THE WAY OF THE WORLD.
“And so, Mr. Malcolm, ye’re goin to take a man’s look over the place
your sister first opened her eyes to the light of heaven in.”
It was Colin Saunders who spoke the above sentence; and Mina’s brother
who responded, as he pulled a flower to pieces and scattered the leaves
carelessly on the ground,
“Well, Colin?”
“Weel,” repeated Saunders, a little tartly; “many a one says weel, weel,
when it ne’er was waur wi’ them.” And, after concluding the above
sententious remark, he looked with such a meaning glance at his auditor,
that the young gentleman was induced to demand, more hastily than
politely,
“What the devil he meant.”
“The deevil and me has no sort of connexion,” remarked Colin gravely,
“further than the universal one Adam and Eve made up with him by
partaking of his food, the apple, off the tree of knowledge, which
brought sin and death into the world, and——”
“Oh! stop your preaching, Saunders,” interposed Malcolm; “I never could
stand sermonizing, even in my youngest days; and, since I left Scotland,
I have been knocking too much about the world, and have met too many
kinds of people, to have learned to ‘stand fire’ a single bit better
than ever.”
“The Lord takes his own time,” groaned forth the man; “but,” he
added,—noticing his late master’s son removing one foot from the stump
of an old tree, preparatory to finishing the discussion by “moving
off,”—“but I had not the design of taking the work of reforming you in
hand myself, believing it would be useless; all I wanted to ask was, if
you would be so obliging as not to couple my name and that of him that’s
no canny together in a single sentence.”
“Well, I’ll try not,” said Malcolm; “but it can do you no harm, and it
is, after all, only a habit I have got; I suppose swearing is a sort of
sin, but still I like it, and so I go on with it, as with smoking and
one or two other accomplishments I learnt in the navy.”
“There is many a thing, sir, ye like besides what ye learned in the navy
that won’t benefit ye much, either here or hereafter.”
“Indeed; I am not aware——” commenced Malcolm, with a very abortive
attempt at a guiltless demeanour.
“That a pretty face could mak’ you do ony single folly in the world;
that you are fonder of sitting beside a woman’s piano, galloping wi’ her
over the moors, and walking wi’ her through the gardens, than of going
bravely out and working like a man. Tak’ care, Master Malcolm Frazer,
tak’ care.”
“Of what?” demanded that personage.
“Of her,” replied Colin, “of the lady all Craigmaver, that is, all the
gentlefolk part of it, has run mad, I think, about: the General’s
handsome daughter, Miss Cecilia Warmond.”
“Why, you don’t think that she is in any imminent peril, that you bid me
have such especial charge of her, do you?” said Mr. Frazer, wilfully
misinterpreting the man’s words.
“I do not think _she_ is in any great danger, except what she may choose
to make for herself; but I am sure you are,” replied the gardener: “it
maybe won’t kill you—such like, seldom do—but you’ll get yourself hurt;
and if I were Mr. Malcolm Frazer, I would neither go to Glenfiord myself
nor let Miss Mina be for ever on wi’ the mistress of it.”
The youth turned first red and then pale; but determining not to be
“worsted” by Colin, he answered,
“As to myself, I am pretty competent, I fancy, to keep out of harm’s
way; and, with regard to the young lady, what possible injury she can
have done you or yours, I confess is a mystery to me.”
“I never said she did me or mine an injury, but I do say she will,
maybe, do you and yours one, some day or other; however, I see I might
as well try to stop the rivers from running as to turn a gentleman on to
the right gait, when he has once made up his mind to take the wrang. I
never do go out of my way and say a word against those whom my betters
have taken a fancy to, but I repent it;” and Colin commenced hacking and
hewing away at an unfortunate tree he had been engaged in pruning in a
more scientific manner, before Mr. Frazer’s advent set his brains
rambling to other and more important subjects.
“I think you are perfectly incorrigible, Colin,” said the young man;
“you are just the same as I remember you years ago: not the least
changed in any one respect.”
