and she had fifty.

The truth was, Malcolm provoked her; she could have overlooked his
extravagance, thoughtlessness, and rashness,—she had felt half inclined
to pity him when she heard he was coming home in disgrace; but when he
did actually swagger into the drawing-room with just the same careless,
unabashed manner as formerly; when his laugh sounded as joyous as ever;
when he and his mother sneered at business and called it low; when he
never offered to settle down steadily at home, and become a useful
member of society, and go each morning off to the place below the Tower
where his uncle “turned over” no end of thousands of sovereigns in the
year; and when he mysteriously hinted how, in a little time, he would
“get round” Uncle John and coax him into doing a little more for him
yet, the worthy lady’s patience became exhausted, and she confidentially
told Mina she thought her brother was “a ridiculous idiot.”

They disagreed, whenever they met, on every conceivable point,—religion,
politics, the news of the day, dress, education, music, books,
amusements: these topics furnished them incessantly with occasions for
what Malcolm styled, “little tiffs;” and he so enjoyed putting the
worthy governess out of temper, that he frequently said precisely the
opposite of what he thought, that Miss Caldera might be thus, innocently
trapped into an argument, which furnished him with opportunities for
laughing at her.

The theme matrimonial was, however, the grand battle-ground on which the
two delighted to fling decided opinions at each other’s heads; for Miss
Caldera, with all her sense, was one of those people who appear to
imagine the feminine portion of the creation have been sent on the earth
for no other purpose save to marry: and, to superficial observers, it
really seemed as if she had remained a spinster solely from a
philanthropic desire to have more time at her disposal to assist her
fellow mortals to fulfil their destinies in this particular.

Original sense and later experiences were perpetually battling together
in her mind, and she strove so hard to persuade herself and all whom it
might concern that a “good settlement” was the great prize on which,
from infancy, a female ought to fix her eyes, that she talked her
theoretical set of opinions at every mortal who dared her to
contradiction, with a pertinacity which ought, at least, to have
convinced her own mind of the truth of her perpetual assertion, “That
the only thing a woman can and ought to do to help herself, is to
marry.”

But in vain: a few obstinate and primitive ideas, which she had
collected amidst the roses of her mother’s flower-garden and the Latin
books of her father’s library, that woman may think of something else
during her progress through this world than “catching” a husband, would
keep springing up in her rebellious heart; and, though she strove hard
to root up these absurdities, all her endeavours were but of very little
use, for the new views which intercourse with the world had taught her
did not satisfy her as to the “rightness” of the match-making system,
though they did as to its utility; and, when she got fairly bewildered,
between feeling and what she was pleased to term reason, she settled the
point by repeating, for the thousandth time, there was something wrong
about women’s position, but as they were so situated, the best thing
they could do, individually and collectively, was to marry, though she
could not avoid confessing to herself that it was a great pity the
eternal necessity should be always driving mothers and daughters along
in an everlasting search after elder sons and wealthy partners.

Some specimens of the “fine old English gentleman” are still to be met
with in rural districts, who assert that fox-hunting is the noblest
pursuit which can employ the faculties of man; and really to have heard
Miss Caldera converse, it might occasionally have been imagined she
thought husband-hunting the grandest chase that could by possibility
occupy the mind of woman, and her knowledge of the difficulties and
troubles besetting every step of a female’s life had made her think it,
as she said, “a very necessary chase,” though, to do her justice, she
never could so far get over some of her original ideas as to feel that a
marriage without affection is preferable to labouring solitarily for
daily bread, or that any amount of hundreds or thousands per annum could
have induced her, even though so weary of her situation, to take, for
better, for worse, one whom she could not respect and love.

The perpetual warfare which went on in her mind, between feeling and
desirability, produced many rather contradictory results; amongst
others, the anomaly that she, a spinster governess, who was constantly
urging on all with whom she came in contact to “fulfil their destinies,”
had refused, since she came to London, what her cousin, the
schoolmistress, had been pleased to term, a most “eligible offer,” from
a rich, vulgar, dinner-loving _parvenu_ (who wanted a wife as a
housekeeper, and thought Miss Caldera would just suit), simply because
she retained an old-fashioned prejudice (spite of her new-fashioned
convictions) that she should not care to wed a person she disliked: and
no doubt she was very foolish to reject a home for such a slight reason.
And she thought so herself; but she could not overcome the prejudice,
and so remained single to give capital advice to other people, which she
did not approve sufficiently to follow herself.

Then again, until any girl amongst her limited circle of acquaintances
was “settled,” she gave her rest neither by day nor night till she
tacked “Mrs.” to a new name; told her, if she chanced to be so
self-willed and unworldly as to refuse an apparently eligible offer,
that “she had thrown good fortune from her,” and “wished she might ever
get such a proposal again;” and finally, after she had, in conjunction
with friends and relatives, moved heaven and earth to get her to tie
herself for life to some rich dunce or genteel spendthrift, she turned
the tables, and commenced grumbling “how that misguided child had thrown
herself away, and what a wretched lot she had thought proper to select
for herself.”

Many reasons induced her to desire that Mina should marry Mr. Westwood:
first, she liked him, and thought there was no cause to fear its proving
an unhappy union; secondly, that gentleman had been at great pains to
convince her that Mina’s chance of fortune from her uncle was by no
means certain; that he might choose a wife for himself; that he might
quarrel with Malcolm, who was a most provoking young fellow; that he
might even fail; that a thousand reverses might arise to blast her
prospects; that, in fact, her only hope of a tranquil existence was
changing her Scotch name for his English one; and his hints to Miss
Caldera had grown so alarmingly strong after Malcolm’s finishing
exploit, that at length the worthy governess became a sight perfectly
dreaded by Mina, who was half frightened by the pictures of poverty
occasionally presented for her contemplation, but who was wholly
determined to have her own way, spite of the combined efforts of the
entire universe, always supposing she could manage to get it.

On the Sunday previous to the dialogue between Malcolm and his sister,
it had chanced that Mr. Alfred Westwood, instead of walking peaceably
home from church to his house in Belerma Square, turned his steps in an
opposite direction, and proceeded to that tenanted by Miss Caldera and
her cousin, both of whom he encountered on the pipeclayed steps.

“Could you favour me with five minutes’ private conversation,” he said,
on the strength of which point blank hint, the strong minded
schoolmistress, who had somehow come to the conclusion that the earth
would be too happy if fine gentlemen and bold children were not
permitted to spoil the face of it, stalked majestically off, setting
down vanity, perfumes, rings, hair oil, and rudeness, as amongst the
sins which did most easily beset Mr. Alfred Westwood, and had gained
immense possession over him.

“Miss Caldera,” began that individual, who could speak perfectly
straightforwardly when he chose to do so, “will you try to bring Mina to
reason. I want to marry her, and settle the business without delay.”

“You ought to try yourself,” replied the lady, who was pretty nearly
weary of her fruitless endeavours.

“I have, till I am tired,” he answered; “but I have now more pressing
reasons than ever: if you will use your best influence, you shall never
have cause to repent; if she marry me I will make her happy—on my soul I
will; her uncle’s consent is certain, will you try to gain her’s?”

“She does not seem to care very much for you; that is the difficult part
of the business,” said Miss Caldera.

“But it is her _interest_ to care for me,” retorted Mr. Westwood, “and
if you point that out to her, the rest is easy; no woman is insensible
to that.”

The _esprit de corps_ brought a flush into the lady’s pale cheek as she
answered warmly,

“Interest is the _last_ thing woman does look to in any relation of
life, and no mortal ever thought less of worldly advancement than Mina
Frazer; faults she has,—too many, perhaps, for her own happiness,—but a
mercenary spirit is not one of them; I could not care for her as I do if
she were sordid and calculating; neither could you.”

Mr. Westwood smiled as he replied,

“Perhaps not,” but it was not a pleasant smile; in truth, he had about
as much opinion of women as of men, and that was none: but he had a
strange sort of attachment for Mina; a dim unacknowledged idea that
there was some kind of good in her, although at the same time he thought
she refused him, not because she was blind to his fascinations—that
being impossible—but because she expected to be a great heiress, and to
marry, perhaps, in time, a pauper lord. He saw the pride and folly of
both mother and son, and concluded that underneath Mina’s reserve, pride
as great, and folly nearly as ridiculous, were resolutely lurking;
therefore, he imagined if she thought herself likely to be poor, she
would accept him, and that was all he wanted her to do; he would manage
all the rest quietly and dexterously himself. In this endeavour, who so
likely to aid him as Miss Caldera, his staunch friend and ally?
wherefore he had come to her, and so, instead of treating her to his
opinion of the entire feminine sex, he said, in answer to her rather
angry speech, the two words previously recorded,

“Perhaps not.”

“I am sure not,” responded the governess earnestly.

Mr. Westwood laughed.

“I wish,” he said, “you would find some means to make her care for me;
believe me she had better.”

There was a significance in the tone of the latter portion of the
sentence that struck Miss Caldera so much as to cause her to inquire
what he meant.

“That it will be well with mother, brother, and sister if she do; that
it will be worse for all if she do not,” was the rejoinder.

“You do not wish me to understand that, even if Mina persist in her
refusal, you would be so ungenerous as to endeavour to turn Mr.
Merapie’s heart against them,” she said, hurriedly.

“Heaven forbid!” replied Mr. Westwood; “but in the one case I should use
all my influence to advance their interests, and in the other I should
merely let matters take their course, without interfering. I don’t
pretend to Quixotism, Miss Caldera: if she marry me, I will do her and
her’s good; if not, I would not stir ten paces out of my way to serve
her; she had better consider fifty times before she says ‘no.’”

“But do you mean to imply that Mr. Merapie takes Malcolm’s breach of
discipline in such an angry spirit that he will never forgive it,—that
the silly boy has endangered, not merely his own prospects but those of
his sister?” she inquired in surprise. “I think you must be mistaken. I
can scarcely believe that he will ever forget to provide for Mina, at
all events.”

“I neither imply nor ask you to believe anything,” said Mr. Westwood
deliberately; “but I say what I _know_, that he is greatly grieved about
his nephew, and perplexed and tormented about other matters; that Mina
Frazer’s fortune won’t be the one half what I once thought it would be,
and what she, I suppose, thinks it is certain to be; and, finally, I
know she had better marry me, and I want you to try and persuade her to
do it: if she does not have her fortune settled now, she may never have
any.”

