A SUDDEN BLOW.
“Malcolm,” said Mrs. Frazer to her son, a few minutes after Mr.
Ivraine’s arrival, “I wish you would see what is keeping your uncle;
tell him breakfast is ready.”
“Mina,” cried Malcolm, one of the laziest of mortals, unless he were
engaged in some occupation he cared for, “run up stairs like a good
child and deliver your mama’s message; be quick now, and do not get into
any mischief by the way;” and having thus shifted the trouble on to his
sister’s shoulders, he drew his chair a little closer to the fire and,
commenting on the coldness of the morning, began to stir the already
blazing coals into a brighter glow, talking and jesting in his usual
careless style as he did so.
He had just uttered some pleasantry, when, in the middle of the laugh
which followed it, the door was flung suddenly open, and, making but one
bound to where he was seated, Mina, as if the sound of his merriment
maddened her, laid her hand over his mouth and uttered the single word
“stop,” in a tone which rung in Ernest Ivraine’s ears for months
afterwards.
“What is the matter?” demanded her brother, looking in blank amazement
in her horror-stricken face; “have you seen a ghost? speak, can’t you?”
“I—I’ve seen a corpse,” she gasped out, cowering down on the hearthrug
and burying her face in her hands, as though to shut out some horrible
sight; “he is dead!”
With a simultaneous exclamation of horror, Malcolm and Ernest rushed out
of the apartment and up the staircase together. The door of an outer
chamber, which Mr. Merapie had used half as dressing-room, half as
library, was wide open, and, hurrying in, they beheld John Merapie
sitting behind a small writing-table, his head falling back over the top
of an old-fashioned chair, his eyes staring; his features fixed, rigid,
cold, in death.
To have seen Malcolm Frazer’s demeanour, one would have imagined he had
lost his senses; he moaned and raved and tore his hair, and finally
betaking himself to the bell-pull, he commenced ringing with such
violence as speedily brought the few servants the house contained to the
spot.
“What is it you want?” Ernest Ivraine kept demanding, whilst he busied
himself endeavouring to discover whether any spark of life still
remained, “what is it you want?”
“A doctor, send for a doctor, go for a doctor!” Malcolm almost screamed
out at last; and though he saw it was perfectly hopeless, Ernest Ivraine
did speed forth on his dreary errand, and returned in five minutes’
time, dragging little Dr. Richards with him.
“Been gone for hours,” were the first words the brusque man of medicine
spoke when he glanced at the stiffened countenance; “past human aid long
ago, long ago; poor Merapie!” and the doctor’s voice softened as he
murmured the concluding words. “It’s of no use doing anything,” he
added, in answer to Malcolm’s wild entreaty for him to bleed, to
blister, to restore heat, to try some vague means for bringing back the
dead to life, not to lose time, but if he could suggest nothing to send
for further help at once.
“What you desire is impossible,” said Dr. Richards in a much gentler
manner than usual; “all the physicians in England, all the skill and
medicine in the world, could not make his pulse beat even once again.”
But still Malcolm implored so earnestly that means might be employed,
that Mr. Ivraine whispered in the doctor’s ear, “It is useless, I see,
but do humour him, he is almost crazy.”
“Never minded a syllable his uncle spoke when living, but goes frantic
about him now he is dead,” growled out the doctor; then, addressing
Malcolm, he continued, “I tell you, young man, we can only treat
breathing bodies, not inanimate corpses; but if it will be any
satisfaction to you, go quietly down stairs, leave me in peace, and I
promise that, if mortal power can be of any avail, I will do my very
best.”
“And I will assist you,” cried Malcolm; and as, spite of all persuasion
and entreaty and command, he would not leave the room, Ernest stole away
from the dreary apartment to see how it fared with Mina.
