THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.
Malcolm Frazer was quite correct in his supposition that Miss Caldera
was the cause of the sage advice Mina had been pleased to give him; and
had his own reason not told him there was some sense in it, he would
have valued it accordingly.
For it is a fact that Malcolm, so good-natured, and Miss Caldera, so
prudent, could not, for some sufficient cause, contrive to “get on
together;” and for every little disagreement which Mina and she were
wont to have, he and she had fifty.
The truth was, Malcolm provoked her; she could have overlooked his
extravagance, thoughtlessness, and rashness,—she had felt half inclined
to pity him when she heard he was coming home in disgrace; but when he
did actually swagger into the drawing-room with just the same careless,
unabashed manner as formerly; when his laugh sounded as joyous as ever;
when he and his mother sneered at business and called it low; when he
never offered to settle down steadily at home, and become a useful
member of society, and go each morning off to the place below the Tower
where his uncle “turned over” no end of thousands of sovereigns in the
year; and when he mysteriously hinted how, in a little time, he would
“get round” Uncle John and coax him into doing a little more for him
yet, the worthy lady’s patience became exhausted, and she confidentially
told Mina she thought her brother was “a ridiculous idiot.”
They disagreed, whenever they met, on every conceivable point,—religion,
politics, the news of the day, dress, education, music, books,
amusements: these topics furnished them incessantly with occasions for
what Malcolm styled, “little tiffs;” and he so enjoyed putting the
worthy governess out of temper, that he frequently said precisely the
opposite of what he thought, that Miss Caldera might be thus, innocently
trapped into an argument, which furnished him with opportunities for
laughing at her.
The theme matrimonial was, however, the grand battle-ground on which the
two delighted to fling decided opinions at each other’s heads; for Miss
Caldera, with all her sense, was one of those people who appear to
imagine the feminine portion of the creation have been sent on the earth
for no other purpose save to marry: and, to superficial observers, it
really seemed as if she had remained a spinster solely from a
philanthropic desire to have more time at her disposal to assist her
fellow mortals to fulfil their destinies in this particular.
Original sense and later experiences were perpetually battling together
in her mind, and she strove so hard to persuade herself and all whom it
might concern that a “good settlement” was the great prize on which,
from infancy, a female ought to fix her eyes, that she talked her
theoretical set of opinions at every mortal who dared her to
contradiction, with a pertinacity which ought, at least, to have
convinced her own mind of the truth of her perpetual assertion, “That
the only thing a woman can and ought to do to help herself, is to
marry.”
But in vain: a few obstinate and primitive ideas, which she had
collected amidst the roses of her mother’s flower-garden and the Latin
books of her father’s library, that woman may think of something else
during her progress through this world than “catching” a husband, would
keep springing up in her rebellious heart; and, though she strove hard
to root up these absurdities, all her endeavours were but of very little
use, for the new views which intercourse with the world had taught her
did not satisfy her as to the “rightness” of the match-making system,
though they did as to its utility; and, when she got fairly bewildered,
between feeling and what she was pleased to term reason, she settled the
point by repeating, for the thousandth time, there was something wrong
about women’s position, but as they were so situated, the best thing
they could do, individually and collectively, was to marry, though she
could not avoid confessing to herself that it was a great pity the
eternal necessity should be always driving mothers and daughters along
in an everlasting search after elder sons and wealthy partners.
Some specimens of the “fine old English gentleman” are still to be met
with in rural districts, who assert that fox-hunting is the noblest
pursuit which can employ the faculties of man; and really to have heard
Miss Caldera converse, it might occasionally have been imagined she
thought husband-hunting the grandest chase that could by possibility
occupy the mind of woman, and her knowledge of the difficulties and
troubles besetting every step of a female’s life had made her think it,
as she said, “a very necessary chase,” though, to do her justice, she
never could so far get over some of her original ideas as to feel that a
marriage without affection is preferable to labouring solitarily for
daily bread, or that any amount of hundreds or thousands per annum could
have induced her, even though so weary of her situation, to take, for
better, for worse, one whom she could not respect and love.
The perpetual warfare which went on in her mind, between feeling and
desirability, produced many rather contradictory results; amongst
others, the anomaly that she, a spinster governess, who was constantly
urging on all with whom she came in contact to “fulfil their destinies,”
had refused, since she came to London, what her cousin, the
schoolmistress, had been pleased to term, a most “eligible offer,” from
a rich, vulgar, dinner-loving _parvenu_ (who wanted a wife as a
housekeeper, and thought Miss Caldera would just suit), simply because
she retained an old-fashioned prejudice (spite of her new-fashioned
convictions) that she should not care to wed a person she disliked: and
no doubt she was very foolish to reject a home for such a slight reason.
