MINA RUSHES ON HER FATE.
It might have been imagined that Ernest Ivraine would hardly have
been the man voluntarily to make a fresh care and anxiety for
himself, nor had he voluntarily, in the first instance, sown the
seeds of a troublesome crop, promising, if fostered, to bring forth
trials abundantly; no—that inexplicable something which moulds our
life’s experiences into a definite shape—fate, chance, accident,
call it by what name you will—cast the germ into the ground, and
he—half-unconsciously, perhaps—instead of nipping and crushing it in
the bud, nursed and tended the plant, so that, at length, after it
had grown, when he came to see the evil of it—when he discovered the
sorrow it was likely to prove, he found its roots had twined
themselves so around his heart that he could only eradicate the one
by tearing out the other.
The soil of his rugged nature was one in which it was difficult to get
any tender emotion to flourish; but that obstacle once surmounted, the
rest was easy. It stayed there, spite of himself, spite of
circumstances, spite of prudence, through life; and so, since her
uncle’s death, since he came to understand how poor Mina actually was,
since he had found that, like himself, she was penniless, he had never
listened to the voice of prudence at all. He felt, so long as Mina was
likely to be an heiress, that to her he was—must always be—nothing; but
now, though he might not marry, he could care for her, and he would have
done anything in the world to make her care for him: but Mina would not;
she had been annoyed, not by, but through him; her pride was wounded,
her vanity offended; her womanly feelings were insulted; they never
seemed destined to “get on” together. Mina went back with him to what
she had been with others as a child: but that made no difference to him;
he was fond of her, though he never exactly knew why he was so; though
he could not have given a single reason for his apparently extraordinary
choice, there could not be a single doubt of the matter: he, Ernest
Ivraine, a prudent, practical, silent, uncommunicative man, was,
nevertheless, so totally deficient in worldly sense and worldly caution
as to form a very sincere affection for a girl without a shilling, of
whose real nature he had not the faintest idea, many years younger than
himself, not handsome—merely pretty, with a strange wayward mood, and a
not especially placid temper. In one word, he had made one cold plunge
into the stream of his fate, and found himself—sometimes to his
pleasure, oftener to his sorrow—decidedly in love.
Sir Ernest, shrewdly suspecting this, wrote a confidential missive to
Messrs. Smeek and Scott, inquiring about John Merapie and his family;
but the solicitors, not being detective officers, merely informed him,
by return of post, that they understood Mr. Merapie was dead, and his
widowed sister removed from London: wherefore the baronet was once more
thrown off the scent, and he did not find it again till too late to
benefit by it.
Colin Saunders, who had now been for a considerable period “useful man”
about Paradise, indeed heard occasionally from his daughter—who lived
near Miss Caldera, and had established a sort of patronizing intimacy
with that lady’s servant—how Mr. Ivraine was great friends with Mr.
Malcolm Frazer, and spent half his time with him when in London; but
Colin never guessed the truth—never thought so “dark-browed a young
gentleman” would dream of marrying any one but some great heiress; and,
even if he had known all, and the baronet had stretched him on the rack,
he would have divulged nothing. He was a worthy descendant of the stiff
old Covenanters, who worshipped on the bare hill sides, and skulked in
caves, and braved death and persecution and torture for conscience sake.
“The man was a mass of sterling steady principle,” so Ernest once said,
and he was right.
“When the heart gives the will, the devil gives the way,” is one of
those aphorisms people never care to speak, because it can lay no claim
to beauty of thought and elegance of expression; but still, one which
nobody can deny, because it generally proves so strictly true. Far be it
from me to say that his Satanic majesty had any share in sending Ernest
Ivraine so often to London, but surely it was an evil genius which drove
him so perpetually across Mina’s path: excuses were never wanting to
render a visit to the metropolis needful, for Henry was married
now—married to an heiress, rich in goodness, beauty, friends, and
ancestors. The young officer inundated his brother with lists of
commissions he desired executed,—every third or fourth Indian mail
brought with it the necessity for a journey to town; and the sum Ernest
had accumulated on Henry’s behalf, but which Henry had exultingly
returned to him, enabled the miser’s elder son to protract his visits a
little longer than it would otherwise have been possible for him to do:
so he was always coming to see Malcolm, perpetually being announced as
“in the drawing-room, sir,” by the maid-of-all-work, after the fashion
recorded towards the conclusion of the preceding chapter, before this
explanation of his feelings was commenced.
