MARRY IN HASTE, ETC.
Yes! Mrs. Frazer was ill, and John Merapie silent, and Mr. Westwood in
existence, and Miss Caldera truthfully candid as ever, and Belerma
Square had not grown one whit more cheerful during her absence, and yet
still Mina was glad, thankful to be back. It is true she did not quite
comprehend the deliberate badness of Miss Warmond’s nature: much as she
had seen, much as she had discovered, she did not fully understand the
utter worthlessness and deceit which were covered by so fair a mantle of
beauty and of grace; but she had found out enough, and suffered
sufficiently, to render her grateful to leave luxury and scenery and
fashion behind, and find herself once more amongst those who pretended
nothing, but loved her much.
Miss Caldera was right: the girl had learnt a great deal when she
returned to be contented in John Merapie’s town house. She had taken her
first lesson in the world, tasted one drop out of the cup of fashionable
life, and found it wonderfully bitter; she had become convinced that one
word of praise or kindness uttered by a sterling steady friend, aye,
even a sentence of warning or rebuke spoken by such an one in loving
sincerity, is more really valuable than all the deceitful compliments
and flattering falsehoods which hollow hearts can dictate and fulsome
tongues whisper.
She returned, not very strong perhaps, but still much better, with a
colour in her cheek and a light in her eye, and a style in her manner,
carriage, and deportment, which she had learnt from Cecilia. For she was
at that age when association is everything, when accent is improved, an
air of fashion conferred, ideas of elegance implanted, by being brought
into contact with persons whose every movement, tone, gesture, tells
that they have mixed in _le beau monde_, and that its usages and customs
and ceremonies are familiar to them as household words. “Wonderfully
improved in appearance,” even her mother thought her. She retained her
former manner, it is true, but the brusqueness, living in a secluded
solitary kind of way had formerly caused her to acquire, was almost
gone; the tone of her voice bordered occasionally on the very confines
of liveliness, her step had lost its languor, her face its melancholy;
quiet and reserved she seemed still at intervals, but, taking her on the
whole, a decided change for the better had been effected by her Highland
trip; perhaps the mountain air might have benefited her health, which,
for a considerable period previous to her departure—indeed, almost from
her childhood—was anything rather than good; perhaps the “rubbing up”
she had got, the mixing with other people besides her own exclusive home
circle, the being drawn out of herself and forced to think of others and
their concerns, exercised a beneficial influence on her mind; perhaps
the glimpse she had gained of “fairy land,” of fine ladies and clever
gentlemen, and the other beings who move in that sphere we call, _par
excellence_, ‘the fashionable world,’ had tended to reconcile her
considerably to a mere terrestrial common-place existence in Belerma
Square: at all events Mina came home to her uncle’s, altered,—not for
the worse.
And if, after the first peaceable fortnight, she and Miss Caldera did
again commence to have various little “tilts” of opinion, still they
never signified, and were by no means so frequent as of yore, for the
governess had apparently arrived at the determination of permitting Mr.
Alfred Westwood to manage his matrimonial plans as best he could without
her interference; and as this was the only point on which she and Mina
had been wont to have arguments, that might almost have been termed
quarrels, they plodded on together without any greater differences of
opinion arising between them than served to prevent their tongues
growing rusty by want of sufficient exercise.
Occasionally, indeed, Malcolm became a very serious bone of contention
for both to try their teeth on, for that young gentleman, whose chances
of a commission seemed far off as ever, grew day by day so much more
useless and indolent and fashionable than had been his wont before, (and
“Goodness knows,” said Miss Caldera, “he was bad enough in those
respects always”) that the worthy governess at last fairly lost all
patience on the subject, and frequently asserted, “He ought to be
ashamed of himself.”
“But what can he do?” demanded Mina, who was very fond and proud of her
brother, “what can he do?”