And she thought so herself; but she could not overcome the prejudice,
and so remained single to give capital advice to other people, which she
did not approve sufficiently to follow herself.
Then again, until any girl amongst her limited circle of acquaintances
was “settled,” she gave her rest neither by day nor night till she
tacked “Mrs.” to a new name; told her, if she chanced to be so
self-willed and unworldly as to refuse an apparently eligible offer,
that “she had thrown good fortune from her,” and “wished she might ever
get such a proposal again;” and finally, after she had, in conjunction
with friends and relatives, moved heaven and earth to get her to tie
herself for life to some rich dunce or genteel spendthrift, she turned
the tables, and commenced grumbling “how that misguided child had thrown
herself away, and what a wretched lot she had thought proper to select
for herself.”
Many reasons induced her to desire that Mina should marry Mr. Westwood:
first, she liked him, and thought there was no cause to fear its proving
an unhappy union; secondly, that gentleman had been at great pains to
convince her that Mina’s chance of fortune from her uncle was by no
means certain; that he might choose a wife for himself; that he might
quarrel with Malcolm, who was a most provoking young fellow; that he
might even fail; that a thousand reverses might arise to blast her
prospects; that, in fact, her only hope of a tranquil existence was
changing her Scotch name for his English one; and his hints to Miss
Caldera had grown so alarmingly strong after Malcolm’s finishing
exploit, that at length the worthy governess became a sight perfectly
dreaded by Mina, who was half frightened by the pictures of poverty
occasionally presented for her contemplation, but who was wholly
determined to have her own way, spite of the combined efforts of the
entire universe, always supposing she could manage to get it.
On the Sunday previous to the dialogue between Malcolm and his sister,
it had chanced that Mr. Alfred Westwood, instead of walking peaceably
home from church to his house in Belerma Square, turned his steps in an
opposite direction, and proceeded to that tenanted by Miss Caldera and
her cousin, both of whom he encountered on the pipeclayed steps.
“Could you favour me with five minutes’ private conversation,” he said,
on the strength of which point blank hint, the strong minded
schoolmistress, who had somehow come to the conclusion that the earth
would be too happy if fine gentlemen and bold children were not
permitted to spoil the face of it, stalked majestically off, setting
down vanity, perfumes, rings, hair oil, and rudeness, as amongst the
sins which did most easily beset Mr. Alfred Westwood, and had gained
immense possession over him.
“Miss Caldera,” began that individual, who could speak perfectly
straightforwardly when he chose to do so, “will you try to bring Mina to
reason. I want to marry her, and settle the business without delay.”
“You ought to try yourself,” replied the lady, who was pretty nearly
weary of her fruitless endeavours.
“I have, till I am tired,” he answered; “but I have now more pressing
reasons than ever: if you will use your best influence, you shall never
have cause to repent; if she marry me I will make her happy—on my soul I
will; her uncle’s consent is certain, will you try to gain her’s?”
“She does not seem to care very much for you; that is the difficult part
of the business,” said Miss Caldera.
“But it is her _interest_ to care for me,” retorted Mr. Westwood, “and
if you point that out to her, the rest is easy; no woman is insensible
to that.”
The _esprit de corps_ brought a flush into the lady’s pale cheek as she
answered warmly,
“Interest is the _last_ thing woman does look to in any relation of
life, and no mortal ever thought less of worldly advancement than Mina
Frazer; faults she has,—too many, perhaps, for her own happiness,—but a
mercenary spirit is not one of them; I could not care for her as I do if
she were sordid and calculating; neither could you.”
Mr. Westwood smiled as he replied,
“Perhaps not,” but it was not a pleasant smile; in truth, he had about
as much opinion of women as of men, and that was none: but he had a
strange sort of attachment for Mina; a dim unacknowledged idea that
there was some kind of good in her, although at the same time he thought
she refused him, not because she was blind to his fascinations—that
being impossible—but because she expected to be a great heiress, and to
marry, perhaps, in time, a pauper lord. He saw the pride and folly of
both mother and son, and concluded that underneath Mina’s reserve, pride
as great, and folly nearly as ridiculous, were resolutely lurking;
therefore, he imagined if she thought herself likely to be poor, she
would accept him, and that was all he wanted her to do; he would manage
all the rest quietly and dexterously himself. In this endeavour, who so
likely to aid him as Miss Caldera, his staunch friend and ally?
wherefore he had come to her, and so, instead of treating her to his
opinion of the entire feminine sex, he said, in answer to her rather
angry speech, the two words previously recorded,
“Perhaps not.”
“I am sure not,” responded the governess earnestly.
Mr. Westwood laughed.
“I wish,” he said, “you would find some means to make her care for me;
believe me she had better.”