On the day in question, however, he did not see Mina; she had a bad
headache, went to her own room, and, moreover, to put it out of
Malcolm’s power to torment her further, went determinedly off to bed.
Perhaps her brother really thought she was ill; perhaps he regretted
annoying the pale-faced girl, his only near relative; perhaps he felt
there was much blameable in his own conduct; perhaps some words Ernest
Ivraine had spoken, during the course of their interview, might have
induced him to look more affectionately at her—less angrily on the
world; perhaps it was only the usual reaction, which generally occurred
after he had been particularly pettish towards her; perhaps her
concluding sentence had touched his heart and aroused his pride; at all
events one thing was certain, that he was so kind to her the following
morning, so different from usual, so much like the wild good-natured
youth of other times, that Mina forgot her vexation, and felt for the
moment happy to see him so; and that afternoon, when the baronet’s son
walked in with her brother, she did not go to bed again, but remained in
the room, not talking herself, but listening to them doing so,—for, at
last, Malcolm had appealed to Mr. Ivraine for advice, and Mr. Ivraine,
for the first time since Mina had known him, spoke long, earnestly,
energetically; he grew absolutely eloquent whilst looking at the young
man’s position, and exhorting him to do what he had not been brave
enough to do himself. The difference between them was, however, that he
was waiting and longing for something, and Malcolm was not,—unless,
indeed, for absolute beggary, which he had unintentionally confessed was
stalking towards them. Ernest at length comprehended how they were
situated, and he first advised strenuously, and then proffered
assistance.
It was a painful conversation throughout; Mina felt it to be so, as,
step by step, word by word, it approached the end; but there was a
fascination about it for her: even had a sufficient pretext arisen for
her to leave the apartment, she could not have done it, so strongly were
her interest excited, her feelings aroused: there was a fate in it, as
there is in all things in earth below, in heaven above.
“I will tell you,” said Mr. Ivraine, by way of conclusion to the many
arguments he had advanced, in order to induce Malcolm to go forth and
battle manfully,—for he felt a sort of sympathy for and interest in him,
and desired to warn the youth, ere it was too late, to avoid the
quicksand on which he was stranded,—“I will tell you,” he repeated,
rising and leaning against the corner of the mantel-piece, his face
turned towards both his auditors, “what course a friend of mine adopted,
whose case was not, apparently, nearly so hopeless as yours. Would to
God I had followed his example a dozen years since, my lot would have
been a happier one; but let that pass. He was not qualified for a
business man; he had not received an education fitting him to be a
professional one; his father would not push him forward in any way: he
had friends, it is true, possessed of some influence; but they thought,
and naturally, it was his parent’s duty to provide for him; and, even
had such not been the case, he was too proud and self-reliant to seek
their assistance. He disliked home for many sufficient reasons; but
still, recollect he had a home—and—so long as he remained there, a
species of support, which you have not. That fact makes all the
difference between your cases. He was not absolutely compelled to work;
you ought to have been doing so long ago.
“He thought for a time, and then he acted. Starting from his father’s
house one gloomy morning in November, with a money capital of a few
shillings, and none other, save an energetic determined spirit, which
will accomplish more for a man than any moderate amount of money, high
birth, or connexion.