There was a something almost triumphant in the tone in which these words
were spoken, and Miss Caldera felt a vague alarm steal over her as she
asked,

“But why do you say so; _why_ is she less likely to be wealthy a few
years hence than now? Why are you in such haste to have matters
arranged?”

“Because life is always uncertain, and business is even more so;
because, in ten words, ‘it is well to strike while the iron is hot,’” was
his brief reply.

Miss Caldera sat and looked at him as if she thought more knowledge
might be gained from any feature in his face than from his mouth; but he
returned her gaze with such an unmoved expression of countenance, that
at last she withdrew her eyes with a vexed and puzzled air: then he,
with a smile, arose to depart.

“I am not jesting,” he remarked, by way of a departing hint.

“I see you are not,” she answered.

“And I trust to your friendship and good sense,” he added.

“I suppose,” began Miss Caldera, “it would be useless to ask you any
questions on the subject, for——”

“For, although it is impolite not to answer any questions a lady may
propound, you think, in this instance, I should feel inclined to do so,”
he interposed, resuming his usual manner, and laughing so as to display
the whiteness of his regular teeth. “No, no, please not to place me in
such a disagreeable position, because I cannot tell even you; and indeed
I should not like to refuse. I have said, perhaps, even more than I
ought, but I rely implicitly on your discretion.”

And Mr. Westwood, who was evidently most anxious to get out of the
house, shook hands quite vehemently with the governess and departed,
leaving her, for the first time since she had seen his clever handsome
face, a little dissatisfied with the possessor of it.

For a few minutes she actually wondered if Mina were not right, if a
marriage between the shrewd, calculating, middle-aged man and the
impetuous, generous, passionate, self-willed girl, were likely to
produce happiness; and then Miss Caldera “pshawed” down the thought, and
decided that, if there were the least risk of Mina ever being poor, she
ought to wed Mr. Westwood at once, who was just as good as most men, and
far better than many.

All that night Miss Caldera strove to convince herself Mr. Westwood had
been merely threatening or scheming; but there was truth in the tone of
his voice as it sounded again and again in her ears. She began to form a
fixed idea that something was wrong, and, on the full strength of this
conviction, she went over to Belerma Square the following afternoon, and
had a long earnest talk with Mina, the result of which talk was, that
her former charge got, as usual, into a passion, and, going a step
further than was her wont, declared that “she would submit to this
persecution no longer; that marry Mr. Westwood she would not; that she
had no present intention of wedding any one; and that, finally, she was
mistress of her own actions and intended to remain so, and that she
wished Miss Caldera would not interfere with her again.”

Then the governess, who, though sensitive to a look from most people,
knew Mina’s love for her so well as never to feel offended even at her
angriest expressions, put her arms around the girl’s waist, and, even
though Mina strove to push her away, besought her, for the sake of
former times, to, listen to her. And then she told her old pupil all
that Mina subsequently repeated to her brother, and a great deal more
besides—which brought tears into the rebellious eyes and a swelling into
the wilful heart—about how earnestly she desired her happiness, and of
what an interest she had taken in her from the first day, and how she
had loved the pale slight child at the beginning, solely because of the
vehement love she had evinced for the land of her birth and the people
who dwelt there.

“You may be angry or not, Mina,” the faithful friend said at length,
“but so long as I speak to you, I will say just what I think; for many
reasons, I believe you are wrong to be so stiff towards Mr. Westwood,
who is so fond of you. Mina, for my sake, will you reflect on all I have
said?”

“Good gracious!” said the girl, squeezing back, after her determined
fashion, a tear that almost trembled on her eyelashes, “good gracious!
you have made me think about Mr. Westwood and ‘marrying and giving in
marriage’ till I am sick of the theme, and the conclusion I long ago
arrived at, Malcolm, you remember, put into words for me the other day.
He said, men considered matrimony, when they reflected upon it at all,
as a thing which might come, not as women did, as a thing which must
come; that it is one incident in the drama of men’s lives, but forms the
entire plot in the drama of ours; that, if you would let me think of it
as of an event which, if it suited, was well, and if it did not, why
well still,—it would be better and happier and more respectable
altogether. He says, that’s the way he contemplates the step
matrimonial, and that he does not see why, simply because I am his
sister, I should not view it in the same light.”

“Malcolm can push his way in the world, if he will; he must never be a
dependant amongst strangers: he is a man and may struggle; you could
not.”

“I could,” retorted Mina, “but I need not, for my uncle will always
provide for me.”

“Mina Frazer,” said Miss Caldera, laying an earnest hand on her shoulder
and looking half sorrowfully into the flushed youthful face, “do not be
too sure of that; life’s chances and changes are awful to contemplate. I
once would have laughed, had any one told me I should ever have to work
for my daily bread; but desolation came into my home. You have not the
patience or the nature to bear, as it has been my lot imperfectly to do;
you would not like to think you would ever be situated as I am; but
remember, dear, when reverses come, that, though a woman tenderly
trained and matured finds it hard to toil and work, yet that still she
must live. I had a father to leave a competence to his only daughter,
and yet you know a little of the burden I have borne.”

“I am as sure,” said Mina, gazing up sadly into the countenance of the
weary woman, “I am as sure of Uncle John as I could be of my dear father
if he were now alive.”

“And still, dear Mina, his love was impotent to preserve you from
beggary; strong it was, I doubt not, but it had not power to keep him
alive to guide and love and struggle for you.”

There was a pause, and then Mina said in a subdued voice,

“I wish I could do any one thing to show how I love you, except marry
that horrid man, indeed I would do it.”

“Will you be a little more polite to him then, Mina, and endeavour to
get Malcolm to be so too?” implored Miss Caldera.

“I will, just to please you,” said the girl; “for you’re a dear, kind,
steady, provoking old friend, whom I shall never quarrel with for more
than an hour at a time so long as I live, never!” And as Mrs. Frazer
entered the room at this moment, Mina left it a little sorrowfully and a
great deal more thoughtfully than usual.

Indeed she reflected so much on the subject that she resolved to warn
her brother at the very first opportunity, and, as we have seen, did
warn him; but her words, instead of soothing that young gentleman, only
moved his spirit unto irritation, all the greater, perhaps, because he
felt them to be true; and he resolved, during the course of his walk,
that, instead of speaking to his uncle, as he had intended, immediately
on Mr. Merapie’s return from Holland, he would go to Scotland until, as
he mentally expressed it, “the storm blew over,” and take Mina with him.

“Then,” he concluded, as he paced home through Arras Street, in the
fading light of a January afternoon, “he will have forgotten all about
my unlucky exploit, and I will promise to be his dutiful nephew, and
turn out a pattern of obedience and grace and so forth, and he will buy
me a commission; and, if Westwood be not ‘settled’ some way by that
time, why of course, when I am more in favour, I can speak with a better
chance of success than would be possible at present: that is just what I
will do forthwith,—write to Craigmaver and tell Allan and the laird what
I want.”

And, having sketched out this vague beautiful design, Malcolm Frazer
raised his eyes from the slippery pavement and noticed casually, as
people do notice such things in London, that a tall gentlemanly looking
man was walking slowly and thoughtfully a few steps before him.

“Decidedly an aristocrat,” was the result of Malcolm’s brief survey, for
he had imbibed from his mother, the city merchant’s daughter, an idea
that fine figures and long pedigrees are inseparable; and having arrived
at this conclusion, the young Scotchman, who had a love for Aristocrats,
second perhaps only to his love for himself, continued to scrutinize the
stranger with some interest.

That individual was so much engrossed with his own reflections, that he
never noticed one of those slides which, spite of the police,
mischievous boys will make for their amusement in quiet streets, and,
walking unsuspectingly upon it, down he came; before he was aware he had
slipped, he was lying full length on the pavement at Malcolm’s feet.

“Halloa!” cried out that young gentleman in true sailor fashion, and
“Halloa!” echoed a cabman, who was slowly coming down the narrow street,
and who pulled up and jumped off his box to the rescue.

“Knowed he was ill hurt,” said he to Malcolm, “by the way I saw his head
coming against the ground.”

“A deuced ugly business,” remarked Malcolm; “his head is cut, and, it
seems to me, his arm broken.”

“Is he a friend of your’s, sir?” inquired a person who now joined the
group to render assistance, as the Londoners always do on such occasions
with hearty good will; “the fall has completely stunned him: is he a
friend of your’s?”

“Never saw him in my life before,” was the rejoinder.

“Better put him in the cab, then, and drive without delay to the nearest
hospital,” suggested a clergyman, standing amidst a knot of passers by
and idlers, who had by this time collected to enjoy the excitement.

“Better look in his pocket for an address and take him there,” growled
out a policeman, coming forward, as if to aid in the search.

“No, no!” cried a doctor; “the hospital’s close at hand, drive him
there.”

“Shall I, sir?” demanded the cabman of Malcolm, to whom he somehow
looked for his fare.

“No,” said the latter angrily; “stand back,” he continued, addressing
the crowd generally, and the policeman particularly: “I am a gentleman
myself, and I won’t submit to see a gentleman’s pockets rummaged or
himself dragged off to an hospital. I’ll take the charge of him on
myself: help me to lift him into the cab, driver; so,—now walk your
horse very slowly over to number 12, Belerma Square;” and, as he spoke,
Malcolm Frazer, who, spite of his absurd speech, would have done the
same good turn for the meanest gillie that ever crossed a Highland moor,
and who was possessed of an honest manly heart, and any amount of sailor
frankness, entered the vehicle and strove with tenderness and
solicitude, such as a woman might have displayed, to prevent the jolting
injuring the sufferer, who, at the moment, however, was insensible to
everything.

“Now you just be off about your business,” said the policeman savagely
to a lot of boys who remained looking after the cab with open mouths,
“be off about your business, if you have any, and if you haven’t, you
had best make it one to be moving, or I may make it mine to stir you,”
which vague threat produced so speedily the desired effect, that in five
minutes he found himself pacing along the street utterly alone in his
glory.

Mina was standing at one of the drawing-room windows as the cab stopped
before the door of number 12; and, when she beheld her brother assisting
the driver to lift something wonderfully resembling a human being out of
the vehicle, and up the half dozen stone steps, she, moved by that
curiosity which her mother Eve had transmitted to her, and also by that
pity which every woman feels for the suffering and the afflicted,
hastily quitted her post of observation, and ran down into the hall to
ascertain what this new arrival meant, and if anything dreadful had
occurred.