She had never changed her position since the first; Mrs. Frazer was in a
swoon, and women were ministering to her, but Mina, as though turned
into stone, still remained in the attitude into which she had fallen at
the beginning: they had spoken to her, but she never answered; striven
to move her, but in vain; there she was, just as when he left her, half
kneeling, half sitting, before the fire, her face hidden from
observation, neither weeping, moaning, nor sobbing; she was shivering
and trembling, that was all.
“Miss Frazer,” said Ernest; but she gave no answer: then he strove to
arouse her by a gentle touch, laid on her shoulder; but finding all his
efforts as ineffectual as those of the women had been, he stooped down,
and by means of some slight violence, at last succeeded in withdrawing
her hands from her face.
Such a look! the dark terrified eyes never met his, but gazed afar off,
as if fastened on some horrible spectacle, from which she found it
impossible to avert them. Every vestige of natural colour had fled from
her face; it was not white or red, but almost black; her lips were
parted, and the chattering teeth, and quick unequal breathing, showed
the shock she had received—the fright she was even then experiencing.
Ernest was glad to release her hands again, and let her head drop upon
them once more; but nothing could obliterate the recollection of that
fixed expression of horror from his mind: it haunted him in dreams in
after years.
“Doctor,” he said to his old acquaintance, after Malcolm had been
dragged from the death chamber and Mrs. Frazer carried to her own
apartment, where the man of medicine had first drowned her in hartshorn
and sal volatile, to rescue her from a fainting fit, and then dosed her
with opiates to avert a series of hysterics, or, rather, to lessen their
violence, “doctor, there is a poor sufferer here, needing your
assistance as much, or more than any one; I can do nothing with her,
will you try?” and he led him into the room where Mina—still crouching
down on the floor—sat silent, asking no sympathy, speaking no sentence,
making no sign.
“Mina!” exclaimed Dr. Richards, who had entertained a sort of regard for
her since she was a child, “Mina!”
Finding no response came, he pulled her hands away with a not unkindly
jerk; then, raising her drooping head by the simple contrivance of
placing his forefinger under her chin, he was met by the same look which
had frozen Ernest’s heart within him.
“This must not go on,” said Dr. Richards, decidedly; “crying is bad, and
fainting too, and screaming, and hysterics worse, but of all evil
methods of taking sorrow I like this least, it does far the most harm in
the long run: Mina!” he added, speaking to her in a louder, and, as
Ernest thought, unnecessarily harsh tone, “you must answer me some
questions; rise up now, it is necessary for you to do so: now, attend to
me; I want to know exactly what you saw when you went to call your uncle
to breakfast?”
He had by this time managed to get her placed in a large arm-chair, and
he stood before her, striving to attract and retain her attention; but
still that look he so disliked remained on her face, and her teeth
continued chattering, while she seemed totally unconscious or unmindful
of anything which was passing around her.
“You must speak!” exclaimed Dr. Richards, in an angry determined tone,
that appeared to affect every quivering nerve, and cause it to vibrate
with acute pain.
Ernest, who had gone to work far more gently, felt as if Dr. Richards
were devoid of common humanity; but the desired result had been at
length produced. The eyes wavered for an instant in their steady stare,
and making an almost convulsive effort, she asked, a sort of spasm or
suffocating sensation apparently impeding her powers of utterance,
“What is it, what do you want?”
“I want to know,” replied the doctor, speaking in a still louder
key,—never for one instant relaxing hold of his victim’s hands and
grasping them with greater force the more she shrunk from him, “I want
to know what you saw in your uncle’s room this morning?”
The old look came over her countenance again, and she struggled for an
instant so violently, that she managed to release one hand from her
tormentor; but Dr. Richards caught it again, and held her by the wrists
in such a vice-like gripe, that the mere bodily pain seemed at length to
exercise a beneficial influence over the wandering faculties of her
mind.
“I saw—I saw,” she gasped, every muscle in her face working, till Ernest
really began to fear the doctor would throw her into a fit,—“him,
sitting with his head leaning on the table; and then——”
“Go on,” insisted he, as she paused and shuddered, “go on, and then——”
“Then I went up to him and spoke.”