“People said he was mad, for his father was rich, an old man, likely to
die soon; they affirmed, if he had only waited a little longer he would
have found wealth ready made to his hand, whereas, by his rashness, he
had flung the chance of fortune—save by his own exertions—from him for
ever; but he replied, he had rather make a fortune than wait for one,
that he desired the death of no man, and that he would not waste the
best years of his life lounging about home, and putting himself in the
way of being tempted to commit a great sin, viz. that of wishing for his
father’s death: he said, that those who stayed might gain; that, for his
part, he would either win a happy home for himself on the earth, or else
seek it in the grave; that, if he earned a name, his father should hear
of him again,—if not, he would never return to the land of his birth
more.”
The speaker paused for a moment, but neither Malcolm nor Mina interposed
a word. Unconsciously, whilst recalling the events of that night, he had
grown desperately in earnest, and that earnestness flung such a stamp of
reality upon the narrative, that the listeners felt, in hearkening to
it, almost as though the hopeful, ardent, brave adventurer were standing
there before them, recounting with his own lips the story of his trials,
resolves, struggles. Mina’s gaze became rivetted on the miser’s eldest
born; she wanted to hear what one so situated had done: to learn, for a
certainty, what her brother might do. Ernest Ivraine met that anxious,
eager glance, and felt it pain, even while it calmed, him. With a half
sigh, turning his eyes on Malcolm and striving to forget the straining
look he knew was fastened on his face, he resumed:
“He went as I have said, enlisted in the army as a common soldier in a
regiment just about embarking for India, never informed his father of
the step he had taken, never repented him of it,—but sailed,—a gentleman
in the uniform of the ranks.
“Years rolled away, and in England there was only one who knew
accurately what had become of him; and when that friend was at length
enabled to send him out a sum sufficient to purchase a commission, it
was returned with the proud boast that he had bought one with his blood;
that he had fought his way up to the point where he stood, and could
show for every step some severe wound, some long deep scar. Note the
result of his rash folly, as people termed it. His father is still
living: he might have grown grey-haired waiting for the wealth which
could only be his through the death of a parent, and was then contingent
on the old man’s will; he might have moped and dawdled and murmured away
the best years of his existence, of no use to mortal being, a burden to
himself, and have, finally, died first or gained nothing after all. He
made a better and a manlier choice, has won name, position, honour, some
money, much love. If you, Malcolm Frazer, will go and do likewise, I
think I can promise to give you the first step, which he had to hew out
for himself: make up your mind to go out to India; I will obtain an
ensigncy or something for you there: after that, all depends on
yourself: only resolve to be great, and you may become so,—only
determine to rise, and that determination will give you wings to soar
almost to any height you please.
“Will you at once take courage and example from a true story of life?
cease waiting and watching and vaguely hoping, and finally act. I do not
proffer assistance through officiousness, but solely because I imagine
you require, and perhaps might not object to accept it. If you do not
like the plan, say so frankly; if you decide to follow it, only speak
the word and I will aid you by every means in my power. Will you go or
stay?”
Who, with poverty on the one side and the realization of his boyish
hopes on the other, would have hesitated to choose? Not Mina’s brother,
for, without an instant’s reflection, he cried,
“Go, with a hundred thousand thanks.”
“You have spoken wisely and well,” remarked Ernest.
“Mina, what say you?” demanded her brother in a kind eager tone, and
with sparkling eyes; “I have been little of a comfort, little save a
trouble for a long time; still you will miss me: what say you?”
“That you must go,” she answered, speaking firmly, even though she could
not prevent tears springing to her eyes at the prospect of this last
break.
“You are right, Miss Frazer,” said Mr. Ivraine; “your brother ought not
to waste his life either here or in Scotland,—he must go to India: and
you,” he added, after a pause, “you will return to Craigmaver, I
presume.”
The blood came rushing up into Mina’s face, and a sort of agonized
remembrance of what that place had once been, of what it had lately
become, sweeping unbidden through her soul, checked her utterance; but
Malcolm, who liked not the appearance of aught being amiss betwixt
himself and the wealthy head of their clan, answered promptly, “Of
course.”
