TREATS OF MANY THINGS.
Acting upon the suggestion his invaluable clerk had thrown out, Mr.
Merapie inquired of Mina whether she would let Miss Caldera teach her at
home, and receiving, after some hesitation, a conditional answer in the
affirmative, he proceeded to that lady and demanded if she would be
willing to instruct his niece.
Poor Miss Caldera would have jumped at the proposition of taming even a
cannibal, had a few pounds been promised as the result of her efforts;
for she was poor—poorer even than the church mouse alluded to in the old
saw, inasmuch as that little animal enjoys comparative freedom, a thing
the governess had never known for years, excepting perhaps occasionally
in dreams.
She was the daughter of a country clergyman; had been brought up in a
pretty village rectory; had been educated solidly, but not inducted into
the mysteries of any of those lighter accomplishments generally deemed
so essential to young ladies. She was learned in Latin, had dabbled in
Greek, knew a little of German, and was mistress of French and Italian;
had studied mathematics till somehow she grew herself like a problem in
Euclid, full of harsh unbending lines and angles; algebra, to her,
presented no more difficulties than the rule-of-three; and as for the
derivation of words, only let any person ask the meaning of one, and she
poured down upon the devoted head of the questioner hosts of Latin and
Greek direct ancestors, with collateral Gallic and old Saxon relatives,
thick as dust from the backs of antique black letter volumes which
almost suffocated him. And whilst her father thus crammed her with
useless learning, her mother instructed her in some more needful and
feminine arts—to wit, the making of pies, and concocting of puddings,
and stitching of shirts, and mending of stockings. And, if nature had
not bestowed upon her a kind heart, a placid temper, and a love of the
beautiful so intense as to be almost painful, she would have been in
reality as in appearance, as crisp, and short, and good, as one of her
own pie crusts, which had been perhaps a little overdone in the ovening;
but she was possessed of, and retained, in spite of circumstances, a
fondness for flowers, and poetry, and quiet scenery, which added still a
bitter drop unto a cup which time and change and death and misfortune
soon made bitter enough.
Parents died, money was lost, friends grew cold, relatives careless, all
save one—the strong minded schoolmistress previously referred to, who,
hearing that her cousin, the rector’s daughter, was in absolute want and
could not get a situation, wrote to ask her up to town, to the end that
she might assist in her matter of fact seminary and receive no
remuneration.
She supported her; and Miss Caldera, after school hours, occasionally
obtaining a French or Italian tuition, contrived by dint of economy and
patching, to clothe herself, and sometimes, purchase a new book and a
bunch of flowers: the two latter were all her luxuries. Toiling,
pinching, saving, she could make no more than kept her from the parish,
and enabled her to buy, at rare intervals, a volume of poetry and a few
half-faded lilies. And this was she who once had affectionate parents,
pleasant acquaintances, a cheerful home; whose birth had been welcomed
with smiles, whose mother had thanked God because a daughter was given
unto her, who once had been admired,—loved perhaps: this was she.
Wonderful are the ways of this world, and of the people in it; but most
wonderful of all things unto me seems the mode in which assistance and
pity, and sympathy and affection, are accorded,—frequently gratuitously
and unnecessarily to the young and to the pretty, the _almost_ happy and
the wealthy; whilst those, on whose faces care has set its unmistakeable
mark,—whose feet are weary with the toilsome journey of years, who
require a double portion of kindness, friendship, and happiness, to
console them for the misery of the past,—are permitted to pass solitary
on their way, unquestioned, unheeded, unloved.
Miss Caldera’s cousin—a bustling, determined, energetic woman—declared
she was a good enough creature, but a great oddity; and the governess
who, though she would have liked her own way as well as any body living,
never got it, subsided in the course of years, into a silent, reserved,
angular old maid, who never opened her heart unto mortal, and never
spoke energetically on any subject unless she were exhorting a child to
be good, or a girl to marry; and who was thought to be just fit for her
position.