“Well,” persisted the doctor, wringing the words out of her, “you spoke,
and what did he answer?”
“Answer!” she echoed, and the trembling and chattering recommenced worse
than before; “answer!”
“Yes, answer!” he repeated. “Come make haste now, I have not time to
wait here all day; get on, what did he answer?”
“Nothing,” she almost panted out, “nothing.”
“What did you do?” he further demanded.
“Then I lifted his head and looked in his face—and—and—I saw he was
dead!”
“There, she will do now,” said Dr. Richards, as a sudden burst of tears
succeeded the conclusion of her short story: then, discarding the harsh
commanding tone he had hitherto used, he commenced addressing all sorts
of soothing expressions to her, giving her whatever scraps of comfort
came most readily to hand, striving to console and pacify her with such
genuine kindness and almost womanly gentleness, that Mr. Ivraine,
looking gravely on, confessed he had done the little doctor grievous
injustice, and never, until that moment, fully understood how tender and
feeling a heart may beat under the roughest and most unpromising
exterior.
Having succeeded in calming her in some degree, Dr. Richards walked over
to the sideboard, and, pouring out a glass of wine, presented the
same—after he had insidiously dropped something out of a small phial
into it—to his patient, and bade her swallow the mixture.
“Now,” he said, “sit perfectly still where you are till I return,” and,
drawing down the blinds, he beckoned Ernest to follow his example and
left the apartment. “That,” he remarked as he coolly turned the key in
the wards and then deposited it in his pocket, “that will keep her quiet
for some hours, at any rate; and now, my dear sir, what is the next
thing to be done?”
Mr. Ivraine did not know, but he went in search of Malcolm, whom he
found pacing up and down the drawing room, rather more composed than
when he had left him about an hour previously, but scarcely arrived,
even then, at a state which might properly have been called sane.
“Mr. Frazer,” began Ernest, “is there anything I can do for you? Do you
think I could be of the slightest assistance in this emergency? If it is
in my power to prove of the least use, I hope you will allow me to be
so; but if not, I feel I ought no longer to intrude.”
“Oh! for pity’s sake,” broke in Malcolm, “do not leave me; there is not
a person in England I care to speak to but yourself: I don’t know what
to do, or where to turn, or how to manage, and—and—for Heaven’s sake
don’t leave me here alone, with a corpse lying in the house and not a
soul to exchange a syllable with but a lot of helpless women.”
“I shall certainly not go; but if you wish me to remain,” replied Ernest
in a soothing tone, “sit down for a little while and do try to compose
yourself: you must recollect how much has suddenly devolved upon
you,—the entire care and comfort of your mother and sister and the whole
management of your uncle’s affairs. A heavy responsibility now rests
upon you, and you ought to prepare yourself to meet it with a man’s
heart and a man’s quiet unmoved steadiness: you are a boy no longer; you
have solemn duties to discharge; you have, as you say, helpless women
depending upon you as their only male prop. You must prove yourself a
strong one; sit down and calm yourself, and then we will look the worst
steadily in the face and see what has actually happened, and what, under
the circumstances, is best to be done. Dr. Richards has promised to
return in a couple of hours, and we can then consult with him who,
having known you and yours for years, takes a deep interest in all that
concerns you.”
“That fellow Westwood,” here broke in Malcolm, who had listened to the
above exhortation without heeding a single syllable of it, “has been
prowling about the house all the morning; I wonder what business he has
here, or who sent for him, or who wants him: I wish to heavens we could
turn him out. Ivraine, could you not give him a civil hint that if he
would go, it would be an immense relief? I’d feel for ever obliged if
you just would rescue me from him. I came here solely to be out of his
way; he is the most impudent——”
“Mr. Frazer,” interposed Alfred Westwood at this juncture, pushing open
the door, which Ernest had left slightly ajar, and cutting right across
the flattering remark his late partner’s nephew was just commencing,
“Mr. Frazer, will you excuse me, as a friend, asking you an apparently
very impertinent question?”