Ernest Ivraine looked at her for a moment almost despairingly; he
thought of her desolate position, of his wretched home, of a choice
between none and that, of whether his father would receive her and what
difference it might make in his future prospects, of being separated
from her for ever, of having her beside him always, of which would be
the worst for her,—to be a wife amongst his friends or a dependant
amidst her own—with one in the world to love her tenderly, or all
perhaps looking coldly upon her. He could not leave her—he feared to
take her. He saw there was a something which prevented _her_ thinking of
a return to Scotland as of a happy event. Was it that her proud spirit
brooked not the idea of being a pauper in the house of her rich cousins?
or was it—could it be—that she cared for him?
If so, she would not value the smiles or the frowns of relatives; she
would endure privation, grief, annoyance, for a brief space, for his
sake. All swept through his mind with the velocity of light: the old
barriers of prudence, consideration for her happiness, dread of the
result, were broken down instantaneously as he gazed upon her troubled
face, and then came rapidly forth the words,
“I know little, it is true, of your affairs; but believe there is no
other home open for her, unless—she will marry me.”
He spoke to Malcolm, but he looked towards Mina; he could read nothing
from her face; he saw she tried to speak, but could not; he felt he
cared for her more than ever, whilst his destiny thus hung quivering in
the hands of fate.
The second which ensued after his abrupt question without his receiving
an answer, seemed such an eternity of torture that, to shorten its
duration, he said to Malcolm, in a tone tremulous with suppressed
emotion,
“Do you think she would?”
“I answer yes for her,” returned Malcolm boldly, though he felt half
conscious he was tampering with her fate, solely that he might win his
own game; “if you wish to hear it from her lips, she will say so too:
Mina, speak.”
One quick despairing glance into the past, an equally rapid and hopeless
one towards the two futures now presented for her choice, a thought of
the selfishness of clouding Malcolm’s prospects again—of flinging him
once more friendless and helpless on the barren shore where he had till
that morning been lying,—a dream of all he might rise to, if she would
just do that which she had for so long been told she ought, a reckless
sensation concerning her own destiny, a feeling of gratitude towards the
man who offered so much to both—who must have a regard for her,—and then
Mina, at the command of her brother, pronounced the monosyllable she had
long vowed she would not speak, but which now, as it was pronounced, she
would have died ere recanting, unless he—Ernest Ivraine—wished it. And
oh! how many a time did she pray that he might desire it.
But he did not: once or twice he thought of telling her frankly and
fairly what a life lay before her; but then the dread that she might
repent, and the conviction that her position as his wife would be better
than any other which presented itself added to the hope that hereafter
he could give her all he might only wish for her now, kept him silent.
He entered the house that day resolved not to drag her into misery,
vowing never to utter a single syllable till he was independent—Sir
Ernest Ivraine, his own master—a fortune-hunter no longer; and he left
it with the little word of assent ringing in his ears, alternately with
the sound of a blessing and the power of a curse.
“Mina is finally settled, Miss Caldera,” said Malcolm to that lady, with
a light laugh, which, however, only partially concealed his troubled
feelings; “kiss the child,” he added, “for being good at last.”
But Mina angrily pushed him away, and escaping from them both, fled to
the solitude of her own chamber, where she could think and weep in
peace.
She felt bewildered, terrified, overwhelmed; she thought of his unknown
relatives, of his uncomprehended self; she reflected alternately
concerning his silence, his kindness, and his reserve; she tried to see
where she was going, and with whom; wondered if he felt he were
condescending to her, and whether he would not be sorry hereafter, and
how he ever came to care for and to think of marrying her; she
remembered Miss Caldera’s advice, and Alfred Westwood’s words, and
Malcolm’s speculations, and, bowing her flushed face in her hands, shed
scalding tears of mortified pride to reflect that some people might say
she had striven to catch a baronet’s son—that he himself might fancy so
sometime.