And oh! how she detested that position, how uselessly she had striven to
master fate a little, and better her condition, she knew; and how, at
night, when she laid down to rest, sick and dispirited, the tears
trickled down her cheeks as she thought of her old home, and her dead
parents; her past, and her present,—the cold moonbeams that fell upon
her face alone took cognizance.
Had any one told any of her London acquaintances, that Mary Caldera wept
in secret, because, at thirty-two, she was an orphan and a dependant,
the thing would have been first discredited, and then laughed at; but
people will not even smile at my recording the fact here, as it is the
custom to extend compassion to individuals where it can do them no good,
viz., in books; and to withhold the same where it might prove
beneficial, to wit, in actual life.
And though Miss Caldera had a kind true heart, and was, moreover, only
two and thirty, her pupils, even those who liked her best, persisted in
calling her a plain, strange old maid; and she cared very little for
anybody on earth, and nobody in the world really cared one straw for
her.
Such, then, was the individual who was selected to instruct Mina Frazer
for two hours per diem, and to bring the rebellious Scotch child up “in
the way she should go.” Her cousin, indeed, to whom, of course, no
profit was to accrue from the arrangement, and who entertained a sort of
horror of the “first pupil who had ever mastered her,” and whom in
consequence she had summarily dismissed home, “hoping that the ruling
powers there would send her back penitent and acquiescent;” seriously
advised Miss Caldera to have nothing to do with the obstinate,
over-indulged, deceitful looking little creature, who had promised to be
so easily managed, and who turned out such a miniature virago. “But the
governess had a vague faith in Mina, and moreover wanted the money; for
both of which reasons she undertook the task of teaching the child, so
far as in her lay, the lore of books, the love of man, and the fear of
God.”
What other persons disliked in Mina, viz., her perpetual allusions to
her father, and her ceaseless regret for her native land and the friends
who dwelt there, proved a sort of link of communication betwixt the girl
and the woman; between her whose future was yet unrevealed to mortal
ken, and her whose lot was, to all human appearance, cast, and settled
for ever; between the child of the Scotch officer and the daughter of
the village rector. For years, it is true, they never exactly understood
each other; for the dry formal manner acquired during a kind of eternity
of tuition, cannot be cast aside at once; and Mina never could
comprehend any one being _very_ fond of her who did not say so; but
still, after a time, they got on remarkably well together; and so did
the little girl with her lessons.
At the first she rebelled considerably, having a dim idea that Miss
Caldera had been in some way accessary to the insults and injuries
heaped upon her Highland head upon the occasion of her first and only
visit to Mrs. Meredith’s establishment for young ladies; but Miss
Caldera, having an intuitive feeling that her charge might be subdued by
kindness, said so calmly, “You would not wish to make me unhappy I
_know_;” that Mina, quite astonished at this view of the question,
answered, “She would not;” and, therefore, did what she was told, as
quietly as if she had been brought up under the iron rule of
“discipline.”
Still there was always, even in her best moments, something so
unsettled, dissatisfied, and melancholy about the pupil, that the soul
of the governess was frequently disturbed about her. “I do not quite
understand her,” she generally thought: “I wonder if her father, who was
so fond of her, did; and dear me! how fond I am growing of the child
too.”
But whether loved in England or not; whether new friends liked or
disliked, praised or blamed, it seemed much the same to Mina: her heart
like that of Campbell was in the Highlands; it stuck there tenaciously,
let her body be where it might. She had been transplanted somewhat
rudely to English ground, and though she lived there, she never for
years and years took root in, or looked kindly on, the soil.
The country of old—the looks of old—the friends of old, were to the
young child what they frequently do not prove even to much older
people—things to be remembered and grieved over, not for a day, but for
years: never to be forgotten till Mina Frazer should have forgotten her
own identity too, and passed from the sight of heather and roses for
ever.
