THE
MOORS AND THE FENS.
BY
F. G. TRAFFORD.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
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 New Friend 1
II.— The Way of the World 22
III.— Marry in Haste, &c. 44
IV.— The Road to Fortune 63
V.— Sir Ernest “Scatters his Enemies” 83
VI.— A Dream of Youth 107
VII.— Crumbs of Comfort 127
VIII.— A Sudden Blow 141
IX.— The Next of Kin 160
X.— A Proposal 169
XI.— Mina “in Training” 196
XII.— The Moors once more 214
XIII.— A Woman’s Weapons 231
XIV.— Mina Triumphant 255
XV.— Stony-hearted London 278
XVI.— Mina rushes on her Fate 297
THE MOORS AND THE FENS.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW FRIEND.
There were no bounds to the affection Miss Warmond had conceived, or
professed to have conceived, for Mina Frazer: her parents had, no doubt,
entertained a sort of love for the girl; Malcolm, possibly, might be
fond enough of his sister; the laird and Allan were evidently deeply
interested concerning her welfare; but to have seen and heard Miss
Warmond, one really would have imagined that her very soul was wrapt up
in her new friend; that Mina Frazer was to her, light, air, sunshine;
that where she lived, happiness must ever abide.
Now, every one among us has probably met, at one period or other, some
bright sunshiny face that claimed and received at once, without the
usual dreary preliminary fee, called long acquaintance, a portion of his
regard, a corner in his memory, a very abundant share of friendship;
and, therefore, to deny that occasionally an individual may jump into an
intimacy, and not repent of his rashness afterwards, would be an
absurdity. But for one person who leaps and finds good safe ground under
his feet, fifty discover they have managed to entangle themselves in a
very difficult quagmire. The rule is, that friendship, being an affair
of sense and reason, and not a dream of sentiment, ought to be the
result of long acquaintance and great watchfulness; and the exception
that, as some people are possessed of the great art of making themselves
liked at once, the acceptance of their hand in friendship is not an act
always to be dreaded, though it may be well to perform even that simple
operation with a sufficient amount of caution to lessen the risk of
subsequent disappointment.
A limited number of individuals are perfectly irresistible: if they say,
“You shall like me,” they are sure to accomplish their purpose; and if
one of this chosen band do occasionally work mischief, the victim is
rarely blamed for being so absurdly “taken in,” everybody knowing that
some human beings, like some snakes, are impotent to repel the power of
“fascination,” and that it is not in the nature of man to be always
suspecting evil, more especially when it lies hidden under honied words
and kind looks and noble sentiments.
And so, if Mina Frazer had been a peculiarly “captivating creature,” a
bright cheerful gladsome being, going about claiming a corner in every
heart, a joyful greeting in every home, who had mixed much in society,
and yet remained unspoiled by it, who went through the world gathering
friends as others do enemies at each brief stopping-place, Miss Warmond
might have professed an undying attachment for her on the occasion of a
first interview, without incurring the imputation of telling fibs; but,
as it unfortunately chanced that she was the enchantress, it resulted
that Mina was the dupe of Cecilia, who succeeded to perfection in
throwing all sorts of dust into the unsuspecting eyes of the laird’s
niece, a feat she had often successfully performed on the much keener
orbs of wiser and older persons.
Mina Frazer was a girl to become gradually interested in, not perhaps to
be taken with soon, but to remember for long; to value, not for any
particular grace, or ease of manner, or felicity of expression, or
striking beauty, but for the real genuineness of her character, the
steadiness of her nature, and the earnest truth and purity of her heart.
It is said that extremes meet, that opposites agree, and if any one who
had acquired the least insight into Miss Warmond, could have dreamt of
believing her sincere in anything save her aversions, the above
paradoxes might have accounted for the sudden affection she evinced
towards Mina. But Cecilia denied that they were dissimilar in aught
“save manner and, _perhaps_, appearance:” she said, “their tastes,
thoughts, feelings were identical;” and her new friend believed this
statement to be perfectly correct, for the General’s daughter could
“seem all things to all men,”—sneer with the scoffer and pray with the
Christian; she laughed with the hopeful and sighed with the desponding;
she had a clever story or witty repartee for those whose temperament was
more mirthful than melancholy, and yet there was not a chord of
sentiment, a tone of grief, she was not capable of sounding for the
edification of the romantic, the world-tired, the unhappy.
Her mind was just like her piano, she could draw anything from it she
pleased; whatever air was called for, whether joyful or sorrowful,
plaintive or spirit-stirring, mournful or triumphant, holy or profane,
came ready to order.