The idea haunted her so that she could not endure for long to hear his
name uttered by either her friend or her brother; she shrunk from the
mention of the subject as if she had been a party to some guilty
transaction; she did not comprehend how poor and unhappy he was, and
consequently attributed all sorts of proud haughty feelings to him, of
which he was completely innocent; she was always glad when he was there,
because then they could not talk about the proposed match, and what a
good one it was; her soul sickened at the idea of marrying for a
position—for money, of being a mere mercenary calculating creature.
“I am not that,” she cried aloud, communing in solitude with the
feelings of her heart, “I am not that, and I have not deceived him, or
ever tried to make him care for me; and, if I am doing wrong, I cannot
help it. I strove to do right, and they would not let me, and I cannot
see what is right—only—only—I wish he were poor like myself;” and then
she grew utterly wretched, reflecting how foolishly he would feel he had
acted when he found out more about what she actually was, and how
estranged they were from all rich connexions, and what a lonely desolate
little wanderer he had taken home.
Home! where was it? what sort would it prove? Had he sisters who would
sneer at her like Cecilia, brothers who would frown darkly on her,
parents who would be angry at his choice? and, as she thought of these
chances, and knew how she had said “yes,” and remembered she might be of
use to Malcolm, that her husband would be sure to help her brother, she
nerved herself up to a kind of hardened determination, steeled and
fortified her soul for the event, tried to reconcile herself even to the
idea of coldness, pride, neglect, haughty relatives, a comfortless home,
superciliousness and contempt. “It will be a home at any rate,” she
said, “and if I marry I have a right to it.” She never told others all
the wild fears she entertained, all the sorrow she endured, but she sat
for hours by herself—pondering and struggling and pining—and sometimes
she grew quite calm externally, and, in fact, looked listlessly at the
whole affair from beginning to end. The end, ah! she could not see that.
It lay far away among those fens, whither she was to journey with him.
He once told her the country there was very flat, ugly, and
uninteresting; but that was all she knew about it, and she did not care
to hear more: she fancied she should be in possession of all quite soon
enough.
He had asked her, not to love, but to marry him; and she said “yes,”
because Malcolm had first spoken it for her, and then ordered her to
repeat the word after him,—because she was sick of striving, tired of
being perpetually told she ought to marry, weary of seeing her brother
inactive, murmuring, discontented. She had no home—no definite
expectation, present or future, of providing a happy one for herself:
she imagined it was best for her to listen, at least, to advice; she
sometimes argued that as she had never previously followed counsel, when
it clashed with her own wishes or ideas, she must now be acting
prudently in yielding to the persuasions of friends, whilst every
feeling of her heart said “no” to the step they proposed.
Many trials, successive disappointments, and actual ill health had
finally reduced her to that state of utter hopelessness in which many
persons fly to convents, and place the irrevocable barrier of a vow
betwixt them, the world, and its cares for ever; and just, in like
manner, she was rushing into matrimony, as she one day told Miss
Caldera, with something between a sneer and a sob, “to have done with
it.”
“To have done with what, my dear?” mildly inquired that lady.
“The theme matrimonial,” returned Mina; “after I take this man for
better for worse, you can never, thank goodness, ask me to marry again.
When once I am Mrs. Ivraine, I shall at last be ‘settled,’ shall I not?”
“Heaven send!” devoutly murmured Miss Caldera, who sincerely entertained
doubts whether the girl would ever be at rest—even in her coffin.
“Heaven send!”
“Amen,” said Mina, bitterly.
“You have never been settled or at peace since I knew you,” remarked
Miss Caldera.
“You have never let me be at peace since I knew you,” retorted Mina;
“but now, at length, I hope you and Malcolm are satisfied. I have
accepted a man for whom I do not care a straw; am about to enter a
family of which I know nothing; am marrying from purely prudential
motives: what girl could do more, even if brought up by a worldly
managing mother? I have proved an apt pupil in the noble art of
match-making, and yet you give me no credit for my proficiency in the
science.”