“Malcolm, what _is_ the matter?” she inquired.

“Don’t torment me, Mina,” rejoined Malcolm, who, on the strength of
being desperately out of breath, and in a profuse perspiration from his
late philanthropic labours, felt himself raised on a sort of moral
eminence above his sister. “Don’t torment me, Mina, but open that door,
and send one of the servants over for Dr. Richards, and don’t talk, but
come and make yourself useful if you can.”

And thus fraternally exhorted, Mina—whilst her brother paid the cabman
so liberally, as not merely to extort three touches of the hat and two
“thank you, sirs” from that individual, but also to cause him to mutter,
as he drove off, in confidence to his horse, that he was a gentleman and
no mistake, though he lived in such a place—did make herself useful; and
truly there was need that she should, since Mrs. Frazer could not bear
the sight of a wound, and the housekeeper was, if possible, worse than
her mistress, and her assistant was out in quest of a doctor, and Miss
Caldera was giving a French lesson some two miles off: there was need
that she should.

“Bad case,” said the doctor when he entered.

“Not hopeless, though,” exclaimed Malcolm.

“Well, no; but he must not be moved again: pity you had not carried him
upstairs at once.”

“There is no necessity,” interposed Mina; “a bed can be made up here.”

“Let it be done then,” said Dr. Richards, one of the briefest and
gruffest of his profession; but as Mina left the room to obey his
command, he added, nodding approvingly to Malcolm, “always knew she was
none of the fainting sort.”

And Mina got matters arranged so speedily and satisfactorily, that even
the acid man of medicine was moved unto complimenting her; and he turned
every mortal out of the room save Malcolm and herself, and made her hold
a candle for him whilst he bandaged, and set, and went so rapidly and
(Mina thought) so roughly through all sorts of surgical processes, that
the girl at last grew quite faint and sick, and would fain have
abandoned her post; but the doctor and Malcolm both telling her, though
in somewhat various modes, that as she had been sent on the earth she
must make herself useful there, she remained at their bidding to do all
she could for the sufferer, who, when he was at all restored to
consciousness, first groaned in perfect agony, and then inquired,

“Where am I?”

“My dear sir,” growled forth Dr. Richards, “will you keep yourself
quiet, if you please, and not speak a single word;” an injunction the
patient obeyed whilst the pain of his arm kept him mute; but during a
moment of ease, he whispered to Mina, who was bathing his forehead with
some mixture the doctor had given her,

“Do tell me what place this is?”

“My uncle’s,” said the girl, in a voice which convinced him, more than
fifty assurances could have done, that he was amongst those who are to
be found in all climes and countries and ranks and classes; amongst
those who enhance the pleasure of life, and soften its bitterness;
amongst those of whom we meet a few everywhere, and part from
mournfully, and greet joyfully, and call with thankful trusting
hearts—friends.




                              CHAPTER XIV.
                ERNEST BEGINS TO SEE THE VALUE OF LIFE.


Three weeks after the occurrences narrated in the last chapter, Ernest
Ivraine, his right arm in a sling and his face paler and thinner than
ever, ascended the broad staircase of Mr. Merapie’s house with the air
of one who found even that slight exertion an immense trouble; and, in
truth, so he did, for he was still weak and suffering.

For many days previously, indeed, he had been permitted by Dr. Richards
to cross the hall and exchange his own chamber for the more cheerful
dining-room; but now, for the first time, he was essaying the bold step
of reaching the apartment on which Mrs. Frazer had set the stamp of her
taste, and he felt fatigued accordingly.

He marvelled how completely a few short weeks had prostrated him, and it
seemed as if, until then, he had never felt half so forcibly how
extraordinary it was that he should be now, after a fashion,
domesticated with people of whose very names he had a month previously
been ignorant; of whom he still knew literally nothing; who were utter
strangers to him, but who had, notwithstanding, nursed and watched and
tended and cared for him, as though he had been a near and dear
relative; who had been kinder to him than any friend he possessed in the
world, save Henry, would have been, and whose attention had in all human
probability been, under Providence, the means of saving his life.

Life! Was the prolongation of existence, then, a boon for which he ought
to thank them?

Ernest smiled bitterly as he opened the drawing-room door and entered
the apartment, which, being tenantless, he felt he was at perfect
liberty to make himself thoroughly comfortable in, and, accordingly, he
took possession of one of the ancient sofas Mrs. Frazer had got “done
up” in damask, and modernized, soon after her arrival in Belerma Square,
and stretching his weary person at full length upon it, he began musing
_à loisir_ on the events of the last three weeks.

They might not be many, but they were important: first, there was he,
Ernest Ivraine, who for years previously had never known any
ailment,—save that common one, the heartache,—a languid listless
invalid, who found it a trouble to raise even his uninjured arm to his
head, which would, in spite of his own inclinations and Dr. Richard’s
unremitting exertions, keep everlastingly tormenting him with harbouring
a dull, ceaseless, throbbing sort of pain, which unfitted him for the
slightest labour of any kind, and made him feel moping and indolent, in
spite of various efforts to rouse himself and try to be, as he
occasionally said to Malcolm Frazer, “a man again.”

Then, in the next place, he, the eldest son of a miserly Lincolnshire
baronet, had formed a sort of friendship for a wild careless boy, who
introduced himself as the descendant of a perfect swarm of old
Highlanders, with all sorts of heathenish and unpronounceable Christian
names, which Highlanders, it seemed, from Malcolm’s account, had been
great in the land before Ben Nevis was heard of; and he knew, by
something more conclusive than the young Scotchman’s vague ancestral
assertions, that he was a guest in the house of Malcolm’s English uncle,
who resided in a very unfashionable gloomy part of London, who was a
merchant, reported to be immensely rich, and whom he had not yet seen,
in consequence of his protracted absence upon important business in the
flat, rich, marshy land of Holland.

And if the “events” had finished here, none of them need ever have been
chronicled, for broken arms will knit, and broken heads will mend, and
strength will return, and the pulse, after a temporary weakness, will
throb rapidly as it was wont to do; and the friendship he felt for
Malcolm was neither so deep nor so intense as to make the prospect of a
speedy parting appear perfectly unendurable to him; and he felt he could
say farewell to Mrs. Frazer and Miss Caldera without a faltering tone;
and as to the house itself, why it was a vast deal more comfortable than
Paradise, the furniture and appointments being twice as good, and the
style of living and so forth infinitely better: but then he did not
expect the owner of it to leave him anything, and he fully anticipated
the inhabitants of his father’s abode would bequeath sufficient to
render him and Henry independent for ever of the smiles or frowns of
fortune. But Ernest Ivraine knew something more had happened during the
course of those three weeks than illness of body, the making of friends,
or the growth of the, to him, hitherto unexperienced sensation that ties
half the world together one day in bonds which, alas! for human nature,
snap asunder too frequently the next—gratitude.

The melancholy man closed his weary eyelids and sunk hopelessly back as
he reluctantly admitted the miserable truth that he had commenced to
care for something besides Henry, his brother; that he had made but one
rapid stride from freedom of heart to sorrow of soul; that a new care, a
fresh trial had been created for him by the pale slight girl, who had
nursed and watched him like a sister during his illness, and scarcely
spoken ten words to him during his convalescence; who, least of all in
the house, obtruded herself on his notice or sought to drag him out from
the armour of silent reserve, in which, for years, it had been his
pleasure habitually to encase himself; who seemed pining to be away from
that dreary Square, just as Henry had pined to leave Paradise; and who,
if not handsome, or striking, or fascinating, had a mild beautiful pair
of eyes that might have pleased any one, and a look of sad, earnest
thought in her face, which interested the baronet’s son more than the
gayest, brightest expression of a happy woman could have done. For
though a glad kind glance might, for a moment, have won an answering
smile from Ernest, still the smile would have faded from his lips the
next, leaving no more trace behind in his soul than that left by a
chance sunbeam on the surface of some darksome river, whilst the look
that dwelt almost continually in Mina’s face had become part of his
thoughts, and having, by some means, found an entrance, it remained in
his heart, for nothing that once took silent possession of that gloomy
citadel, whether good or evil, pleasant or disagreeable, could ever
afterwards be completely eradicated therefrom.

His feelings, affections, hates, grew to be as much portions of himself
as the blood in his veins, which had been half stagnated during his long
residence at Paradise. Though he was so weak and ill, it seemed to
Ernest, at times, as if the stream of life circulated more freely
through his frame in the more wholesome London atmosphere than it had
been wont to do amongst the swamps of “home;” and even whilst he mourned
over it, he could not conceal from himself the fact that a better
feeling than love of gold, or the craving, sickening desire for a
father’s death, had got possession of him,—love, yea, verily love, for
Mina Frazer.

Ernest Ivraine felt himself constrained to care for her, and though he
told his rebellious heart that she was not and could never be anything
to him, still his heart declined to believe the assertion. Wherefore,
Mina, all unconsciously, retained her place there, and the baronet’s son
mourned because of the fresh trouble that had fallen upon him.

“Your sister does not seem very strong,” he had remarked one day to
Malcolm; and the answer which was returned to this observation pained
him more than he would have cared to acknowledge.

“No,” said Malcolm, who always liked to speak of his “clan,” “she pines
and sickens for home and a sight of our relatives there. The English air
has never suited her nor never will; her body is here and her heart
there: but whenever my uncle returns, I intend to go myself and take her
to the Highlands.”

“Not to remain for a permanency, though?” exclaimed Ernest hastily; then
added more quietly, “Mrs. Frazer could scarcely do without her.”

“And me,” supplied the youth, pulling up his shirt collar with a
self-satisfied air, which proved to Ernest he knew he should be the most
missed. “Oh, no! not for a permanency, at least, not at present; when I
am older and have seen a little more of the world and feel tired of
excitement and that sort of thing, I shall probably settle there, buy an
estate (where I hope you’ll come and shoot), and be, like my uncle, a
small sovereign in some remote Highland principality; but just now, you
see, I am rather in the ‘black books’ here, and want to be out of sight
of St. Paul’s till the fog clears away. And Mina, poor child! I have not
yet told her of my intention, but she will be wild with delight at the
prospect of seeing Craigmaver once more. She was quite young when she
left it; but it has been what novelists call ‘an enduring thought’ with
her ever since.”