“Work,” responded the lady; “is not that what men are sent into the
world for, and what right has he, blessed with youth, health, and
talent, to be standing idle, whilst older and better men are toiling
wearily from day to day?”
“He has no profession,” suggested the girl.
“Let him choose one, then,” replied Miss Caldera, “or rather let him get
rid of some of his absurd dandyism and family pride and dreamy
anticipations, and settle quietly down at business and become a useful
member of society.”
“Like uncle John?” added Mina.
“He will never be like any one half so good,” remarked Miss Caldera
warmly, for she thought Mina’s words implied a sneer, which they did
not.
Her former charge looked for a minute or two up at the clear blue
heavens, then she said in a deprecating tone,
“I do not think I have any pride, or absurdity, or ‘notions,’ as you
call them, and yet I should not like Malcolm to do what he styles, ‘put
himself into harness’ and be buried alive at Wapping, and sit there the
whole day leaning over a desk, writing from morning till night, and
thinking of nothing but money—money—money—till he grew a regular old
city merchant like some of my uncle’s friends: I cannot fancy my brother
‘a business man.’”
“Indeed!” angrily retorted Miss Caldera; “and pray, my dear, what can
you fancy your brother?”
“An officer,” replied Mina.
“A nonsense!” exclaimed her friend.
“I don’t see why he should not,” said his sister; “he is handsome
enough, and daring enough, for anything, and my father was in the army,
and many of our relations; I really do not see why Malcolm should not be
an officer, if he choose.”
“Well, I do,” answered Miss Caldera; “for he has so provoked your uncle,
that I can see plainly he will never buy him a commission.”
“Then we must get him one some other way, that is all,” replied Mina, so
quietly, that Miss Caldera began to think her almost as foolish as her
brother, and told her so; at which the girl laughed, and said she
believed her friend imagined both of them to be perfect simpletons, but
that, indeed, she was mistaken.
“That may be,” responded the governess, in a manner, however, which
clearly implied the unspoken mental addition of “but I don’t believe I
am.”
Meanwhile, very shortly after her return to London, the old laird’s
niece received a long letter from Cecilia, so full of “dears” and
“loves” and “darlings” and all sorts of fond expressions, that it fairly
astounded the recipient, and induced her almost to believe she must have
misunderstood her friend, and felt displeased with her on very slight
insufficient grounds.
Cecilia hoped her “pet” would come and be one of her bridesmaids, for
she was to be married in the autumn, and though Mr. Malcolm Frazer and
she had not parted on the _very_ best terms, she hoped he had not quite
forgotten her, and desired best and kindest remembrances to him. And she
gave an account of her cousin’s wedding, and said how _very_ lonely
Glenfiord seemed after Mina’s departure, and filled half a sheet with
wishes that they were living close to each other, and asked how she was
contriving to exist in that dreadful Belerma Square, and made particular
inquiries concerning the state of Mrs. Frazer’s health, and said that if
Mr. Merapie were going to retire, and thought of purchasing an estate in
the Highlands, there was a beautiful property to be sold not a mile from
Glenfiord; how delightful it would be if Mina could induce him to buy
it; and she wound all up by saying, “Of course my engagement is no
secret now. Ever dear, dear Mina, your affectionately attached—CECILIA
WARMOND.”
Miss Caldera smiled when she finished reading through the epistle her
former pupil handed to her for perusal, and in answer to Mina’s
question, “Well, what do you think of it?” she said briefly, “Not much;”
which reply, undoing the effect the letter had produced, brought the
individual who was so happy as to be called by Miss Warmond “friend”
back to her preconceived opinion of that young lady, and caused her to
doubt if every word traced in that fair, delicate, Italian hand were
true, and whether the one half at least of the contents of the epistle
did not sound, as Miss Caldera, who never could resist a saw or a
proverb, said, “a vast deal too sweet to be altogether wholesome.” Also,
on Mina’s informing her brother of the projected marriage, he curtly
rejoined,
“Oh! yes, I knew all about it long ago; she told me she was engaged to
Allan after she had drawn me on to propose—hang her!” and, in fact, so
much evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, was produced just about
this period in Miss Warmond’s disfavour, that poor Mina began to be
thoroughly convinced she was very far from what she ought to be—very,
very far, indeed, from being the sort of person she had fancied that
bright spring morning, when she threw her arms around the beautiful neck
and said she was so glad, so very glad Cecilia was to become her cousin.