All she required was a hint as to the sort of melody her auditor
fancied; that sufficed, for simple ballad or brilliant bravura, slow
dirge or rapid concerto, all seemed alike to her.
“She is so clever she can do anything,” said her father.
Perhaps it might have been quite as well had fewer talents been
entrusted to her keeping, for then she could not have been held
accountable for the misuse of so many.
There is, however, a charm about real simplicity of character, which
exercises a strange spell even over those whose minds are as full of
twists and turns as was the Cretan labyrinth of old; and thus, perhaps,
as Mina was by no means so accomplished or so handsome as Miss Warmond,
and appeared, in that lady’s eyes, in the light “of quite a chit of a
child,” it is just possible, at the bottom of the immense mountain of
absurd pretence which the General’s daughter raised and styled
attachment, there may have originally existed a little grain of that
indefinite article, liking, beyond which, staid, sensible people never
go,—further than which it might be well for many never to venture.
Mina’s boundless admiration probably flattered the vanity of one whose
desire for praise was, indeed, almost unlimited; besides, Miss Warmond
had a few very cogent reasons for affecting, in the present instance, a
fondness she was incapable of feeling; and accordingly she lavished such
an amount of attachment on the girl, that Mr. Frazer felt quite
gratified, and Mina wrote Miss Caldera a long letter full, as that lady
drily remarked, of “Cecilia Warmond;” and Malcolm—who, whenever he once
became enamoured of a face that pleased him, went on from stage to stage
of absurdity till he grew tired of it, or saw something which pleased
him better—began to think, in the superlative vanity and conceit of his
boyish heart, that the Edinburgh belle, the heiress of Glenfiord, must
have taken a fancy to his mother’s darling,—that, in short, the lady’s
love for the sister was caused solely by her love for the brother;
whilst Allan, who alone fully comprehended the whole business, sneered
as he looked grimly on, for it was Cecilia Warmond who had contrived,
with sweet smiles and sweeter words, to cast the shadow over Craigmaver,
the cloud across the soul of Mina’s clever cousin.
No mortal ever ventured within the magic circle of her attractions who
passed out scatheless therefrom; no one who once gazed admiringly upon
her, ever subsequently forgot that woman: she was not a being to be
looked at, flirted with, talked to, flung by, and forgotten, but a
creature to remember, not for a few hours merely, but through life.
People liked her too soon, and despised her too late; nobody ever “found
her out” in time: friend, suitor, enemy, it was just the same,—Cecilia,
in due course, wrought sorrow for them all; if any one loved her with a
lasting attachment, it was grievous to have to part from her; and it was
a worse fate to stay long enough beside her to get a glimpse of the dark
turnings of her heart, and yet not be able to leave the enchantress,
whose songs had ceased to be melodious, whose tones struck harshly on
the ear, whose smiles wearied the eye, whose artifices had no more power
to delude; who, the more her captive struggled to be free, held him the
tighter; who said to those desirous to become her slaves, “I want you
not, away from my presence, and be happy if you can;” and to those who
loathed the fetters they had once foolishly permitted her to bind around
them, “I will never unloose the chain, and every effort you make to
escape me only renders my determination stronger.”
It was, perhaps, merely an act of retributive justice, that Allan
Frazer, the most incorrigible flirt who ever existed, should finally
meet with his “match” in the person of Cecilia Warmond; still it was a
hard fate. He had rushed willingly into the trap; and then he would have
given all he possessed on earth to get out of it again: but he had
caught the bait too greedily to escape the hook, and a hand, strong and
cruel, though apparently weak and merciful, held the line,—and, spite of
her assumed negligence and careless demeanour and teazing and
tormenting, held it, as Allan well knew, securely also.
And for all this, the young man confessed he had nobody to thank but
himself: he had fallen so desperately in love with Miss Warmond the
season previously, when she first “came out” in Edinburgh, after various
“comings out” in London, Paris, and elsewhere, that he had neglected
every other pursuit, abandoned every other object, and devoted the whole
of his thoughts, energies, and talents to one great end, namely, that of
inducing her to care for him; and when, thanks to his being at that time
the “rage,” he had succeeded in effecting this purpose, he never rested,
by night nor by day, till he had gained a promise from General Warmond,
that whenever Cecilia was one-and-twenty she should become his wife. He
had, in fine, managed, in the course of a few brief months, to get
himself so hopelessly entangled with her and her connections—to rush so
far along the dangerous road leading to matrimony, without once
seriously thinking of whom he actually intended to take for better, for
worse—that when, before marriage, he contrived to do, what many of his
relatives had accomplished after that event, namely, fall out of love
again, he found, to his unspeakable dismay, that retreat was utterly
impossible.