What could he, the silent, melancholy, Lincolnshire misanthrope ever be
to Mina Frazer, the rich city merchant’s niece, with her Highland
partialities and prejudices, her old strong attachments, her
unconquerable dislike to her mother’s country, her wild yearning for the
hills and the moors and the mountains of her beautiful fatherland! What
had he, whose eyes were weary with gazing over fens and swamps and flat
low fields, to do with one who had in childhood looked on the bold
scenery of her birthplace till she had come to claim affinity with it,
and to feel that it was a sort of living death to dwell far from rushing
waterfalls and spreading lakes and rocks and caves and glens! Why should
he, whose relatives were so sordid and mean and calculating, even think
of her who had spent the most impressionable part of life amongst those
whose hearts were pure and fresh and free as the wind that wandered over
the heath-clad hills! He was nothing—could be nothing to her, Ernest
Ivraine constantly reflected; and yet, with a sort of soul sickness, he
found day by day that she was growing to be much to him.

Too much—a being to remember, to carry a sad memory back to Paradise, to
dream of in after days, to long to see, to marvel concerning. She would
return to the Highlands with Malcolm, ay, and stay there, probably, and
lose the melancholy expression which had first attracted him to her: in
time she would marry, perhaps, and be mistress of some lovely Scottish
home, whilst he remained for ever moping and pining amid the dreary
swamps surrounding the ancient gloomy brick pile he had called, since
infancy, “home.”

“I ought to go,” Ernest murmured, half aloud, as the whole truth dawned
upon him; and he raised himself on one elbow and looked hopelessly at
the window, as if beyond it lay freedom from care, as though through it
he proposed making his final exit,—“I ought to go.”

Perhaps, indeed, for one moment he actually thought of doing so, but
exhausted nature laid a detaining hand upon him, obscured his eyes with
a sort of semi-darkness, and once again Ernest sunk back on the sofa,
feeling that something stronger than his will—stern necessity, to
wit—kept him a not reluctant captive in that house.

Then, when the temporary excitement had passed away, and the sort of
calm that great weakness always induces had succeeded thereto, the
invalid became conscious that there were persons in the adjoining
apartment speaking eagerly and hurriedly together.

There were only folding doors separating Ernest from them—folding doors
but imperfectly shut—and the last few sentences of the conversation
being uttered in rather a high key, its purport flashed instantly across
his mind. He was no eavesdropper, was too honourable to wish to hear
what was not intended to reach his ears; but almost ere he had time to
comprehend the interview was a private one, it had concluded and the
talkers stood beside him.

“I gave you a decided answer once before,” was the first hurried
sentence he heard, “and I wish you clearly to understand that my present
is a final one.”

“So be it,” answered Mr. Westwood bitterly; “believe me, I should be
glad to help you to a grander or a better match.”

“You are too kind,” said Mina, with something wonderfully resembling a
sneer; and, pushing open the doors as she uttered these words in an
irritated tone, she beheld Mr. Ivraine, who had, perhaps, never during
the whole course of his life felt himself placed in such an unpleasant
position before.

“I hope you feel better, sir,” said Mr. Westwood, who, having noticed
Mina’s sudden start as she crossed the threshold of the two rooms, had
followed her in, and now stood the only apparently unembarrassed person
present. “I hope you feel better.”

“A great deal, thank you,” answered Ernest, a very poor apology for a
smile flickering over his grave face; “still a little weak, but I shall
get over that in a day or two.”

“Hope to see you quite well again in a short time,” said Mr. Merapie’s
partner, with quite an air of interest; “but you have been most
dangerously ill, and these things are not to be shaken off all at once.
I suppose I can do nothing for you in the city. Oh! Mina, I quite forgot
what I came in especially to say to Mrs. Frazer, but will you be kind
enough to tell her I had a letter from your uncle this morning, and he
expects to be home to-morrow or the day after.”

“Confound your impudence,” thought Ernest, a sort of tingling sensation
pervading the fingers of even his right hand, as the above sentence
smote on his ear; whilst Mina, looking angrily into Mr. Westwood’s face,
answered briefly “I will;” and, apparently, not in the least ruffled or
disconcerted by what had occurred, the _ci-devant_ clerk bowed to the
invalid, and hastened off to the office of “Merapie and Westwood,”
vowing all sorts of vengeance against his insensible “ladye love,” and
wishing, for no very good reason, excepting, perhaps, because he was
thoroughly out of temper, that “that dark proud Lincolnshire squire had
been ‘finished’ instead of cured by gruff little Dr. Richards,” who
declared the baronet’s son had a constitution like a lion, which would
stand the wear and tear of a thousand years; a declaration Ernest had
almost groaned over, as he reflected that it was from his father’s side
of the house he inherited “this incapability of being killed.”

There was an awkward pause for a moment after Mr. Westwood left the
room, during which Mina looked at the carpet, and the invalid at her;
but before he had time to recover sufficiently from his embarrassment to
frame a sentence, or utter a single commonplace observation, the post
brought relief to both, in the shape of an imposing looking packet
directed to Ernest Ivraine, Esq., and bearing unmistakeable signs
indicating that it had travelled far over the sea, over the land through
many countries, from India to the former home of its writer, England.

“I will leave you to read it,” said Mina, noticing how eagerly he
clutched the missive; and thankful to get away, even for a few minutes,
she hurried out of the apartment, and proceeded more slowly to her
mother’s chamber, to inform the much enduring lady that their visitor
was at length able to come upstairs, and had actually accomplished the
bold undertaking.

“Well, my dear, I shall be down to see him directly,” said Mrs. Frazer,
coughing in a genteel manner, which clearly proved she was suffering
from influenza. “What in the world, child, makes you look so pale?” she
added, gazing languidly at Mina from beneath the lace borders of a most
ladylike and becoming morning cap; “I never was pale at your age; I’m
sure I am not so even now;” and the widow glanced complacently at the
mirror, as was her wont whenever she had a convenient opportunity of
admiring herself, whilst Mina answered,

“I am always pale, you know, mamma, and besides, I do not feel well,
which I suppose makes me be paler than usual; I have not been strong for
a good while past.”

It was about the first time in her life the girl had ever complained of
bodily illness, and, perhaps, it was this fact which induced her mother
to gaze at her for a moment ere she responded,

“Ill! yes, that’s just what Malcolm was saying this morning, and he
wants me to let you go to Craigmaver with him for a little, when I am
better, and your uncle returns; but I really do not see how you can
leave me.”

Mina stretched out both hands imploringly to her mother, as she cried,

“To Craigmaver! oh! let me go, do, pray let me. The air of the Highlands
will give me new life; I feel almost as if I should die of excess of joy
to see that place once more. I am sure Malcolm would not like to be
there without me; won’t you let me go with him.”

“What a strange unaccountable being you are, Mina,” said her mother,
with a puzzled and but ill-satisfied air; “I cannot conceive why you
should like that horrid place, miles and miles from a town, where there
is nothing to see or hear or buy, and nobody to speak to. It is not
natural at your age: I do not understand you, I confess.”

“Nothing to see!” echoed Mina, and then the long pent-up loves and
longings of her soul burst forth, and fell on the ear of one who could
not understand her, and who had never done so. “Nothing to see! oh!
mother, think of this, and then of that; think of the hills and the
heather and the pines and the free pure air; think of the garden at
Craigmaver, filled with flowers and birds and perfumes, where, even in
winter, the sun seemed always shining; think of the view down into the
silent dark little lake, and of the valleys beyond, and the mountains
rising above, peak upon peak, till, in the distance, they seemed to meet
the sky, and become lost in heaven; think of the moors where the bees
swarmed in myriads; where the scent of wild thyme filled the air, and
the eye grew almost tired of the gorgeousness of the purple carpet;
where for miles and miles there was no human habitation, no road,
scarcely a path, but over which one never got weary of roaming. Nothing
to hear! when I was a child, papa and I used to sit down on some old
grey stone and listen for hours to the chirping of the grasshoppers and
the scream of the eagle, and the dashing of distant waterfalls and the
murmuring of nearer streams. Oh! the land that he loved, where he is
buried, is dearer to me than any other could ever become; and when,
besides all this, I think of seeing my kind old uncle, and Allan and
Saunders and all the people who knew my father as a boy, and love his
children for the sake of the dead,—I feel as if my heart would break
with joy—as if I should never live to meet them all again.”

A colour had come up into the usually pallid cheek during the progress
of this rapid sentence, and the dark eyes were moistened with tears when
Mina concluded.

“You are just your father over again, child,” said Mrs. Frazer, and the
widow sighed deeply as she made this announcement, evidently considering
Mina’s likeness to her late husband a dreadful misfortune.

“But I may go with Malcolm?” persisted Mina, a wild joy and a great fear
contending for mastery in her bosom; “may I not, mamma?”

“I do not know, I cannot say,” answered Mrs. Frazer, vaguely, who
possibly might have more speedily acceded to the request had her
daughter not been so extremely anxious for it to be granted; “we can see
about it when your uncle comes home.”

“He is to be here to-morrow or the day after,” said Mina.

“I’m sure I am thankful to hear it, for the responsibility of being
alone in the house with that poor invalid I have felt to be most
dreadful; indeed it has been decidedly injurious to my health,” said the
widow, who had let her sympathy for Ernest evaporate in words since the
first evening her son carried him into the breakfast parlour, until now,
when he sate alone in the drawing-room; “and, Mina, you had better go
down stairs again and give him my compliments and say how glad I am to
hear he is so much stronger, and that I hope to see him presently;” in
compliance with which maternal injunction the girl descended the stairs
and re-entered the apartment where she had left Mr. Ivraine, and where
she now found him, sitting with an open letter in his hand, and an
expression of such pain on his face, as caused her almost involuntarily
to demand if he were ill.

He started at her words, and hastily crumpling up the papers, answered
“no,” so abruptly, that Mina, fearing she had annoyed him, asked no
further question, but, drawing an embroidery frame near to her,
commenced working without delivering her mother’s message.

She could not understand Mr. Ivraine; she had felt very sorry for him,
and done all that lay in her power to soothe his sufferings and restore
him to health; and, at first, when weak and almost helpless, he was
lying on the sofa in the dining-room, it had seemed as if they were
likely to “get on” well enough; but one unhappy day he repelled her most
unintentionally, but still most completely, and Mina never recovered a
shock of the kind. Thus it came to pass:

Mrs. Frazer and her daughter were sitting, out of compliment to their
guest, in the apartment where John Merapie had been wont to take a
comfortable sleep after his dinner and port wine, the widow entertaining
the invalid with some of the latest fashionable intelligence, which she
thought might prove at once interesting and amusing, when, during one of
the lulls in her sensible conversation, Mr. Ivraine turned to Mina, who
had sat mute as a statue for fully twenty minutes, and asked if she
would be so kind as to write a letter to his father for him.