“What is making Mr. Allan Frazer marry such a creature?” demanded Miss
Caldera, as she folded up the letter with an air of supreme contempt;
“what in the world has possessed him?”
“I am sure I do not know,” replied Mina, and it was true, for she felt
Allan’s love for the General’s daughter was nothing remarkable, and she
had speculated often concerning what could, as Miss Caldera said, “have
possessed him.”
But Allan Frazer himself knew, and that was sufficient; he was aware of
how he had longed to be free—of a painful interview between himself and
his uncle, which terminated with his saying, “Oh! if she would only give
me up,” a thing she had not the remotest intention of doing, either for
him or anybody else.
For, as far as she was capable of loving man or woman, she loved the
laird’s grandson—loved him for himself, his appearance, his talents, and
the sort of celebrity he had acquired; further than all this, she stuck
to him because he desired to cast her off, and showed her he did; and,
because she fancied he cared for Mina, “that little, insignificant,
uneducated child,” and she was determined as he had once proposed for
her he should marry her, or else she would know the reason why.
“If you have not changed your mind,” said Allan; coldly, to her one day,
when, at length, some kind of an explanation had become unavoidable, “if
you have not changed your mind, or repented your choice, or come to the
conclusion that I am not qualified to make you happy,—if, in one word,
you wish me to fulfil my engagement, I am ready to do so; if not——”
“You will start for London and resume your interrupted flirtation with
Mina Frazer,” she added, with an angry laugh.
“With Mina Frazer! heaven forbid!” ejaculated Allan; “no, no; Mina is
too good and gentle-hearted to flirt with, and as to marrying, if she
ever do commit the folly, I trust the fates will provide her a better
husband than I feel I am competent to make any one: no, no,” he said
again, in a less hurried tone, “I am fond of her as a cousin, as a
sister, as a dear, good, truthful little girl; she always rises to my
mind like a pure pleasant memory of childhood, or something very close
to childhood: never say that again, Cecilia; I cannot bear to have even
Mina’s name mentioned in connection with that horrid word.”
“I spoke thoughtlessly,” responded Miss Warmond, who felt she had
ventured a little too far on dangerous ground, “and it was wrong for me
so to do, as you were talking seriously concerning a serious subject.”
“Our marriage!” acquiesced Allan. “You have now had a long period to
reflect upon the matter, and I wish to know if you are still of opinion
that I am an individual with whom you could endure to pass years—a life
time. I do not desire to hold you bound because of any engagement
between us: I have endeavoured not to deceive you in any point, whether
relating to my family, circumstances, or self; you have seen everything
as it is, had ample opportunities of judging for yourself. I am well
aware that I can offer you no home equal to some others, the doors of
which would open gladly to receive you; and therefore I ask you to
consider yourself as perfectly free, and to decide for the second time,
as if it were the first, whether you will take me as I am and my
fortunes as they are, or whether we shall part now, never to meet again
excepting, perhaps, as friends.”
Cecilia knew what this speech meant just as well as the person who
uttered it: she knew he was really asking her to set him free, though he
worded the sentence as if it were he conceding that boon to her; she
read down into the depths of his heart and saw that his love for her,
vehement, wild, romantic as it had been, was gone; she felt he was
yearning with a soul-sick longing to be set at liberty; that he was
waiting, like a criminal to hear his doom, dreading lest she would
accept him. Cecilia knew and saw all these things, and yet, and perhaps
because of them, she held him to the contract he had madly rushed into
and would not give him up.