“Well,” answered Saunders, “I am sure I might say the same of my old
master’s son, for what he had as a boy, I see he has carried up to
manhood with him; but I did not mean to offend ye, sir: I am sorry if I
have done so, only as I know it would have been well for Mr. Allan if he
had never looked twice in that lady’s face, I thought I would just make
so free as to give you a hint, which, as I might have expected, you
don’t feel obliged to me for; and I hope, sir, you may never find my
words come true. And now I have no more to say, except that I trust the
Lord will take better care of you and that kindly-hearted child Miss
Mina (who, I thank God, is _not_ changed) than either of you seem
willing or able to do for yourselves:” and, as Malcolm, after muttering,
“A pious finale to a prosy sentence,” strolled off, whistling, the old
man gave over pruning, and stood sadly gazing at his retreating figure
till it disappeared altogether, when he exclaimed,
“You will have sense taught you some time or another: I hope it wunna
come to you as it did to your father, too late to benefit either him or
those who were near to him. Ah, well-a-day! to think o’ _his_ children
going back to that place wi’ her.”
Poor Colin did more than think about them going, for he saw their
departure.
“I never saw good come of a woman who could not keep her mouth quiet,
who was for ever smiling or laughing or singing or talking or
something,” he soliloquised. “There surely is a ‘thraw’ in her, some
place, she wants to hide, or she would let herself be at peace
sometimes, if it was but by way o’ variety.”
And one other person in the world besides Saunders had grown weary of
the eternal brightness of Cecilia’s face, who journeyed to Glenfiord as
he would to a funeral, and took up his abode there as he might in a cell
in Newgate.
He said he was ill, to account for his lack of spirits, and the laird,
who thought he really was so, backed this assertion so warmly that their
host grew quite uneasy about him, and Cecilia tormented him with so many
kindnesses that he often ungallantly wished she were lying at the bottom
of the lake; whilst Malcolm, who, in such cases, was blind as an owl
with the light shining full on him, fancied his cousin was jealous of
the progress he had made in Miss Warmond’s affections, and Mina and the
quiet mechanical cousin wondered and surmised, but said nothing.
It had been a source of much astonishment to Mina to find the said
“cousin” a placid, amiable looking person of about thirty, with no token
of extreme eccentricity about her, who seemed to have only one object
and aim in life, and that to make others happy, and to forget herself as
completely as if such an individual had no place on the outside of the
round ball we live on; and it had been a still greater matter of
surprise to her, when, on the night of their arrival, she heard—after
Cecilia had kissed her twenty times and wished her pleasant dreams and
departed—first, a gentle tap at her chamber door, and then beheld the
door opened, without ceremony, by Miss Lynd, who walked in and closed it
after her.
“Do you ever take advice?” asked the lady, gazing from the elevated
point of view, which superiority of height gave her, on the girl, who,
having been engaged, ere she entered, in the task of settling her long
refractory tresses for the night, stood now, brush in hand,
contemplating her unexpected visitor. “Do you ever take advice?”
“Sometimes, if I like it,” responded Mina, a vivid memory of Miss
Caldera’s rejected counsel recurring to her.
“But if it happen to be good would you refuse to accept advice, solely
because it might seem a little disagreeable?”
“Well, no,” returned Mina, after a pause, “not if I thought it good
too.”
“Do you, then, never take anything on trust?” was the next question.
“Scarcely ever.”
“Not even a friend?” Miss Lynd inquired.
Mina made no answer, but fastened her eyes on the other’s face as she
proceeded:
“In a general way I permit people to plod along their several paths
without dreaming of interfering with them; but you are so young, I have
thought it my duty to give you this warning—never make a confidante of
one you have not known well and long; place nothing in anybody’s power,
and believe that occasionally a fair exterior may conceal a false
heart.”
“Do you mean to imply——?” commenced Mina, indignantly.
“Nay, nay, do not get into a passion; you think me prejudiced,
eccentric, odd, I know,—in fact ere you came here you were possibly
taught to expect to meet something decidedly peculiar; and, perhaps,
trouble, which has not spared me, may have made me different from my
happier fellows: but still I am a great deal older than you; and,
because of your extreme youth, because you have no mother or sister or
friend near, I have come to say, that the less of your private affairs
you tell any one, in the course of your passage through life, the
greater is the probability of your making that passage smoothly and
safely. Read the hint as you please, apply it as you choose, repeat it
if you will; I have performed my duty: good night;” and, as she had
appeared, so she vanished, abruptly and rapidly, leaving Mina to
complete the brushing and disentangling of her hair, after having
supplied some new thoughts to keep her company and prevent her mind from
stagnating during the process.