“You see,” he added, glancing at his arm, “it is a duty I am unable to
perform myself.”

Most truthfully Mina answered that she would be very glad, and,
immediately producing writing materials, she drew a chair and table near
to the sofa and sat for a minute or two waiting, with a pen in her hand,
ready to write down whatever he might choose to dictate. But, after a
puzzled pause, Ernest, a very curious expression flitting over his
countenance as he spoke, said,

“I believe, Miss Frazer, I shall not trouble you; perhaps your brother
would write it for me instead.”

He never added a single syllable of explanation, and Mina felt hurt and
mortified. Why she felt so, she did not exactly know; but the effect
produced by the simple sentence was such that, whilst Malcolm and Mrs.
Frazer, and even Miss Caldera, grew to like the stranger, and he, in his
turn, came to converse freely and easily with them, they two scarcely
spoke to each other ten times in the course of the day, for she fancied
he was proud and stern; and he, imagining she could care for nothing
which was not an importation direct from Scotland, knowing his own
position, and feeling, moreover, how dangerously large a portion of his
thoughts she occupied, sedulously avoided much association with, and
kept away from her, as men of strong minds do keep away from things and
people whom, even whilst they long to be near, they dread for their own
peace sake becoming very dear to them.

And so Mina could not understand the silent uncommunicative man, and
thinking, therefore, he did not wish to be interrupted in his
meditations, she bent her head over her work, and, as the rapid needle
sped on its course, she gave herself up to pleasant imaginings,
concerning her visit to the North and meetings and greetings with the
never-to-be-forgotten friends who dwelt there.

Meanwhile, Ernest Ivraine, a blacker and sadder shadow than ever
darkening his brow, sat watching her; for the first time in his life, a
doubt of the prudence of his choice, years before, occurred to him; for
the hundredth time, he felt the galling slavery of his position
unendurable: he was sickening for liberty to act as he listed, to speak
as his heart prompted him. For the moment he almost desired to cast
Paradise and the golden shackles that bound him to it and drew him
reluctantly back there, from his soul, and to rush forth hopeful and
self-reliant, as Henry had done, into the world.

For, without his aid, Henry had succeeded; the brave heart and the
strong arm had triumphed and brought to their honest manly possessor
fame, station, comparative wealth, at last.

There lay the letter before him, scarcely legible with the glad high
words of fulfilled hope, of thankful rejoicing, with inducements to his
brother to come and do likewise, with sentences of affection and dreams
of still higher fortune; there it lay, and there also lay the money
Henry did not now require to aid him in his ascent, and Ernest gazed
alternately at them and Mina.

It is easier—oh, woe for the soul of man!—easier by far to weep with
those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice: easier to clasp
the hand of a friend in sorrowful sympathy than to wring it in cordial
congratulation; for grief is so perpetual a visitor to the hearts of
most, that its advent to that of another only seems to draw the chords
of attachment closer, and to cause the same mournful melody to vibrate
in greater unison, whilst—so contradictory is human nature that a throb
of joy, agitating the bosom of one even dearly loved, nineteen times out
of twenty causes a sensation of pain to distract, for an instant, the
peace of the other.

Ernest Ivraine had suffered and sorrowed for and with Henry; with all
the intensity of his nature he loved his brother; he had longed for him
to be great and respected and fortunate; and yet now, when success flung
her bright smiles on the path of the younger brother and threw a sort of
sunshiny track far away into the future for him, Ernest’s first feeling
was regret, not that Henry was happy, but that his own lot was not
equally so.

“Good heavens!” he thought, “what a wretch dwelling amongst swamps must
have made me, when I do not feel my heart bound with triumph to hear
Henry is climbing at last, and without my assistance.” And Ernest
crumpled up the letter, and strove to put it and the rebellious feeling
aside, whilst he talked to her who was the cause of the latter, for she
had made him wish and thirst for liberty and success, as he had never
previously done for aught save gold.

“Miss Frazer,” he began, and the strong effort he was making to master
his emotions made him seem a little graver and sterner than ever: “Miss
Frazer, I believe I soon must leave this house, where I have received so
much kindness and——”

“Oh, no!” interrupted Mina, looking up with a happier look in her face
than Ernest had ever seen there before—she had been thinking of sunshine
on the Scottish hills, but he did not know that;—“oh, no! Dr. Richards
said you were not to attempt to move till you were quite strong again.”

“But I am much better now, thank God!” said Ernest, “and I feel I cannot
intrude any longer. Mr. Merapie——”

“Will be delighted for you to stay till it is quite safe for you to
travel, at any rate,” once more interposed Mina. “We have all regretted
not being able to make you more comfortable,” she added in a slightly
hesitating tone; “this place is so dreary and stupid, it is not good for
an invalid.”

Ernest mentally reflected, it was a sort of heaven in comparison with
his own home, and sighed as he did so.

“Then you do not like Belerma Square?” he said, after a moment’s pause.

“No,” briefly responded Mina; and the “No” was, as Malcolm would have in
some cases approved, decided.

“Nor London?” proceeded Ernest.

“Nor London,” she acquiesced.

“Nor England?” he inquired, by way of a finale.

A sort of perplexed look came over the girl’s face for an instant, but
then she frankly replied,

“It would not be exactly polite for me to say to you that I dislike
England, particularly as I know so little of it; I am not very fond of
your country, it is true, but I might like it better if I did not love
my own so much.”

“Then you would not desire to pass your life here?”

“Here! no!” she responded. “I wish my uncle would retire and buy an
estate in the Highlands, but he thinks no place is so pleasant as
London, and I could not bear to be always away from him now: that is the
worst of removals, one cannot carry every friend one makes away, nor
collect every desirable thing together: those are the happiest who live
and die and remain always in the one spot.”

“If they care for that spot,” supplied Ernest.

“Every one is fond of the place he was born in,” said Mina.

“Some dislike it for that very reason,” answered Ernest drily; “but,” he
added, turning the current of the conversation very abruptly back into
the course from whence he himself had diverted it, “I fear your uncle
will think my long illness must have completely exhausted your patience,
and that my protracted visit has been perfectly unreasonable and
unjustifiable.”

“When you were unable to go away, whether you would or not,” broke forth
Malcolm, who had sauntered into the room in time to catch the conclusion
of the foregoing sentence. “Ah! you do not know my uncle; he will say
bringing you here is the first sensible action he has known me perform
for some years past, and he will add, he hopes you will consider this
your home until you are well enough to return to a better; and he will
ask you if we have taken as good care of you as any one, excepting your
own relatives and himself, could have done; and he will regret his
absence from London, feeling quite sure he could have made you twice as
comfortable as his scapegrace of a nephew has endeavoured to do; and he
will think that, on the whole, I am not so bad as he thought me before
his departure for Holland. And Mina and I will set off to the Highlands
early in the spring, leaving him as well pleased with us as ever he was;
and I shall look out for a fine site for the house I mean to build when
I get on into middle life, of which Mina is to be mistress, and where we
shall be delighted to see you whenever you travel north.”

Having concluded which safe and hospitable invitation to his Scottish
_chateau en espagne_, Malcolm Frazer sank down lazily into an easy
chair, whilst Ernest, to whom the cause of Mina’s unwonted cheerfulness
and communicativeness was now no longer an enigma, mournfully thought of
the place where he should be dwelling when they were wandering over
Highland mountains; and his heart grew faint and sick as he did so.




                              CHAPTER XV.
                              A DISCOVERY.


Malcolm Frazer was quite correct when he said his uncle would ask Mr.
Ivraine to make his house his home till he was able to journey back to
the fens; for, under a rather unpromising exterior, John Merapie
possessed a kind and truly English heart, and further, though he was a
“city man,” who detested and railed at all sorts of “humbug,” he felt a
little pleased to have for his guest an individual who was not merely
the son of a baronet, but who would, if he only lived long enough,
appear in due course as a baronet himself.

Then Ernest had no “humbug” about him, was not a bit of a dandy,
seemed to understand the value of money, and did not wound the worthy
merchant’s sensitiveness by the slightest touch of aristocratic
_hauteur_; which word, when translated into our vulgar tongue, might
frequently be found to mean underbred impertinence. No; John Merapie
found he was a far more sensible agreeable kind of fellow to work with
than many a rich business _parvenu_ with whom he had occasionally
dined, and altogether the Lincolnshire squire and the London
quarter-millionaire ran so admirably together along that difficult and
dangerous road called daily communication, that Mr. Alfred Westwood
grew at length seriously uneasy, and finally felt quite as if an
incubus was removed from his spirit when he heard Mr. Ivraine had at
last fairly taken his departure, after receiving a cordial invitation
from his late host to pay him a visit whenever he was “within twenty
miles of Belerma Square.”

But notwithstanding his long absence and his good feeling towards his
new acquaintance, Malcolm and Mina both noticed that the cloud which had
rested on their uncle’s brow ere his departure for Holland, had returned
thence with him, and a gloom seemed to hang over the entire household
from the moment of his re-appearance, the mystery of which no member of
the establishment, and no person, perhaps, in the circle of his
acquaintances, save Mr. Alfred Westwood, was able to fathom.

That clever individual, however, having opened “by mistake” a letter for
Mr. Merapie, which he knew was not on business, during his principal’s
absence in Holland, had arrived, after its perusal, at the knowledge of
a great secret; which knowledge put him in a position to triumph a
little over Malcolm and Mina Frazer, and to feel that, to a certain
extent, the whole family, from Mr. Merapie down to his refractory niece,
was, after a fashion, in his “power.”

“I have often wished,” he said, after taking a copy of the epistle above
referred to, “I have often wished to possess some ‘hold’ over them all,
and that girl in particular; I have got one now, a capital lever, if
only properly employed, and, please the fates, I’ll use it.”

And having arrived at this Christian determination, Mr. Westwood sallied
forth and hunted over half the city shops to get an oblong seal with the
announcement “I wait” cut thereon; and when, after great difficulty, he
had succeeded in obtaining it, and a stick of pale blue wax, he returned
to the office and closed up the missive again, which, by the way, was
directed in a female hand, and marked “private.” And, as he chanced to
be writing that very afternoon to Mr. Merapie, he forwarded the letter
to him and sauntered thenceforth about his partner’s house in Belerma
Square as if, to repeat Malcolm’s impatient expression, “it belonged to
him.”