Colin Saunders had done her merely justice when he affirmed so
vehemently, on the morning of her departure, that “she would not forget
even a daisy on the moors;” and when Allan, the old laird’s grandson,
who delighted in tormenting the gardener, remarked, as he frequently
did:
“I told you, Colin, she would not remember us for more than a few days;
we have not had a letter for an immense time, and your ‘mull’ seems to
me like what Prince Charlie was, ‘long o’ comin’,—’”
Saunders, looking up into heaven as if to implore it to corroborate the
truth of his assertion, would respond—
“If I never heard tell of her; if I never saw her; if there never was
word from her again; I would know her heart was wi’ us a’—the places and
the people she cared so much for: the child of my dear old master never
could but care for the land he ‘lo’ed sae weel.’”
“But my cousin, Malcolm, is the son of Captain Frazer, too; and—”
“Ay! but Miss Mina strained after her father’s side of the house; and
he, got from his mother the English nature that cares not so much for
country or clan, as for gold, and ease, and comfort, and the things o’
this wicked world.”
“I am sure our neighbours would be flattered by your opinion of them,
Colin.”
“Flattered or no’, it’s nae concern o’ mine,” retorted the man warmly;
“I’d say it to their king if he were standing where you are now,—that no
people in the world cares so much for home when they’re in it, or pines
as much for it when absent, as the true old Highlanders that fought so
nobly for their own prince,—fought, and fell, and died for him: ay! and
would do it again, if need were.”
“Hush! hush!” cried Allen, laughing, “or although the Jacobite days are
over, I shall have to report you to our friend the sheriff.”
“I said, Master Allan, I would speak it to the king, and I don’t mind
telling it to the sheriff; it’s not treason but truth; the minister says
it is so; and if he says it——”
“I may swear it,” supplied the laird’s grandson; “and does he assert
also that Mina will not forget us?”
“I never heard him speak of her, in regard of that,” responded the
gardener; “but I assert it Master Allan, and if she does not send the
‘mull’ to me, I know she wants to send it, which is just the same.”
Colin was quite correct, as the subsequent advent of his snuff box
proved, the sole cause of the delay having arisen from the fact that
even in London things cannot be purchased without money, of which
valuable commodity, when Mina made her generous proposal, she was
lamentably in want. But a present from her uncle, who discovered in
course of time, perhaps through the medium of Mr. Westwood, the desire
of his niece’s heart, at length enabling her to fulfil her promise, she
dispatched to Craigmaver the very ugliest snuff box eye of mortal ever
lighted on. She thought it beautiful, however, and so did Colin
Saunders, who regularly carried it to “Kirk” with him, though he would
have died rather than have taken a pinch out of it in the sacred
edifice; and when the old man, long long afterwards, closed his eyes on
earth’s pleasures and sorrows for ever, that snuff box was found,
preserved as a precious relic, beside the two other treasures of his
life—his mother’s Bible and his father’s spectacles.
And that wonderful chariot of time, pursuing its ceaseless course just
the same along the London streets as over the Scottish moors, gradually
added some inches to Mina Frazer’s height; gave a different expression
to her face, and by an imperceptible, inexplicable—and, if not noted day
by day, almost alarming—process, transformed Mina Frazer from a child
into something bordering upon, if not quite, a young lady.
But time, rarely, as we know, missing an opportunity of altering aught
upon which it is possible for him to lay either a beautifying or a
withering finger, had effected other changes besides that of making Mina
older; he had sent Malcolm, as a midshipman, into the navy; brought a
tenant to one of Mr. Merapie’s houses; and, almost immediately after
Mrs. Frazer’s arrival in the mansion the merchant had chosen for his own
abode, installed Miss Haswell as efficient housekeeper, in lieu of Mrs.
Coleford, abdicated.
For these events, of course, there were a multitude of reasons; but, not
to be tedious, suffice it to say that in reference to Malcolm, Mr.
Merapie had wished the boy to enter his counting-house; which idea was
strongly opposed by Mrs. Frazer, by her son, and finally, by Mr.