Early the next day Mina arose, and, flinging open her window, gazed over
the scene that lay sleeping peacefully beneath her, bathed in the
sunshine of morning; it was so early that not one of the household,
excepting a few of the servants, was stirring, and all looked so
exquisitely still and quiet, that she felt as if no better opportunity
were likely to present itself, during her stay at Glenfiord, for a
lonely visit to the abiding place of the only friend she possessed, who
had lain him down to rest in the land of his birth, under the shadow of
the mighty Ben Lomond: and accordingly, tying on the rustic hat she had
worn since her arrival in the Highlands, she quitted the house, and
crossing the gardens and passing through the plantations, arrived ere
long at the enclosure, wherein reposed generations who after ‘life’s
fitful fever’ slept there ‘well.’
She pushed the rusty iron gate open and walked up to the corner, where a
plain marble slab, bearing the name of Allan Frazer, covered the dust of
him whose child she was. She stood for a minute or two motionless; but
then, flinging the flowers she had carried with her on the grave, she
crept close down to the ground, as if that brought her somehow nearer to
him, and, laying her face on the damp grass, she wept, as most of us
have, at one time or other, over the last home of a loved and dear
relative for ever departed.
“Is it now ye are beginning to miss him, poor bairn?” said a harsh voice
in a kindly tone at her side; and Mina, starting up, found herself face
to face with the sexton’s wife, who had known her when a child, known
her and him and all of them.
“I am not _beginning_ to miss him now, Margery,” she answered; “I have
felt it just the same always, only time, perhaps, has softened the trial
and reconciled me to it.”
“Ye’ll feel his loss more yet than ye have ever done,” was the
consolatory reply; “and that minds me, Mr. Allan sent me out to bring ye
away from the grave and the wet grass: see how your gown is pairfectly
dreeping; come in and get it dried, if ye are no set to kill yersel’,”
and the worthy woman fairly dragged Mina into her wretched abode, where,
half-choked with smoke and surrounded by a swarm of dirty, hungry
children, she managed, with the assistance of a blazing wood fire, to
dry her garments; during which operation her hostess entertained her
alternately with laments of the family that “was gone,” and
commendations of the family that “had come,” applying the corner of her
apron to her eyes one minute, as she related some instance of liberality
on the part of the late Captain Frazer, “who was the best gentleman that
ever lived;” and brightening up the next, when she told how Miss Warmond
had given the children dresses a-piece the Christmas before, and new
bonnets at Easter, and “behaved like a real born lady, as everybody knew
her to be.”
“Come, Mina, are you ready?” said her cousin Allan at length, putting
his head in at the door and speaking through a dense mass of smoke and
dust; and, thankful to escape from the woman’s garrulous details and
endless reminiscences, she at once replied that she was, and went out to
join him, after placing such a souvenir in Margery’s hand as caused her
to be ranked from thenceforth as something little, if at all, lower than
a duchess.
“Now, little one, you are not to do that foolishness again, remember,”
were the only words her cousin spoke to her during the progress of their
homeward walk: he was commencing, indeed, another sentence, when the
appearance of Cecilia Warmond, who came tripping across the garden
bright and fresh as ever, cut it short.
“You are a pretty pair,” she said laughing; “I concluded you had run off
together, and papa was just suggesting the advisability of a pursuit to
Gretna, whilst my cousin, in a state of tranquil despair at being put
out of her usual methodical course, has sat down to read Shakespeare
before breakfast—only think of that—Shakespeare with the “beauties,” for
fear she might not be able to find them out herself. Now what apology
have you to offer for thus setting a whole household in disorder,
turning my cousin’s brain upside down by upsetting her whole system of
domestic management, and forcing her to begin the day at the wrong end?”
Mina had heard such sentences as the foregoing uttered perpetually by
her friend without ever once thinking they were out of place; but, fresh
from a graveyard, newly arrived in a place which brought all sorts of
memories back to her mind, the words jarred upon her feelings, and, for
the first time in her life, she fancied Cecilia a little flippant. Could
it be that the doubt Miss Lynd had whispered in her ear was taking
effect? She had no time to analyse the matter, for Allan, after
apologizing as best he might for their long delay, led Miss Warmond into
the breakfast room, while Mina ran back to her own apartment to arrange
her costume and render it altogether, as Malcolm would have said,
“presentable.”