And though, during the course of the following month, he was too much
occupied through the week with business, and too constantly engaged on
Sundays watching Mina and Mr. Ivraine, to pursue his investigations as
far as he desired, yet he never for one moment forgot what he had
discovered, and what he wished further to discover; so, when in due
course Mr. Merapie’s return and Ernest’s departure set him once again,
as it were, at liberty, he hastened to make himself master of the whole
subject by actual observation and personal investigation on the spot.

It was some five miles from London, under the spreading branches of an
ancient walnut tree, standing leafless and bare, close to the entrance
of one of those villas we see so perpetually advertised under the
appellation of “genteel residences,” that knowledge, full and complete,
reached the mind of Alfred Westwood; more full and complete truly than
he had ever desired should dawn upon his startled comprehension: for, as
he sauntered past the place in the chill cold light of a February
afternoon, a phaeton, containing two persons, a lady and a boy, drove up
to the gate; there was a momentary pause, whilst a person, who chanced
to be coming out at the instant, opened it, and the glance which that
pause enabled Mr. Westwood to catch of the lady’s face caused him to
turn as pale as a corpse and tremble for a second like a woman.

He had barely time to pull his hat almost involuntarily over his eyes
ere the vehicle and its occupants were gone. They had come, passed him,
and departed like a dream of the morning; but Alfred Westwood knew it
was no dream. “I wish to heavens it were,” he muttered, with clenched
teeth and livid lips, as he strode after the female who had admitted the
pair, and whom he recollected perfectly, as he recollected every thing
and place and person on whom, with his extremely far-seeing,
disagreeably searching eyes, he had once looked.

“Mrs. Colefort,” he said, and the words, though spoken in a low tone,
made her to whom they were addressed start as if a pistol had gone off
at her ear. “Do you not remember me?” he added, finding she only stared
in his face by way of reply to his abrupt salutation.

“Yes, sir,” she stammered, “but——”

“But you do not wish to remember,” he interrupted, his wonted
self-possession having by this time completely returned to him: “well so
be it; only one question fairly answered, and I am satisfied; who is
that?”

“Who is what?” demanded the old woman, a gleam of her ancient cunning
sharpening her wrinkled features.

“Pshaw!” returned Mr. Westwood; “who is the lady you admitted this
instant into that villa place?”

“My mistress,” was the brief reply.

“And her _real_ name,” he persisted; “recollect I am willing to pay for
accurate information.”

“What will you give to know?” asked the woman.

“Five pounds,” replied the man who once had been a bankrupt.

“Five pence,” she contemptuously retorted; “it’s worth fifty guineas.”

“Five pounds or nothing,” said Westwood determinedly.

“Make it ten, and I’ll tell you,” she returned.

“If you won’t speak for five, you may hold your tongue,” was the
response; “so take your choice, for I ask you for the last time, who is
she?”

A purse glittering with steel beads was in Mr. Westwood’s hand as he
uttered the foregoing sentence; and when, at its conclusion, he held
forth five sovereigns and added the single word “Now,” the woman felt
herself impotent to withstand the bribe, small though she considered it,
and therefore cautiously answered, after stealing a look behind her,

“Mrs. Merapie.”

“The devil!” ejaculated Mr. Westwood, and he ground out a few oaths
between his teeth, whilst Mrs. Colefort, with a sinister laugh, echoed,

“Yes, she is pretty nearly one; so John Merapie found, to his sorrow,
before she had borne his name long.”

“And what name did she bear before that?” demanded Mr. Westwood
fiercely.

“Her own, I suppose,—Margaret Maxwell.”

If the light had been a little clearer and her own eyes undimmed by the
mist of age, the woman might have noticed that a sort of throe seemed to
convulse Mr. Westwood’s frame as her answer grated on his ear. He winced
under the sound of that name as if it had touched some concealed wound:
the truth which the quondam housekeeper framed into such unconsciously
telling words, appeared to blast him, as if a wind from some barren
desert had passed over and scorched his soul.

Long after he had left the woman, long after he had returned to London,
days after the brief interview in which he had learnt all he wished to
know and a great deal more besides; in the busy ’Change, in his quiet
house, everywhere, Alfred Westwood found himself inwardly repeating,
over and over again, one single sentence—

“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”

And this sentence never grew old or familiar to his ear; he harped on it
eternally, and yet still its meaning always came with a sort of shock
upon his understanding.

“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”

If a spell had been contained in this simple combination of letters, it
could scarcely have produced a greater effect on the _ci-devant_ clerk,
who became for a time quite taciturn and reserved, who ceased to
domineer over Malcolm or torment Mina, and never once strove to dissuade
Mr. Merapie from permitting both the young people to go to the Highlands
and enjoy themselves.

“What under the sun has come over Westwood?” demanded Malcolm of his
sister, the evening before they started on their self-imposed pilgrimage
northwards.

“He is growing old, dear,” answered Mina, who could afford to laugh at
her uncle’s partner now she was in a good temper and going to leave him
behind her; but neither her brother nor Miss Caldera, who was present,
thought her suggestion a rational one, and the former, for once, felt
almost inclined to agree with the governess, when she told Mina a little
tartly, that she was a very absurd girl, and that she surely might have
had sense enough to see that something must be decidedly going wrong at
the office, when both her uncle and his partner were so grave.

“Heaven send they may weather the storm,” added Malcolm devoutly; “but,
if there be any judging from faces, business clouds must be of the
blackest down at Wapping; however, Uncle John is a first-rate craft, and
the wind cannot always blow a-head; so, when I return from Craigmaver, I
shall hope to find him in a friendly port, and consequently able and
inclined to do what I want him to do—buy me a commission.”

“You ought to be made to work for one,” remarked Miss Caldera.

“All in good time, dear lady,” answered Malcolm, laughing; “I make no
doubt I shall have to be very industrious, a human sort of busy bee at
some future period or other.”

“It will be greatly against your inclination, then,” retorted the
governess: but, spite of the utterance of this truism, Malcolm and she
parted remarkably good friends; and Mina, with a little tremor in her
voice, promised, as she kissed the dear, quaint, steady friend, not to
forget her, and to bring her back a cairngorm brooch from Scotland.

“Bring yourself, you wayward creature,” answered Miss Caldera, “and
don’t leave your heart behind you.”

“Oh, no! I shall keep it safe for—Mr. Westwood,” were the girl’s last
words ere, in a perfect ecstasy of delight, she bent her longing eager
eyes northwards; for, steadily as the needle points to the pole, Mina’s
thoughts and hopes and expectations turned ever unceasingly towards the
land of her birth: to revisit it, to hear again well-remembered voices,
to speak once more to those she loved, to wander as of yore over the
hills, to see the grand old mountains piled against the clear blue
heavens, had been the dream of her life, the wish of her soul for years:
and now it was no longer to be a dream, an ungratified wish,—it would
soon be a reality.

“I am so glad,” she said to Malcolm, “that I could cry.” And Mina did
cry with joy to see the old familiar places once again, just as she had,
in former times, wept in bitter anguish because compelled to leave them
all behind her.

It was a lovely evening in the early spring when, after that long dreary
separation and fatiguing journey, Mina caught at length a distant view
of beautiful Craigmaver. The departing sun flung a warm rich tint over
mountain and valley, over the peaceful lake, the silent firs, and the
graceful birch trees that were just donning their first faint green
attire. A feeling, such as she had not experienced for years, of youth
and freshness and vigour and hope, swept across Mina’s heart as she
leant forward and took in, at one earnest glance, every object in the
landscape; but since the days when, a child by her father’s side, she
had enjoyed that scene without a care or a thought of sorrow, a few
corroding drops from the cup of experience had fallen on her spirit and
saddened it; and thus, even in the midst of her joy, a memory of pain
brought tears to her eyes and blinded them.

“Nothing is changed,” remarked Malcolm, as they drove along, “excepting
that the trees have grown.”

Mina made no answer. Nothing except the trees, indeed, had changed, she
knew, since last she had looked upon that place; but, since the old
times, when they had been wont to visit the laird, her father had passed
from earth for ever, and Glenfiord was not theirs now; and the girl
called another country, home; and the inheritance that was to have been
Malcolm’s had been purchased by strangers; and in the house and gardens
and pleasure grounds, which her dead parent had owned and improved and
prided himself on, she or hers had no right to set foot, unless by
courtesy or sufferance. As a dark thread mingles ever in the web of
human life, no matter of what gay, bright colours the rest of that web
may be woven, so the sad thought of her lost home and of him who had
dwelt there caused one or two tears of sorrow to fall with the many
happy ones that came streaming from the girl’s dark eyes, as she and
Malcolm drew nearer, still nearer, to the lonely lovely nook amid
Highland mountains, where the head of the Frazer clan, the best, the
truest, the worthiest descendant of a proud old race, dwelt peacefully.

“Look up, Mina,” cried her brother, “there they are on the lawn watching
for us.” And, as he spoke, the old laird advanced to meet the vehicle.

There was a wild throbbing at her heart: as she sprang out, a mist fell
upon every object within her range of vision; but still Mina, hanging on
her uncle’s neck, heard his almost inarticulate words of tender welcome
sounding in her ear, and, for one brief moment, she felt, as she had
once said to Miss Caldera she should feel, “that she had not a thought
of care, a wish on earth ungratified.”

“Are you just the same as ever?” demanded the laird, holding her a
little from him and gazing intently into her agitated face, wet with
weeping, yet still bright with smiles, “are you just the same as ever?”

“Not a bit better, uncle,” she answered.

“If you are no worse, I humbly thank God,” said the old man, looking
upwards; “but are you sure,” he added, as though in doubt, “are you
quite sure you have brought the old honest heart you once possessed back
to us again?”

“It has never been away from you,” she earnestly replied; “my body was
in England, but my spirit always remained here; and you, uncle, you are
not in the least altered, but Allan has become a man: dear me! how he
has changed.” And Mina stood for a moment contemplating him whom she had
left a boy, and whom she returned to find as handsome and stately a
specimen of the Highland gentleman as ever crossed the moors, or brought
down, with unerring aim, the wild bird, which finds a perfumed home and
a violent death amid the glowing purple heather.