There was a burning fury raging in her heart; if she had hated Allan
Frazer she would still have forced him to marry her: she resolved to be
revenged, even though, in working out that vengeance, she should wound
herself; jealousy, anger, resentment, affection, mortified vanity,
determined obstinacy, a truly feminine spirit of contradiction, and a
lamentable deficiency of womanly feeling and womanly pride, urged her
on, and, amidst a torrent of, for once, perfectly genuine tears, she
sobbed forth the decision, which it was death to the laird’s grandson to
hear, “She would marry him.”
The fiat had been pronounced that sealed and blasted his destiny for
life; like the victim who feels the last plank drawn from beneath his
feet; like the child of care, on whose bosom the chill hand of
misfortune has just stamped some ineffaceable mark; like the bereaved
one who is told of the death of a friend, loved better than land or gold
or station; like the merchant who hears his wealth has vanished and that
he is left a beggar, so Allan Frazer listened to her final resolution;
and when at length he slowly and gloomily quitted the apartment, it was
with that look of fixed despair in his face, which marks so
unmistakeably the man who feels his peace is wrecked, his happiness
destroyed, his future blighted.
Moore, in one of his songs, tells us how wretched man would be
“If, when deceived in love,
He could not fly to hate.”
Which may be strictly true, not merely in poetry, but in fact, when the
parties who hate are compelled to separate.
But hatred, or even indifference, is a commodity of rather questionable
utility to start with in the line matrimonial; so Allan Frazer thought,
yet still he did start with nothing beside it, excepting, perhaps, a
little contempt and a great deal of anger, as a happy benedict: and he
found, as time went on, he was never likely to become a bankrupt, for
his stock in trade increased rather than diminished, and when people
congratulated him and admired her, the new-made husband turned away sick
and dispirited; for the beauty that had won was impotent to retain, the
grace and the accomplishments had grown distasteful to his soul, her
soft low voice affected him sadly, as a melody—no matter how sweet it
may be—that awakens disagreeable memories palls on the ear of the
listener and causes him to desire to fly from the sound of it: where she
dwelt was a place to be absent from as much as possible; in one word,
the doom of many of his race was upon him, only he had repented sooner
than they. The change, he was conscious of before marriage, but that,
perhaps, made the sorrow only the greater, for the lady, not desiring
the engagement to be cancelled, he had felt himself bound in honour to
make her his bride; and thus Cecilia carried her point, as she would
have carried any other on which she had once set her mind, even had the
same been going up to her neck in Loch Lomond and finishing her earthly
experiences there: and if she did not get all she wanted, why Allan got
nothing he desired, and that was an immense advantage gained,
considerably more than half the battle; it was indeed almost the whole
of it, so the General’s daughter consoled herself by thinking at
times—when the conviction forced itself upon her that both had been
worsted in the struggle, that she had paid a high price for something
not particularly well worth having, that, in short, for the sake of
loving him a little, it had been scarcely worth while to persist in
tying herself, whether he would or no, to a husband who loved her not at
all. But whatever she thought about the business signified not; there
was nothing now to be done but make the best of it, for they were
married. Oh! yes, there could not be the least doubt about that fact;
they were married one bright sunshiny morning in the autumn, as Cecilia
wrote to her “Dear Mina” was to be the case; and the ceremony proved a
very sublime affair indeed, for an Indian commander-in-chief—or, to
speak more correctly, a commander-in-chief who had been in
India—honoured the nuptials with his presence; and his niece, Lady
Matilda Cintra, looked charming, as one of the bridesmaids; and, in
brief, so many grandees, gathered from far and near, came in carriages
and pairs and carriages and fours, flanked by outriders and surrounded
with a sort of halo of liveries and crests and coats of arms and
pedigrees, to see one person, at least, made miserable, that the leading
Edinburgh paper of that period devoted a paragraph to the affair; and it
got stuck somehow in the _Morning Post_, and cards went flying about to
the houses of the great and the noble and the wealthy; and John Merapie,
who hated humbug, read the passage through from beginning to end, and
then told a city friend, who asked if the bridegroom were not a
connexion of his, that he believed he was cousin or something of that
kind to the children (Mina and Malcolm), and that the bride had wanted
his niece to be one of the bridesmaids, but, he was thankful to say, she
was too sensible to run mad after folly and fashion and Mechlin veils
and lords and ladies and—humbug.