That day Cecilia made herself more charming than ever; there was no end
to her affection for her guest: whatever Mina liked, she liked; whatever
the other wished, she was delighted with; she gave her a lesson on the
guitar; she had the quietest horse in the stable brought round for her
to try; she was wonderfully solicitous about her friend’s health;
declared early rising was most injurious to the constitution; made
Malcolm take them a row on the lake by moonlight, as Mina was romantic
and liked moonlight, and was so obliging as to teach both of them a form
of invocation to the moon, which invocation had reference to the future
partner fate had in store for them, and the answer whereto was to be
conveyed through the rather uncertain medium of a dream.
The following morning she inquired first of Mina what vision had
appeared to her; and, after receiving an answer, which she deemed a fib,
to the effect that the girl had not been favoured with any lunar reply,
she turned to Malcolm, and demanded of whom he had dreamt.
“Of you,” said that young gentleman, which impertinent and most untrue
response caused Miss Warmond to blush most becomingly, and declare he
was “perfectly unbearable,” while Mina wished greatly, that Cecilia
either would cease flirting with Malcolm—or, rather, encouraging him to
flirt with her—or else permit her to tell him the grand secret she was
not then at liberty to reveal, viz., the engagement subsisting between
Miss Warmond and Allan Frazer.
For though Mina would not at first admit such an idea, there could not
be a doubt but that the poison was beginning to work. Suspicion—that
many-eyed fiend—had been set on the trail of Cecilia’s errors; and when
once a correct scent is given, we know how fast it is possible to follow
it, particularly when it leads to anything disagreeable. Hitherto, it
had been Mina’s habit only to look for virtues in her friend, but now
she had an eye for the failings also, a sort of distrust—of what she
scarcely knew—having been infused into her. Ere she had been quite a
week at Glenfiord, she had absolutely detected Cecilia covertly sneering
at her three times in the prettiest manner conceivable, and she detected
her fibbing twice and flirting, whenever an opportunity presented
itself, always. Cecilia was not perfect: Mina found that fact out in an
incredibly short space of time after her arrival at Glenfiord, and, like
many another person in the world, she felt a little inclined to be angry
with her friend for not possessing all the qualities she had most
absurdly imagined her to be endowed with.
The veil soon dropped partially from her eyes; ere long it fell
altogether, and she beheld Cecilia, not as she seemed, but very much as
she actually was.
For Mina now saw Cecilia under different circumstances from those under
which they had first become acquainted; and Miss Warmond, by dint of
ceaseless watching, came to know that Allan Frazer’s malady was not a
bodily one, that his affection for her was most sensibly diminished, and
that he entertained altogether too high an opinion of his cousin to suit
her uncommonly strict ideas of propriety.
“What beautiful hair you have,” Mina said, as the junior portion of the
Glenfiord party stood, one bright sunshiny day, among the flowers of the
garden, “what beautiful hair you have,” and Mina, as if the fact had
never struck her so forcibly before, twisted one of the long silken
curls round her finger while she spoke.
“Not more so than your own,” responded Miss Warmond, who could afford to
praise a ‘decidedly inferior article,’ “as, I have no doubt, some people
in England would tell you if they were here.”
“Don’t teach the child folly,” interposed Allan Frazer a little sharply,
“she will learn nonsense in the world soon enough when she mixes with
it, believe me.”
The blood mounted even to Cecilia’s temples at these words, which, had
the speaker reflected a minute, he would never have uttered, and she
quickly retorted,
“You would like to have the instructing her in all kinds of lore
entirely to yourself, signor, I doubt not; well, be it so: she is not
altogether such a child but that she will make an apt pupil. Is not your
cousin becoming a perfect Goth?” she added, turning to Malcolm, with a
laugh; and that young gentleman gladly declared he was, and rejoiced in
his heart to see how savage Allan looked, not that he disliked the
laird’s grandson, but it proved, he thought conclusively, what fair way
he himself must be making in the good graces of their hostess, who, from
that day, treated Mina with a sort of sarcastic fondness, which
estranged them more than any actual unkindness could have done. Just as
a cunning mischievous boy lures a dog up to him by all sorts of devices,
by tones of encouragement, by calling ‘poor fellow,’ holding out a bone,
and fifty other treacherous expedients, to the end that, when he has got
the animal within reach, he may give him a sly kick or a sound thrashing
and send the creature away howling; so Cecilia would spend half a day,
sometimes in making herself fascinating to Mina, and then deal her a
telling blow, which was struck nobody could say how, and felt nobody but
the actors could point where, but the sharp pain of which, nevertheless,
frequently kept Mina weeping for hours after she had laid her head on
her pillow.