“I suppose it makes very little difference whether I will or not, as you
are sure to ask it at any rate,” replied Malcolm sulkily.
“I must ask it,” returned Mr. Westwood; “still I trust, though I am
aware my words must sound very unfeeling at such a time, that you will
not be offended. Has your uncle left any will?”
“What business is that of yours?” demanded Malcolm, his whole
countenance flushed with anger; “how the devil can it concern you,
whether he has or not?”
Mr. Westwood shuddered, as if the sound of the young Scotchman’s hasty
oath appalled his refined religious ears; but getting, with wonderful
rapidity, over the horror with which he desired it to be thought it had
inspired him, he answered,
“It concerns _me_ not in the least, Mr. Malcolm Frazer, I admit; but you
may yet discover it a matter of some importance to you and to some
others, after whose interests you are now most certainly bound to look
with an eye of watchful affection: you, however, dislike to hear truth
from the lips of a friend; I will, therefore, relieve you of my
presence.” And Mr. Westwood, a half-triumphant, half-insulting
expression on his face, turned, as he concluded, to leave the room.
“Stop!” cried Malcolm, a vague dread of some unknown evil flashing
through his mind and bringing him ‘to his senses,’—“stop!” and he flung
himself between his late uncle’s partner and the door. “Now, sir,” he
continued, folding his arms resolutely across his chest and using a
quick decided tone, “now, sir, I see by your face, I judge by your
words, that you are aware of some circumstance or circumstances of which
I am at present in ignorance, but of which I ought to be informed; and,
as you have thought fit to come here without invitation, you shall stay
here on compulsion till you explain your meaning clearly and
satisfactorily.”
A smile of contempt and malice curled Mr. Westwood’s lip, and, for a
moment, Mr. Ivraine imagined he had some intention of swinging Malcolm
from his position and clearing a passage for himself; but, if he ever
harboured such an idea, it was instantly abandoned, for he answered
without even a trace of irritation and, as the looker-on thought, with
the most wonderful temper and forbearance.
“I came here as a friend, and you received me as an enemy; now, when I
propose going, you insist that I shall remain, but I am willing to make
every allowance on account of your youth, inexperience, and the trying
situation in which you are placed; and, as I really wish to be of
service to you if I can, I overlook the insulting style of your address,
and, merely remembering that you desire information, reply, that I am
here ready and willing to answer any questions you may think proper to
put, always supposing they are of such a nature as that good and not
harm can result from responding to them.”
“I detest long sentences, sir,” was Malcolm’s polite rejoinder to Mr.
Westwood’s temperate speech.
“I really think you are acting foolishly, Mr. Frazer,” interposed
Ernest, over whom a shadowy alarm had begun to steal, “I really think
you are.”
“And I know he is,” returned Mr. Westwood; “but that is no affair of
mine: my motto is, ‘let everybody take care of himself, and manage his
own business as best suits his own fancy.’”
“I wish you’d carry your theory into practice,” exclaimed Malcolm
pettishly; “but, whether foolish or wise, I want to put an end to this
interview, therefore suppose we proceed at once to the matter in hand.
Why, therefore, do you assert that the fact of my uncle not having left
a will can be an affair of importance to me and mine?”
“Because,” replied Mr. Westwood, “a few strokes of the pen have
sufficed, in some instances, to make a man independent for life, while
the absence of two or three words has reduced many individuals to
beggary and want.”
“But, in our case, a will is unnecessary; an unfavourable one might have
unmade us, it is true; the want of one altogether merely leaves us in
possession of what my uncle always intended should be ours.”
“Perhaps so,” said Mr. Westwood.