“I think, Mina,” returned Miss Caldera severely, “that you are, without
exception, the strangest, most unreasonable, most dissatisfied person I
ever met with. Here you, a portionless girl, without any extraordinarily
rich or high relatives, are on the eve of espousing a handsome,
agreeable, elegant-looking, country gentleman, son to a baronet, rich,
amiable, apparently qualified to make any woman happy; in fact, it is in
every way a much better match than you could possibly, even during your
uncle’s lifetime, have expected.”
“But good gracious!” here broke in her auditor, “I never expected, I
never wanted to make a grand or a good, or any kind of a match at all; I
only wanted to be let alone, and, as I always said: and as you have just
now confessed, had I been rich, you never would have so tormented me;
and—and,” she added hastily, “I wish I were dead.”
“Solely, I believe, because you cannot die just at present,” responded
her friend; “if you could, you would not wish it, and if you could not
marry, I daresay you would think a home of your own a very haven of
happiness. Mina, you are a perfect enigma to me: why, most girls would
think themselves fortunate if, in your position, they could settle one
half so well, and yet you talk, or rather rave—for I do not think you
mean one half what you say—incessantly, as if you were a sort of martyr;
in fact, I half suspect you feel as if you were one, don’t you, dear?”
“I feel as if my heart were breaking,” returned Mina, as she left the
room, in a tone so cold and steadfast, that somehow it carried more
conviction to the mind of Miss Caldera than had ever entered there
before.
“Things have gone very cross with her lately, poor darling, and she can
see no happiness in anything just at present,” she soliloquized, for in
her heart she loved the girl better than any one else on earth; even
whilst she scolded and lectured and worried her life out, she felt a
near and tender interest in the child of a wayward temper and a wayward
destiny. She did it all for her ultimate good; she sincerely and
rationally enough believed that to marry Mr. Ivraine was the very best
thing the orphan could do, both for herself and her brother; and,
accordingly, she left no stone unturned to induce her to become, as Mina
had once pettishly said, “a country squire’s country wife.”
But still there was a something so fixed, so unchangeable in Mina’s
mood, that the lady at length began to marvel if the marriage really
would turn out as happy an affair as she had at one time anticipated it
might.
She once wondered “if it were prudent;” and then again she said, “of
course,” because, if the girl did not wed him, what else was she to do?
Work she could not, beg she might not, teach she would not—to make money
as she desired, by writing, was a farce; and her brother,—no, no, there
was nothing for it but a golden wedding ring: she was securing a home
for herself,—employment, promotion, perhaps a brilliant destiny, for
Malcolm. “It would be all right in time, quite right;” so Miss Caldera
hoped, so she tried to believe, yet the doubt which had crossed her
mind, made her feel vaguely, strangely uncomfortable.
The interval which elapsed from the time of Ernest’s sudden proposal was
truly a miserable one for all; in after days, not one of the trio ever
liked to look back upon it. When, in answer to a question regarding the
period for the marriage, Mina responded, she did not care—the sooner the
better, adding her customary “then it will be done with,” her friend
felt strongly inclined to read her a lecture concerning the sin of
ingratitude generally, and hers particularly; but a look at the face of
one whom she had known as a child and watched through all the struggles
and sorrows of her later life,—whose story, vague, unsatisfactory, and
foolish though it might have been, she had pondered on and sighed over,
drove back the words as she would have uttered them, and she refrained.
Yes, they were growing very patient with, and fond of, and lenient
towards her now, when patience and fondness and leniency availed not;
Mina felt that, and sometimes it softened and sometimes it chafed her:
she was seldom ten minutes in the same temper, though she never varied
on one point,—regret that, against her will, she had been forced, as she
said, into an unequal union.
One night, after a brief conversation in the usual style, to which
Malcolm, sitting more thoughtful than was his wont by the fire, listened
in silence, Miss Caldera said, as they arose to separate for the night,
“If you are so very averse to him, Mina, would it not be better for you
to pause—to break off the marriage?”