His grandfather beheld the lady in Edinburgh, just when Allan’s
affection for her was at fever heat; and the beauty, the vivacity, the
grace, the position, the pretended high-mindedness, and the assumed
amiability of the General’s daughter, so completely captivated old Mr.
Frazer, that, with a tremulous voice, he told the young man that the
“dearest, proudest wish of his heart would be fulfilled when he brought
her home to Craigmaver—a bride;” and thus matters progressed charmingly,
till General Warmond and his daughter returned to Glenfiord, and invited
Allan to go with them there.
Then, at last, light dawned on his eyes; and when they were opened, he
beheld, like the disenchanted visitor to some fairy palace, deformity
instead of beauty, affectation in the place of what he had fondly called
candour; in fact, just as paper, on which words unintended to meet the
common eye have been traced, when held before the fire, presents,
instead of its former pure white surface, dark tracings, whose very
existence was previously unsuspected, so the apparent guilelessness of
Cecilia’s character, when presented calmly and steadily to view in the
clear searching light of truth, was seen to be spotted all over with
stains of hypocrisy, envy, uncharitableness, and selfishness.
He remained a fortnight to note the process, became restless, uneasy,
unhappy, and returned to Craigmaver so altered, as to cause his
grandfather to mourn over the fickleness of his character, to lament the
change society and flattery, and the pomps and vanities of the world,
had wrought in the soul of the boy he had educated and been proud of, as
if he had been a still nearer relation than was actually the case—his
own son.
The quondam lover dared not explicitly state the opinion he had recently
arrived at about Miss Warmond; first, because it was not one great fact
that could be related against her, but a series of little droppings that
had made such fearful inroads on his affection; second, because he had
heard the old remark cavillers made anent the inconstancy of his race in
matters of the heart; and, as he knew himself sufficiently well to be
compelled to admit he could admire more ardently than steadily, he was
aware that if he confessed the whole state of affairs to his
grandfather, he would only be met with charges of changeableness and
caprice, from which, on account of various foregone circumstances, he
should be perfectly unable to clear himself.
Besides, what was the use of speaking! it was utterly impossible for him
to draw back now with honour: if he jilted the girl whom he had
professed to adore, it would blast his own prospects and break his
uncle’s heart; and, besides, if Miss Warmond really cared for him—which
vanity whispered was more than possible—he must marry her, there was no
help for it. Fifty times a day Allan cursed his overhaste and his folly
and his unlucky destiny, in terms that would have alarmed the old
laird’s piety had he heard him: and thus, pining and fretting, because
of the chain he had doomed himself to wear, the young man dragged over a
few weeks, at the expiration of which time Mina and her brother arrived
at Craigmaver.
During those weeks, however, a sort of comprehension of the storm raging
within his grandson’s bosom had dawned on the old laird’s brain, and the
very day before their relative’s arrival he asked Allan abruptly,
“Do you repent this engagement?”
“Bitterly,” was the answer, which almost involuntarily escaped the happy
lover’s lips; “but there is no use in talking, I cannot recede; I have
gone too far for that: if beggaring myself could free me, I would
relinquish every shilling I possess; I would give up every dream of
fame, every hope in life, to have my liberty restored, to undo ever
having seen or spoken to Cecilia Warmond.”
“I never had but one fault to find with this alliance, Allan,” responded
the laird, sadly; “I feared you were too unsteady to make any woman
permanently happy: you have been flattered and caressed by the beautiful
and the amiable till you have grown like a spoiled child, dissatisfied
with everything; you weary of the loveliest faces and the most
interesting pursuits the moment they lose the charm of novelty; my
conviction is,” he added, earnestly, “that Miss Warmond is too good to
throw herself away on a ridiculous fellow, who has not the sense to
value the pure sterling love of such a creature, when he knows himself
to be actually in possession of it.”
“I hope you may always think so, sir,” responded Allan, as he turned to
leave the room; “and I only wish you could persuade Miss Warmond to
become a convert to your opinion. However,” he continued, noticing the
shade that came over his grandfather’s face, “I have no intention of
running off my engagement; I shall marry whenever the proper time comes:
meanwhile, all I ask is no conversation on the subject: I must endeavour
to forget her for a space, and try whether absence will, in my
unfortunate case, make ‘the heart grow fonder.’”