Westwood, as he _said_, in consequence of their strong objections to the
project.
“Let him take his own way for a while,” he said; “and he will then
either quietly settle down to business, or else stick to the profession
he has chosen for himself. If you _force_ him now to the desk, he will
never become either a clever merchant or a brave officer; give him his
wish and you will speedily see whether it be not a mere boyish fancy:
theoretically liking the navy is one thing, and practical knowledge of
it another; let him eat of the fruit and find if it be most sweet or
most bitter.” And, as usual, Mr. Merapie followed his clerk’s advice;
nothing loth, if the truth must be told; for Englishmen in general,
albeit ours is not a military nation, are by no means averse to talk of
“my nephew, the captain,” serving his country either by land or by
water: wherefore he speedily fitted Malcolm out for sea, and, as if the
one step were the natural consequence of the other, almost immediately
afterwards took, as Mrs. Frazer had often wished he would, his clever
clerk Mr. Alfred Westwood, into partnership.
And, as “one event makes many,” this new business arrangement brought,
in the person of that gentleman, a tenant into one of Mr. Merapie’s
dreary mansions; for, with clerkship, Mr. Westwood discarded lodgings,
and commenced that wretched trade called “housekeeping,” on his own
account. Thus it naturally came to pass that many, or rather most of his
evenings, were spent in the drawing-room of his senior partner,
conversing with his sister; and, when Miss Caldera was there,
insinuating himself into her good graces, and endeavouring to regain,
what somehow he had lately lost, his power over Mina—whose reserve, and
strangeness, and eccentricity, her mother said, increased every day;
but, latterly, Mrs. Frazer, after this mournful declaration, was in the
habit of adding: “And it is such a pity, for every one says she is such
a clever creature;” appealing to Mr. Westwood for confirmation of this
opinion,—which confirmation, he gave in a manner that made Mina feel
desperately angry whenever she chanced to be in the room whilst he was
delivering his complimentary impression of her.
And Mr. Westwood had not the most remote intention of marrying Mrs.
Frazer, as Mr. Merapie had once expected he would: to be sure, the
advisability of such a course had once presented itself to him, and he
had argued the matter in his own mind—as the newspapers say about
lawyers—with considerable ability and much clearness on both sides, but
he finally shook his head and said “no.”
“What would fifty pounds a year do towards maintaining her and her
children, and I can get a partnership without marrying for it; and it is
not by any means likely John Merapie would both give me a share of the
profits and portion his sister. No, no! I won’t marry her at any rate.”
But it very soon occurred to the busy and practical imagination of
Alfred Westwood, that, though John Merapie might not “give him a share
of the profits and portion his sister,” yet he most probably would “give
him a share of the profits and portion his niece.” And he then began to
consider what an uncommonly nice little creature that niece was—quite
pretty enough to fall in love with; quite clever enough, though by no
means accomplished, to adorn his West End home—when he got it—and,
therefore, before the partnership was even spoken of, he made up his
mind that, sometime or other, he would marry Mina Frazer, her consent to
such an arrangement being taken by the worthy clerk as quite a matter of
course.
“She liked me when she was a child, and continues to do so; at least, I
do not see why she should not,” he reasoned; “her uncle will give her a
large fortune, and it will all suit admirably.” Acting upon which
conclusion he began to make himself “particularly agreeable” to Mina,
who, strange to say, seemed so wonderfully insensible to his
fascinations that, finally, Mr. Westwood grew quite provoked, and
resolved, as he expressed it, just “to see how matters really stood.”
And, accordingly, chancing on his way up to the drawing-room one evening
to encounter her, the _ci-devant_ clerk abruptly demanded—
“Oh! Mina, I have been intending to ask you something for a long time:
should you have any objection to marry me?”
“The greatest objection possible,” she briefly returned. Whereupon he
laughed as if it were a capital jest; but Mina knew it was not so on his
side; and he, clearly understanding her words were spoken in solemn
earnest, felt angry and irritated accordingly.