“Yes, it’s all very well to ask me that _now_,” returned the girl almost
fiercely; “as I have gone so far, I will go still further,—settle my
destiny and myself for ever. It is too late to draw back; and, even if I
could, it would be of no use: it must come to this, or something very
like this, some time sooner or later, and perhaps the sooner the
better.”
She uttered the sentence in one rapid breath as she stopped for a moment
on the staircase; and when she concluded, without waiting for answer of
any kind, she ran hastily towards her own room and locked and bolted the
door behind her.
“I wonder if it be a right thing,” murmured Miss Caldera, half aloud, “I
wonder how it will ‘turn out.’”
“If evil come of it,” said Malcolm sternly, in answer, “will either of
us be free from blame in the matter?”
The lady coloured deeply at the unexpected remark; she seemed as if
about to reply, but the words died away on her lips, and the young man,
with a gloomy look in his usually thoughtless eyes, left her to her own
reflections—pleasant or the reverse—as successive ideas, fears, and
visions floated through her brain.
Malcolm paused, ere proceeding to his own apartment, by the door of his
sister’s room, and listened for a moment. He heard no sob, no
sigh—nothing but the sound of her light tread, and the rustle of her
mourning dress, as she moved restlessly backwards and forwards,
measuring with hurried footsteps the length and breadth of the small
chamber; scarcely knowing what she was doing, but walking on a sort of
mental treadmill, to which she had bound herself, as she fancied, for
life.
“Mina,” cried her brother softly, “Mina, dear, speak to me one word.”
She unfastened the door and asked him what he wanted.
“It is not for me, Mina,” he said, in a sort of choking way, “not for me
you are doing this.”
“Doing what?” she demanded.
“Marrying Mr. Ivraine; I have not forced you into this, have I?”
There was a self-reproach, a sorrow in his words that brought back the
girl’s love and affection for him, recalled her to a remembrance of
their actual position, revived her dreams of a bright future for him,
made her almost forget herself, brought their childhood vividly to mind.
The light fell full on his pale troubled face; she saw he was willing,
at that instant to give his consent to the match being broken off, to
renounce his darling hopes rather than incur the responsibility of
pushing on the marriage; she perceived he had repented of his share in
the business, that he longed for her to say it was not he who was
forcing her to take a step she dreaded. A strong revulsion of feeling
chased all angry emotions from her soul: she would have done anything in
the world for him then; so, putting her arms about his neck, she said in
a low hushed voice,
“I am marrying for a home, Malcolm; do not distress yourself: I am not
very unhappy, and you shall never hear me complain more; we have both of
us much reason to be thankful.”
He kissed her when she concluded with a tenderness and reality of
affection one could scarcely have imagined him capable of feeling: one
depth of his heart had at last been sounded; and thenceforth he seemed
changed, improved, subdued. And Mina,—she had effected a sort of victory
over herself, and became quite calm: whatever she felt or thought, she
never said. At last she was granted perfect peace on the
subject,—“left,” as she had often wished to be, “alone.”
If they had always done that, she might have been made to care for him
long before; but she was not conscious of that fact—only humbly thankful
for the silence Malcolm and Miss Caldera now generally maintained.
I wonder, however, what silence could keep an impending marriage a
secret from a London maid-of-all-work. Not that, at all events, which
was preserved in Miss Caldera’s abode, for the young damsel who
officiated in that capacity in the governess’ domicile, took occasion to
have a confidential chat with Mrs. Frith concerning the whole affair,
and Mrs. Frith wrote down an account of the same to her father, Colin
Saunders, who would, the worthy Scotchwoman fancied, be overwhelmed with
joy to hear Miss Mina was to be wedded to his master’s son: but the news
did not seem altogether to rejoice the old man; he moped about the place
for some time after receipt of that letter without speaking to anybody,
during which period Mina never suspected an humble friend was grieving
deeply, though silently, for her.
END OF VOLUME II.
LONDON:
Printed by SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15, Old Bailey.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.