And accordingly from that hour the lady’s name was never mentioned at
Craigmaver till she herself appeared there, for Mr. Frazer had great
faith that separation and silence would rekindle the flame; and Allan,
feeling that when near Mina he breathed a purer atmosphere than was his
wont, not merely, during the course of the month succeeding her arrival,
strove to forget Miss Warmond altogether, but occasionally succeeded in
this laudable object.
For he was, indeed, fickle as the winds; and, though, had any one told
him he was “getting up a flirtation with Mina, his cousin,” she who had
been so lately a child, he would indignantly have rejected the idea; yet
there cannot be a doubt that he was travelling very fast towards it,
when Miss Warmond’s unexpected visit to Locholen startled him from his
dream, and roused him to a full memory of how he was situated, whom he
had proposed for, ay, and actually intended to marry.
He would fain have kept Mina and her apart; but Mr. Gordon knew of the
advent of his cousins, and he could not deny that they were still at
Craigmaver: he pleaded Mina’s delicacy as an apology for deferring a
visit to some indefinite period; but the General’s daughter was too
skilful a tactician to be so put off. See the new arrival she was
determined she would; indeed, the instant she had heard of the flutter
of a petticoat having been noticed on the lawn of Allan’s home, her
curiosity had become painfully excited, and accordingly she volunteered
to lay aside all ceremony, and “come and make friends with the old
laird’s niece,” of whom she had heard so much ever since her arrival in
Scotland.
And finding Mina as unlike a rival as can well be imagined, she took the
girl thenceforth under her caressing hand, petted and fondled her, and
treated her as if she had been a favourite kitten; and poor Mina, never
once imagining aught so beautiful could ever treat her unkindly, gave
herself up altogether to the care of the lovely vision, who had glanced
so unexpectedly across her path.
Locholen was such a distance from Craigmaver, Cecilia found it
impossible to see as much as she desired of her new friend, so she
appeared one day in a handsome open carriage, and carried Mina off
bodily with her; but when pressed by the laird to come and spend a
little time with his niece, she answered, shaking her curls till their
brightness arrested the very sunbeams and caused them to fling rich
golden shades on the tresses of her luxuriant hair,
“No, no, the dear grandpapa at home could not do without me at all; I
cannot leave him during my brief visit, even for a day;” and so Mina
passed the greater portion of a fortnight at Locholen, during which
period Miss Warmond, by dint of a little judicious feminine cross
questioning, contrived to get everything out of her she wanted to know,
which, in plain English, meant that Mina was so foolish as to tell her
all the particulars of her life, all about her uncle and Malcolm, and
Mr. Westwood and Miss Caldera, and Ernest Ivraine, and everybody and
everything; and the young lady, when she had read her through like a
book, breathed freely and felt satisfied.
She had never met any one who resembled his niece, she assured the Laird
of Craigmaver; there was a something so perfectly natural and
unsophisticated about her, so different from the generality of the girls
she had known, it really was quite refreshing to talk with her; and, in
fine, she did talk so effectually to all, that it was ultimately agreed
Mina should return with her to Glenfiord, and General Warmond politely
hoped “Mr. Frazer, his grandson, and nephew would accompany them also.”
“Should you like to have a peep at your old home, my pet?” demanded Miss
Warmond of the girl, when she had fairly set matters in train to effect
the grand explosion she contemplated; “should you like to see Ben Lomond
and Loch Lomond, and the flowers and the fields and the trees of
Glenfiord once more?”
“I should be so glad,” answered Mina, after a pause, “so very glad to
see it, only—only—I should be so sorry.”
“Not to come and be my sister there for a while, surely?” said the
other; “you have not lost that home, remember, you have only changed it,
as you will again change your present one for a brighter and a happier;
think of it in that light: let me take you back there and we will talk
about anything you like under the shadow of the hills, sitting beside
the waterfalls, looking over the silent lake.”
Mina gazed into the distance, as if, at the end of some long vista of
silent thought, she beheld Glenfiord beckoning to her: all her
childhood’s memories came gently up before her—the old haunting sorrow,
the happiness of the present, the possibilities of the future; and at
length her heart became so full of feelings, half sorrowful, half
pleasant, that she laid her head on her friend’s shoulder and burst into
tears; for the silly child had a way of crying whenever her father or
her old home was mentioned, for which Cecilia secretly despised her.