“Yes, cousin mine,” responded Allan, “I am changed in many ways, and I
have, alas! for me, become a man; but do not delude yourself into the
belief that I am the only one time has touched, for I see you are
“Little Mina” no longer, and the child of the mountains has become quite
a young English lady; and Malcolm, I find, has managed to overtop me: we
are all changed in appearance, two for the better, one for the worse, if
you like to accept the vague compliment, cousin; I hope you will.”

“Is flattery an accomplishment you have learnt since we parted, Allan?”
demanded Mina, suddenly, and the sharp question brought a glow on his
cheek, even while he answered “No.”

“It is,” broke in the old laird; “he is more altered than you are,
notwithstanding he has lived at Craigmaver, and you amongst the noisy
London streets.”

“Send me to London in charge of my fair cousin then, sir, and see
whether the din may not improve me,” was Allan’s response: but Mr.
Frazer merely shook his head in reply, and led Mina off to the house,
sighing as he did so.

Inside the mansion all remained just as his niece had left it: the
deer’s heads and the old swords and gauntlets and pieces of ancient
armour hung in the hall in the same places she remembered they occupied
when she was a very little girl; the furniture in the drawing-room, the
tapestry in the bedchambers, the polished oaken floors, the carved
armchairs, the family portraits, the view from the windows, all were so
like what they had been that, as she wandered through the apartments,
Mina felt as if everything, save herself, must have stood still during
the years that had seemed in London so countless, but which then she
imagined she could clasp at once in her hand—so dream-like did that
portion of the past appear, so real and tangible was the present. The
shore of childhood came, for the instant, so close to that bordering
upon womanhood, that, for the moment, Mina fancied they actually
touched, and forgot the broad wide gulf stretching between the two, over
which she had, in the dreary interim, crossed. As the mariner, after
months and months of weary voyaging, recollects not, when he again
beholds the cliffs of his native land, the pains and perils of the sea,
so the period she had spent in England became a sort of blank, for the
time being, in Mina’s memory; she rejoiced so fervently to come back
once more to find all as she had left it.

All! the girl soon discovered there was a something different in the old
place; what, she could not tell: it was not that they, the inhabitants
of that Highland home, were altered in affection towards her; it was not
that her love for them had suffered any diminution; it was not that less
concord reigned in the domestic circle; that disunion prevailed; that
arguments arose. Mina could not find out what the “something” might be;
and, as it seemed to be independent of her and hers, to be merely a
shadow from some distant cloud, which threw a sort of darkness into that
once perfectly sunshiny house, she gave up, after the first day or two,
speculating concerning it; thus the weeks sped joyously on, and a flush
of greater health than had for years past been seen there, mantled on
her formerly pallid cheek; while Malcolm and she built air castles
innumerable; and time passed, oh! with what swift noiseless feet; life
seeming a sort of fairy dream to Mina during those quiet hours when she
walked and sat with her uncle, and strolled about the gardens, talking
to Saunders and looking at his flowers; when she and her brother and
cousin rode quietly over the moors; and when Allan, in the solemn
twilight, touched the keys of an old pianoforte, and sung songs so
plaintive and beautiful that the girl used to bow her head on her hands
and weep, she knew not why, to hear them.

For Allan Frazer had learned many an accomplishment besides flattery
since the days when they last parted: he was skilled, not merely in
field sports, but also in those other acquirements that make a man be
deemed a welcome guest in the houses of the literary, the fashionable,
the select. He could sketch with a firm, rapid, masterly hand the
scenery of his native land; he could sing, in tones that stole somehow
into the very innermost recesses of the heart, Scotch and Italian and
Spanish airs; he was learned in many sciences, wrote works that
publishers accepted, and poems ladies loved him for inditing; he had
read and studied and thought; and when he went to Edinburgh, clever men
sought him; and the most beautiful women of that metropolis would rather
have danced with Allan Frazer than with many a lord or baronet, for he
was the “fashion” there—Mina’s handsome, elegant, interesting cousin.

“How much you know, Allan,” she remarked to him one day, shortly after
her arrival.

“I have paid a price for it,” he answered, with a strange smile.

Mina paused and looked doubtingly at him for a moment; then she said,

“If I were not afraid of my words sounding tame, after the compliments
uncle tells me you are accustomed to, I would say I never saw any one so
improved in my life.”

“I have gained a good deal I could have done without, Mina,” he replied
a little gravely, “and lost what I can ill spare.”

“Tell me what it is, Allan,” she pleaded, “perhaps it may keep me from
envying you too much; tell me what it is.”

“Peace of mind,” he answered, with a sigh; and Mina, after gazing into
his clouded face, feared that it really was so, though why it should be
she found herself perfectly incompetent to tell.




                              CHAPTER XVI.
                             COUSIN ALLAN.


Time, which hath a way of enlarging our circle of new acquaintances, and
of curtailing, by various painful methods, the number of those whom the
soul in its tenderness loves to call “old friends,” brought, ere she had
been quite a month at Craigmaver, a fresh individual under the notice of
Mina Frazer; one whom, in after life, amid all the cares and troubles
and difficulties of existence, she never forgot.

She—for this new friend, started up in the person of a most lovely and
accomplished woman—appeared somewhat after the sudden wayward fashion of
an apparition before the eyes of the old laird’s niece, whom Allan had
undertaken, as Mina told him, “for want of something better to do,” to
instruct in the manifold mysteries of sketching and shading, of
perspectives and foregrounds.

“There never was a quicker pupil,” so said the master.

“Nor a more patient master,” so said the pupil: and thus, as both,
perhaps, were pretty nearly correct, the work of tuition progressed
pleasantly and rapidly; for Mina had an object in view, and worked
diligently to accomplish it; and Allan, tired and sick of fine ladies as
he was, found himself wonderfully interested in the progress of one who
could be earnest about what he considered such an insignificant trifle
as the carrying back a few of her “own home views” to the country which
circumstances had compelled her to adopt, whether she would or not.

One morning, therefore, in that most unsatisfactory, half smiling, half
weeping month called April, Mina was busily engaged copying in pencil a
landscape Allan had laid before her, whilst he stood near, looking, if
the truth must be told, far oftener at his cousin than the drawing,—and
Malcolm, whom the household generally called indolent, lay stretched at
full length on a sofa, dreaming about his scarlet uniform, and the great
deeds he would perform at some indefinite future period,—when a sound of
horses’ hoofs trampling over the gravel caused Mina to look up from her
employment, and as she did so, the words, “How beautiful!” burst from
her lips; and springing from her seat, she darted to the window to
obtain a nearer view of the object which had attracted her attention.

“Oh! how beautiful!” she again exclaimed. “Allan, do come here and tell
me who it is.” But Allan, without pausing to reply, flung the portfolio,
landscape, half-finished drawing, pencils, and etceteras recklessly into
a corner, and darted out of the room, and down to the principal
entrance, where Mina soon beheld him assisting the new arrival to
dismount; and a few minutes afterwards she came gliding into the
drawing-room, accompanied by a fine military-looking man, and stood
before Mina a vision of feminine loveliness, such as she had never
previously conceived existed, save in the imagination of some great
master of the divine art of painting.

Yes! beautiful she was; beautiful as a dream, as the conception of a
poet, as the ideal of a visionary! If Mina had been born in another land
and educated in a different faith, she might almost have knelt at the
sight of this unexpected visitor, fancying she was a spirit from some
purer, happier, brighter world than ours,—save for the costume, that
assuredly savoured more of earth than heaven, and which proved at once
she was after all only a mortal, though certainly a very superior one;
but which, notwithstanding its sublunary character, set off every
personal gift she was possessed of to the very greatest advantage, and
that she knew perfectly well, wherefore she always wore it, whenever she
had even half an apology for doing so.

It was a riding-habit of the finest blue cloth, which, fitting closely
to her figure, displayed the shape of her shoulders, the slenderness of
her waist, and the gracefulness of her every movement. A small Highland
bonnet made of black velvet, from which depended a drooping feather,
secured by a silver thistle, contrasted well with the luxuriant golden
curls the lady permitted to fall loose and unregarded in rich masses
over her neck. Her eyes were large and of that most beautiful purple
sometimes to be noted in connection with light hair; her features were
small, regular, and perfect, as if they had been chiselled by the hand
of some great sculptor, but a brilliant colour gave life and animation
to the whole; whilst dark eyebrows and still darker lashes redeemed the
countenance from that charge of mawkish sameness, which is frequently
laid—whether justly or unjustly signifies little at present—to the
account of those of beauty’s daughters whom we call—to distinguish them
from their darker sisters—blondes.

But Cecilia Warmond had a far higher charm than any mere loveliness of
feature can confer; she had that which can make a gentlewoman out of the
coarsest and most unpromising materials, redeem the plainest face,
render elegant the meanest home,—the all-pervading, indescribable,
incomprehensible, all-powerful, instantly discernible charm of grace.
There was a something about the way she walked across a room, extended
her hand, accepted a kindness,—in the tone of her voice, in the sound of
her laugh, which would have proved irresistible had she been plain as
she was handsome, old as she was young.

The mere advent of one who had been, during the whole of the preceding
Edinburgh season, the centre of universal attraction, the theme of
general conversation, the courted, the admired, the flattered, was quite
sufficient to account for the way in which the guilty colour came and
went in Allan Frazer’s cheek, for the sudden embarrassment perceptible
in his usual half-careless, half-satirical, whole-fashionable manner.
Mina settled the business ere the ceremony of introduction had taken
place, in a peculiarly feminine mental sentence.

“He is in love with her;” and the time had been when that view of the
question would have proved especially happy and felicitous.

“My cousins, Mr. and Miss Frazer,” said Allan as the drawing-room door
closed upon the new comers. “Mina, Miss Warmond, General Warmond.”

“What a stiff formal introduction, O lord of the mountains,” broke in
the lady, whose rapid eye had scanned “the cousins” at a glance. “Miss
Frazer,” she continued, “I have heard about you ever since I came to
Scotland, and I have wished so much to know you, that when I heard you
were actually at Craigmaver, I could not resist the temptation, but,
setting that bugbear, called by those dreary individuals styled
fashionable people, strict etiquette, at defiance, I persuaded papa to
gallop over with me from Locholen, and, accordingly, here we have come
to ‘make friends’ with you.” And she stretched forth the smallest hand
in the world, encased in the most expensive and _recherché_ of riding
gloves, as she spoke, for Mina’s acceptance.