“Why, don’t you know,” burst forth Malcolm, “that we are his nearest
relatives, that the next of kin always succeeds to property in the event
of an intestacy, that nothing _but_ a will could deprive us of it? Are
you not lawyer enough to understand this, or,” he added, a sudden
suspicion occurring to him, “do _you_ know of any will? By Heavens! if
you have worked upon him to disinherit us, if you have been scheming and
plotting against either me or my sister, if you have dared to meddle in
family concerns, or got my uncle to leave you anything to our prejudice,
I swear you shall never enter into possession of the property, never
live to spend a single shilling of the money so iniquitously acquired.”
Ernest Ivraine never could tell, at least not until long years
afterwards, why this scene affected him with a sort of deadly sickness,
that faint sinking of the heart, which is induced, not by bodily
illness, but by mental excitement: he felt as if he, too, had an
interest in the matter; as if he, too, had a right to interfere; as if
he were one of the parties concerned—likely to be benefited, or possibly
to be wronged: it was a sort of acting by others of what might come to
himself; it was a kind of rehearsal of something, in which hereafter he
was to be a principal character—a prominent figure; he had felt at the
first that loathing of hearing pecuniary matters discussed in a house
shadowed by the wings of the mighty angel, Death, which the sensitive or
the uninterested always experience, when the mercenary and the grasping
introduce the theme of probable legacies, and wrangle concerning their
various chances, in a room next to that desolate apartment tenanted by
the corpse of one who has done with earth, and the curse
thereof—gold—for ever. But Malcolm’s words had touched the vibrating
chord in his heart; the demon was at length roused; the legacy
hunter—the man who had voluntarily doomed himself to a hateful slavery,
to the end that he might keep all other claimants at bay—all other
vultures off the spoil—felt himself sympathising with Malcolm, and
anxious for his prosperity, desiring to hear more, wishful for accurate
information, doubtful of Mr. Westwood, fearful of the event; and,
accordingly, before he well knew what induced the action, he found
himself standing, dark and stern, at Malcolm’s side, with one hand on
the youth’s shoulder, entreating him to greater calmness, to attend
patiently, and hear Mr. Westwood’s reply.
“Let me talk to you,” said that individual, turning from Malcolm with an
angry gesture; “let me talk to you, as you seem disposed to be a friend
to those who will, I fancy, ere long require friendship from many a one
who will not be ready to extend it to them. It is useless speaking to
him; the boy is a fool—a child, not in understanding, but in wayward
passion, absurd caprice, senseless prejudice; do you act for him, and
lose no time; search every drawer, box, desk, safe, in the house,
possible or impossible, and see if you can discover a will. I intend to
proceed to Mr. Merapie’s solicitors, and see whether they possess any
document of the kind; and if not, I request that some disinterested
person may search the office. It is of no importance to me whether any
be discovered or not, further than that I wish well to this ungrateful
youth, and the two delicate beings, who may be reduced to beggary by
_the absence_ of such an instrument. Directly or indirectly I shall
never benefit by my late partner’s demise. Mr. Frazer’s suspicions have
done me most foul wrong. I think it the height of villainy in any man to
attempt to step between relatives; and if I were left sole legatee
to-day, the only use I should make of my wealth would be to hand it over
to the rightful owners to-morrow. Do not let prejudice blind you; have
the house thoroughly examined: I am giving good sound advice, for which,
perhaps, at a future day, even Mr. Malcolm Frazer may thank me.”
He made a step forward, as if to leave the room, but Ernest detained
him.
“Tell me,” he said, “what it is you mean? Are not Mrs. Frazer and her
children the sole living connections Mr. Merapie has left behind him?”
“They are not,” replied Mr. Westwood.
“Has he any nearer relatives?” demanded Mr. Ivraine.
“Time will show,” was the brief response uttered, as Mr. Westwood pushed
Malcolm—who stood like a statue, gazing intently and half stupidly in
his face—gently aside, and walked past him out of the room and down the
stairs and so out of the house.