“She does not weep,” thought that amiable individual, “for things worth
crying about,—for the want of society and equipages, and excitement; but
she maudles concerning a man who has been dead for years, and a place
which, though well enough in its way, is nothing remarkable.” Yet, spite
of this soliloquy, the young lady bent down her head and kissed the
broad smooth forehead, and said, by way of diverting her thoughts, and
turning them into a pleasanter channel,
“You shall see everything about the place, if you will come, from the
new wine cellar up to my eccentric cousin, who lives there, and
housekeeps for me.”
“I never heard you speak of her before,” answered Mina.
“Well, she was not worth speaking about; she is a most exemplary piece
of mechanism,—always keeps in time, never gets out of tune; is made up
of conscientiousness, religion, and economy; has not a single idea
beyond strict decorum, tidiness, and cleanliness, though she is trying
to acquire one or two more to please a clergyman who astonished us all
one day by proposing for her, after we had set her down as an old
maid,—a Glenfiord fixture, who was to go on having things made
comfortable for the household generally till the end of time. Principle
and propriety are her virtues; she possesses no others, and she has no
foibles or sins, unless, indeed, not thinking very highly of me can be
classed as one of the latter.”
“Does she not think highly of you, then?” demanded Mina.
“No, she has not nearly so good an opinion of me as she ought,” replied
Miss Warmond, laughing. “I am not neat enough, nor economical enough, to
suit her ideas; perhaps when I am as old as she I may improve: meantime,
however, she imagines I am far from what I ought to be.”
“That is strange,” said Mina; “I thought nobody in the world could wish
you to be different from what you are.”
“Oh! but then you are not a prim, stiff, starchedup old maid,” suggested
the other; “I often wonder what could have attracted her reverend
suitor, for she is not rich or beautiful or accomplished or anything.”
“Is not she good?” asked Mina, and the question, simple though it was,
brought a colour into her friend’s cheek, as she hastily answered,
“To be sure, she is; perfectly, unexceptionably good: but mere goodness,
you are aware, is occasionally rather uninviting.”
“Perhaps so,” said Mina; “but still it is valuable, for all that: and
what,” she added, after this little hint, which was given more
innocently than hint ever was, “what is he—the clergyman—like?”
“He! not what either you or I would choose,” responded Miss Warmond;
“but he is well enough, and has a little money, and everybody agrees is
quite good enough for her. He wears shoes an inch thick in the sole, it
is true, and despises etiquette, and ‘values only the mind, and not the
setting,’ he says—which inuendo I always pretend not to understand—and,
oh! he is just another piece of mechanism, wound up to perform certain
duties in a certain manner: they will get on capitally together; you
shall see him when you come, and every other individual of note who
visits at my present quiet home; I suppose it won’t be my home for very
long, though.”
“Why, is General Warmond going to sell it?” abruptly demanded Mina, a
wild yearning for wealth to purchase it rising in her bosom.
“No, silly one,” responded the other, “I said _my_ home, not his.”
Her friend gazed earnestly in her face for a moment; then, as if she had
solved a mystery, she exclaimed,
“You must be going to be married; is not that it?”
“Perhaps!” was the reply.
“You said, a minute or two ago, that clergyman was not what either you
or I would choose for a husband. I have never reflected about choosing
any, but you must; please tell me what he is like?”
“Wonderfully like your cousin Allan,” said Miss Warmond, smiling.
“Is it he? are you going to marry him, are you really?” Mina demanded;
and as the words “I am” fell on her ear, she cried, flinging her arms
around the neck of her relative that was to be, “Oh! I am so glad—so
very glad; then we shall be cousins, next to sisters, you know, dear,
dear, Cecilia.”
Dear Cecilia felt quite gratified at this way “of receiving the news,”
for it proved conclusively that Mina had never entertained any evil
designs on the pre-occupied heart of Allan Frazer; still it did strike
her as something remarkable that the matter should never have been named
before such close connexions; and she, therefore, to make assurance
doubly sure, inquired,
“Did your cousin never tell you we were engaged?”
“Never,” was the answer.
“Strange,” half murmured Miss Warmond; then added, “well, you must not
mention the matter to any one till I give you permission; promise me you
won’t, even to your brother.”
“I promise,” said Mina; and, after that brief sentence had passed her
lips, she would as soon have dreamt of cutting off her right hand as of
betraying a trust, no matter of what nature, which had once been
confided to her: and that Miss Warmond possessed penetration enough to
know; wherefore she had done, what ladies are sometimes in the habit of
doing, sounded the girl by telling her a secret, and bidding her keep it
safely.