All of which impressing the city friend with a magnificent idea of the
grandeur of Mrs. Frazer’s Highland relations and of the wealth and sense
of her brother—a man who could afford to talk lightly of a
commander-in-chief and a Lady Matilda Cintra—he turned over thenceforth
a new leaf in his behaviour towards the family in Belerma Square, and
found out that Malcolm and Mina had the “stamp of aristocrats about them
and no mistake.” “Real true blues,” he remarked to an acquaintance who
had extensive dealings in indigo, and who, therefore, stupid as he
generally was, understood that style of praise, and grunted forth an
acquiescence thoroughly genuine and sincere, though he did outrage
Lindley Murray and mangle Dr. Johnson horribly during the performance.
And that paragraph was perused by many another besides John Merapie and
his city friends.
Alfred Westwood learned it off by heart, and then silently cursed some
mysterious parties, and communed for hours with himself, after which he
took a fixed resolution. Miss Caldera glanced through it and said, she
“hoped they’d be happy.” Mina skimmed the list of fashionables over the
governess’s shoulder, and sighed, she knew not why, to find so grand a
lady was actually her cousin.
Mrs. Frazer got her son to read all about the wedding aloud for her
edification, and though he sneered when he came to the part about the
lovely, amiable, and accomplished bride, still the whole thing gratified
his Highland pride and snobbish nonsense. The cards so beautifully tied
together and inscribed, Mr. Allan Frazer—Mrs. Allan Frazer, to the end
that they might be better seen, were taken carefully out of the highly
enamelled envelope and placed on the top of the papier maché basket John
Merapie’s sister had filled with bits of pasteboard collected during
previous years, on which were printed the names of grandees, who had
forgotten such an individual as herself ever existed.
Well, well, it was a harmless vanity, a reminiscence of more fashionable
days, a sort of silent denial that Belerma Square was a proper place for
her to reside in, a mute protest against the injustice of shutting her
out for ever from intercourse with “the persons moving in the sphere of
life she had formerly been accustomed to.”
I once heard a tale of an individual who _stole_ a card, having the name
of a peeress traced on it, and who, if the story were not a fiction,
preserved it among lesser and more ignoble cards till it grew yellow
with the action of time, worn with the process of perpetual fingering.
Poor Mrs. Frazer did not carry her absurdity so far as this; she merely
exhibited to, or rather placed within view of, curious visitors what was
_bonâ fide_ her own, acquired legitimately in other times; and finally,
as if by accident, so disposed the heap, that the last precious
_morceaux_ the fates were pleased to send her should be seen by
everybody at a glance: only did this, and got Malcolm to read her a
dreary newspaper paragraph through.
One other person permitted his eyes to wander over that chronicle of the
goodly company who went to see Miss Warmond transformed into Mrs.
Frazer; and, when he concluded, a darker shade came on Ernest Ivraine’s
brow, and he sighed as he looked at the swamps of Paradise to find
Mina’s relatives appeared to be, not merely rich, but aristocratic; that
to the beautiful land of her birth she had so many ties; that Malcolm’s
assertions regarding their family were quite correct; that his own
impressions had been a little wrong. Ernest’s hand trembled slightly as
he laid down the paper which a sycophantish neighbour sent his father
day after day; why it should have done so he knew best; “she was nothing
to him—nothing;” he said so constantly, and tried to believe the
statement correct.