The girl knew now perfectly who she was, for if, since her arrival at
Craigmaver, the laird’s grandson had never once mentioned the name of
Warmond, she had heard it years previously, when Glenfiord passed away
into the hands of strangers, when she was told that a General Warmond,
who had wedded Miss Gordon of Locholen, was the purchaser of the place
which once had been her father’s, near to which, under the shadow of Ben
Lomond, within sound of the ripple of the lake, he slept his dreamless
sleep—unmindful of scenery, forgetful of sorrow—peacefully.

Yes, she knew her now. This, then, was the lady who resided in the home
that, but for a dreadful misfortune, had still been theirs. A choking
sensation oppressed Mina as those slender fingers clasped hers in
proffered friendship, a sort of darkness came before her eyes; for an
instant a gloom fell over the sunshine, and that faint sickness of the
heart which a great surprise, whether joyful or sorrowful, frequently
induces, caused her to see even the fair vision who spoke so sweetly and
kindly to her, dimly, as if she were beholding unreal objects in some
vague, half-mournful, half-pleasant dream.

It was but for a moment, however, this lasted, for then the full use of
her faculties returned, and Mina could both hear and see.

“And this is your other cousin,” said Miss Warmond, turning her fine
eyes on Malcolm’s handsome face, and speaking actually to him, though
her words seemed addressed to Allan; “this is your other cousin,” and,
with a slightly diffident air, she once again extended the white-gloved
hand to a member of the Frazer family; and the act, and the bright frank
smile which accompanied it, fairly “settled” the susceptible youth, and
caused him to forget all about “grey eyes” and a host of other coloured
orbs he had admired since them, and write in a private mental note book,
wherein he was always setting down and rubbing out facts relative to his
varying ideas of feminine beauty: Mem.—Purple eyes are the most lovely
and expressive in the world.

Poor Malcolm! he never saw a pretty face that he did not fall over head
and ears in love with the owner instanter: it was surely fortunate,
considering the alarming frequency of these attacks, that they did not
last long, for, if they had, the fit must inevitably have proved mortal.

That was a happy day to Mina, for the visitors remained for lunch, and
she and her new friend strolled away together through the gardens; and
then Miss Warmond talked in her soft, low, musical voice, so touchingly
about Glenfiord, that the tears she vainly tried to repress came at last
raining down Mina’s cheeks, and then Cecilia, who was her senior by some
years, kissed the weeping girl and told her how she had often mourned to
think of the child Allan said had almost broken her heart when removed
from amid the flowers and perfume and luxuriance of that wild romantic
home.

“Your name has always possessed a strange interest for me,” added Miss
Warmond; “therefore, now we have at last met, I hope we shall be real
friends.”

“If you will let me be fond of you,” said Mina impetuously, “I will love
you always; I never saw anybody so beautiful as you are in all my life
before; I never saw any one I thought I could like one half so well:”
and thus, on the spot, a friendship was formed, destined to last as long
as such absurd friendships ever do last, but not an instant longer.

There was something perfectly charming, the young girl thought, in Miss
Warmond’s manner towards her uncle; it was so respectful, so
deferential, yet, withal, so playful and captivating, that Mina did not
marvel to notice how completely the laird was fascinated by it.

“There was nobody in the world like Cecilia,” so the General evidently
thought, so Mr. Frazer felt convinced; and Mina and Malcolm endorsed
this opinion without further inquiry or the slightest hesitation.

For, if the sister had seen a few disagreeable and repelling women in
the course of her short passage across life’s ocean, she had never met
with a false one; so she accepted the friendship (which, if she had been
a little older or a little wiser, she would have known could not be
worth much, else it had never been so freely offered) with a frank,
trusting heart; knowing no deceit herself, the idea of it in another
never crossed her mind: besides, who, looking at Cecilia, could dream of
deceit? The surface mirror was apparently too clear and transparent to
induce a belief that the slightest dross _might_ perhaps be found lying
at the bottom of a heart which, seemingly guileless as a child’s, was
really so perfectly choked up with dangerous thoughts and black deceit
and jealous feelings, that truth had long since fled from the citadel in
disgust and taken up her abode in better, though possibly less inviting
looking, quarters.

Cecilia kindly took upon herself the task of teaching Mina the exact
meaning of the word “hypocrisy;” but, as it was long ere the girl
discovered her benevolent intention, she took her as she seemed, and
liked her accordingly. And Malcolm. Why, if any one had informed him
Miss Warmond was not quite so good as she seemed, he would have
answered, like a great, good-natured, foolish, overgrown boy, who
thought himself a man, as he was,

“Well, you see, I don’t mind that; if a woman be but pretty, I can
forgive her anything.”

So every one was satisfied that bright April day, save, perhaps, Allan
Frazer, and matters went smoothly, as they generally do, on the occasion
of tolerably short visits, when people are inclined to be mutually
pleased, and when one or two agreeable talkers and a proportionate
number of patient listeners are present: but at length General Warmond
declared they must positively go, and so Cecilia, after saying all sorts
of pretty things, tripped gracefully across the hall and down the steps,
and was obliging enough to permit Malcolm to help her to the saddle and
adjust the reins properly for her; after which she bade farewell to all
the Craigmaver gentlemen, and rode off down the avenue, not forgetting,
however, as she did so, to turn round and kiss her hand to Mina, who
stood watching her departure from one of the drawing-room windows.

The girl caught herself sighing when the Highland bonnet disappeared
altogether from sight; if she could but have known what sorrow the lady
who wore it was destined to cause her, she might have gone down on her
knees and prayed she should never more behold it: but Mina possessed not
the vision of a seer, and so, quite excited with the events of the day,
and delighted to think of the beautiful being, who, though so perfectly
fascinating, deigned to call her “friend,” she took possession of her
uncle’s arm, and walked in with him to dinner.

“I was not aware, Allan,” said old Mr. Frazer, after a long ominous
pause, which, contrary to custom, succeeded the withdrawal of the cloth,
“I was not aware, Allan, you had been over at Locholen, yesterday.”

“I happened to be in the neighbourhood, sir,” answered his grandson,
“and called to inquire how Mr. Gordon was.”

“And found General and Miss Warmond there,” added Mr. Frazer.

“Yes, they arrived the day previously, I believe,” responded Allan, who
was, to all intents and purposes, apparently so much engrossed in the
difficult operation of peeling an apple, that he could not raise his
eyes and look straight at his grandfather as he spoke.

Mr. Frazer impatiently cracked one or two nuts, and then said hurriedly,

“Would it not have been better, more _comme il faut_ altogether, for
Mina to have called on Miss Warmond? If I had known she was at
Locholen”——

“I told Miss Warmond,” interposed Allan, “that as Mina was not very
strong, and the distance between us was so great, I feared my cousin
would be unable to call until the weather was a little more settled; so
she very kindly said she would not stand on ceremony, but ride ten long
miles here, and ten equally long back again, to see her, as she has
done.”

There was a tone in Allan’s voice, and a look in his eyes as he uttered
the foregoing sentence, which Mina could not understand; it was not
precisely a sneer that disfigured his face, nor was it an expression of
pain; but it was a something so certainly very far from agreeable, that
the girl caught herself thinking.

“I must have been mistaken; he cannot be in love with her:” and yet, as
she was unable to reconcile his manner towards Miss Warmond with this
new version of an old subject, she determined to leave time to solve an
enigma she was getting tired of puzzling over, to wit, the heart of her
cousin Allan. But that very evening he so provoked her with silently
listening to all her enthusiastic observations respecting Miss Warmond,
and replying “never a word” to them, that she fairly forgot about “time”
altogether; and wishing to get to the bottom of the matter at once,
indignantly demanded,

“Allan, can you admire nothing?”

The young man looked earnestly away to the distant hills, scarcely
visible through the gathering twilight, and a sort of shadow, as if from
them, fell over his face as he did so; after a moment’s pause he
answered,

“The stern old mountains, and the bright, healthy, happy child; the pure
face of nature, and the honest face of man: everything on which our God
has set the stamp of grandeur, or of loveliness, or of goodness, I
admire.”

There was a solemnity in this reply, very different from the usual
careless indifference of his remarks; but still Mina remained
unsatisfied.

“Then do you not think Miss Warmond very beautiful?”

“I consider her the handsomest, the most accomplished, the most
fascinating heiress in Scotland,” he responded; “what induced you to
imagine, cousin Mina, I was blind to her perfections?”

“The way you have got of praising either not at all, or else against
your will,” replied his cousin: “I never fancied it possible for any
mere mortal to be so surpassingly lovely; I never even dreamt of such a
face before, and, at first, I fancied you thought her a sort of angel
too; but now, Allan, I cannot make you out exactly. I do not understand
you at all; I wish I could.”

“You need not, Mina,” he replied, smiling grimly; “the knowledge of
myself I have lately acquired has brought little happiness to me; it
could not give any to you. Suppose we let the matter rest there.”

“I have always felt just the same towards you as to Malcolm,” Mina
returned, not heeding the latter portion of the foregoing sentence; “and
I am sure, though you are so clever and so much changed in many ways,
you consider me quite as much your sister as ‘in the old days departed;’
and therefore I should like greatly to ask you one question—you won’t be
angry with me, will you? may I ask it?”

“Go on,” said Allan, gazing forth more fixedly than ever into the gloom.

“Are you really unhappy, or is it only a habit you have acquired of
talking as if you were? is there really any sorrow—any pressing sorrow I
mean—in your heart?”

“There is,” he briefly answered.

“And the cause, dear Allan, may I not know it?”

He paused for a moment, as if irresolute; then repressing the strong
inclination he felt to tell her all, he said,

“No, Mina, my own ‘little’ sister Mina, as I used to call you, you must
not ask me anything more about myself ever; you will be fond of me,
spite of my faults, and we will be great friends always, shall we not?”

He held out his hand as he spoke, as if to seal, with a good honest
pressure, the cousinly compact; then, gliding away to the piano, he
sung—more sweetly and mournfully than Mina had ever before heard him
sing—old laments and hymns and dirges that made the girl’s heart
sorrowful within her and caused Malcolm, who, having been out with the
laird, returned at this juncture, to declare Allan had mistaken his
vocation, for he was only fit for one of three callings, to wit, a
parson, a parish clerk, or an undertaker.


                            END OF VOLUME I.


                                LONDON:
            Printed by SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15, Old Bailey.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77931 ***