She could not have repeated the words containing the sting: it was a
thing to be felt, not seen, heard, or repeated. In the art of irony
Cecilia was an adept; thus she wounded her visitor under cover of a
compliment, and, by pretending to be a useless being, good for nothing
but accomplishments, not by the one half so intellectual and learned as
Mina, she effectually turned every scrap of knowledge the girl called
hers into ridicule, and by a process, imperceptible to any eyes save
those of her victim and Allan Frazer, succeeded in making her so
miserable, and placing her in so very inferior a position, that one
morning, when a letter arrived from London, requiring her return on
account of her mother’s indisposition, Mina felt as if heaven had
suddenly opened before her, she was so rejoiced to get away from
Glenfiord, and leave her persecutor hundreds of miles behind.
To have heard Miss Warmond begging her to stay, if it were only for one
other week, any person might have arrived at the conclusion which
delighted the old laird of Craigmaver, that the girls were bosom
friends, and likely for ever to remain so; but, if her mother had been
at the point of death, Mina could not more strenuously have urged the
necessity of her immediate departure, and Malcolm, to his sister’s
unutterable thankfulness, wished to be gone also: so without any
unnecessary delay they bade “good bye” to the hills and the waters of
their native land and the people who dwelt there, and set off on their
long journey to that mighty city both of them now called “home.”
Mina had clung for an instant round her dear old uncle’s neck, and a
tear had fallen on his face as she said farewell; she had looked sadly
at Allan’s troubled countenance, and gazed back again and again at
Glenfiord; but still, though the sorrow of departure hung heavy on her
soul, it was not the passionate unmixed sorrow of her childhood; she had
learnt one lesson from her northern tour, namely, that happiness abides
not in place; that true hearts make pleasant homes anywhere; that there
is a treasure of more account than beautiful scenery or lovely
faces—pure affection, which can, thank God, dwell in hovels, and exist
in atmospheres killing to mawkish sentiment and pretence, and which is
to be found in the bosoms of those whose countenances are stained and
weather-beaten, furrowed by time and seamed by trouble. Mina had learnt
a great deal; so Miss Caldera thought.
“Well, dear,” said that sterling friend, as she poured out scalding tea
for her and Malcolm on the night of their return, “well, dear, did your
visit realise _all_ your anticipations?”
“Not quite,” was the rejoinder.
“And Miss Warmond, whom you were so fond of, has she proved all you
expected——?”
“She has proved the most confounded flirt I ever met,” burst in Malcolm,
to the astonishment of both ladies; after which remarkable assertion, he
hurried through his meal in silence, and then sulkily ascended to his
mother’s room.
“And so, dear foolish child, you are not, on the whole, sorry to be back
here once again,” said Miss Caldera.
“Sorry!” repeated Mina, “I’m very glad; I will tell you all some time if
I can: I do not want to see the Highlands again till I can carry you all
there with me; and I have brought the cairngorm quite safe, indeed I
have, it is in my trunk upstairs.”
“And the heart, Mina?”
“I left it behind in the old places when I was a child; but it has come
back to England with me this time,” she answered.
“I had fancied your cousin, Allan——”
“Oh!” broke in Mina, “you don’t know about Allan; he is so clever and
talented and altered, I would not have known him; and, besides——”
“Well, Mina?”
“Well, you see, though I don’t think it could do any harm to tell you,
still I promised not, and——”
“Quite right,” said Miss Caldera; “so that is the way of it, is it? and
do you feel very glad?”
“I did, but I am not sure I do now,” was the reply; and Mina, by way of
a finale to some unspoken train of thought, put her arm round the
governess’s neck, and kissed her over and over again. “I often imagined
when I was away,” she said, “I had not been half fond enough of you; but
I will be now, and never grow cross or impatient or discontented any
more.”
“Don’t be too sure,” answered Miss Caldera laughing; “we shall know more
about that when you are next tempted.”
“Well, I will love you from this night twice as much as ever I did,”
replied Mina, colouring.
“Love me just the same, and keep the affection unchanged through time;
that will be a deal better for both of us,” remarked Miss Caldera,
earnestly: and Mina acquiesced in the truth of this observation so
meekly, that the lady thanked the fates for having sent her former
refractory charge to Scotland, and taming her so effectually when they
got her there.
“I only hope it may last,” murmured Miss Caldera, as she stole silently
up the stairs of her relative’s house, and thus went noiselessly, and
more tranquilly than usual, to rest.