There was a significance in the tone of the latter portion of the
sentence that struck Miss Caldera so much as to cause her to inquire
what he meant.
“That it will be well with mother, brother, and sister if she do; that
it will be worse for all if she do not,” was the rejoinder.
“You do not wish me to understand that, even if Mina persist in her
refusal, you would be so ungenerous as to endeavour to turn Mr.
Merapie’s heart against them,” she said, hurriedly.
“Heaven forbid!” replied Mr. Westwood; “but in the one case I should use
all my influence to advance their interests, and in the other I should
merely let matters take their course, without interfering. I don’t
pretend to Quixotism, Miss Caldera: if she marry me, I will do her and
her’s good; if not, I would not stir ten paces out of my way to serve
her; she had better consider fifty times before she says ‘no.’”
“But do you mean to imply that Mr. Merapie takes Malcolm’s breach of
discipline in such an angry spirit that he will never forgive it,—that
the silly boy has endangered, not merely his own prospects but those of
his sister?” she inquired in surprise. “I think you must be mistaken. I
can scarcely believe that he will ever forget to provide for Mina, at
all events.”
“I neither imply nor ask you to believe anything,” said Mr. Westwood
deliberately; “but I say what I _know_, that he is greatly grieved about
his nephew, and perplexed and tormented about other matters; that Mina
Frazer’s fortune won’t be the one half what I once thought it would be,
and what she, I suppose, thinks it is certain to be; and, finally, I
know she had better marry me, and I want you to try and persuade her to
do it: if she does not have her fortune settled now, she may never have
any.”
There was a something almost triumphant in the tone in which these words
were spoken, and Miss Caldera felt a vague alarm steal over her as she
asked,
“But why do you say so; _why_ is she less likely to be wealthy a few
years hence than now? Why are you in such haste to have matters
arranged?”
“Because life is always uncertain, and business is even more so;
because, in ten words, ‘it is well to strike while the iron is hot,’” was
his brief reply.
Miss Caldera sat and looked at him as if she thought more knowledge
might be gained from any feature in his face than from his mouth; but he
returned her gaze with such an unmoved expression of countenance, that
at last she withdrew her eyes with a vexed and puzzled air: then he,
with a smile, arose to depart.
“I am not jesting,” he remarked, by way of a departing hint.
“I see you are not,” she answered.
“And I trust to your friendship and good sense,” he added.
“I suppose,” began Miss Caldera, “it would be useless to ask you any
questions on the subject, for——”
“For, although it is impolite not to answer any questions a lady may
propound, you think, in this instance, I should feel inclined to do so,”
he interposed, resuming his usual manner, and laughing so as to display
the whiteness of his regular teeth. “No, no, please not to place me in
such a disagreeable position, because I cannot tell even you; and indeed
I should not like to refuse. I have said, perhaps, even more than I
ought, but I rely implicitly on your discretion.”
And Mr. Westwood, who was evidently most anxious to get out of the
house, shook hands quite vehemently with the governess and departed,
leaving her, for the first time since she had seen his clever handsome
face, a little dissatisfied with the possessor of it.
For a few minutes she actually wondered if Mina were not right, if a
marriage between the shrewd, calculating, middle-aged man and the
impetuous, generous, passionate, self-willed girl, were likely to
produce happiness; and then Miss Caldera “pshawed” down the thought, and
decided that, if there were the least risk of Mina ever being poor, she
ought to wed Mr. Westwood at once, who was just as good as most men, and
far better than many.
All that night Miss Caldera strove to convince herself Mr. Westwood had
been merely threatening or scheming; but there was truth in the tone of
his voice as it sounded again and again in her ears. She began to form a
fixed idea that something was wrong, and, on the full strength of this
conviction, she went over to Belerma Square the following afternoon, and
had a long earnest talk with Mina, the result of which talk was, that
her former charge got, as usual, into a passion, and, going a step
further than was her wont, declared that “she would submit to this
persecution no longer; that marry Mr. Westwood she would not; that she
had no present intention of wedding any one; and that, finally, she was
mistress of her own actions and intended to remain so, and that she
wished Miss Caldera would not interfere with her again.”
Then the governess, who, though sensitive to a look from most people,
knew Mina’s love for her so well as never to feel offended even at her
angriest expressions, put her arms around the girl’s waist, and, even
though Mina strove to push her away, besought her, for the sake of
former times, to, listen to her. And then she told her old pupil all
that Mina subsequently repeated to her brother, and a great deal more
besides—which brought tears into the rebellious eyes and a swelling into
the wilful heart—about how earnestly she desired her happiness, and of
what an interest she had taken in her from the first day, and how she
had loved the pale slight child at the beginning, solely because of the
vehement love she had evinced for the land of her birth and the people
who dwelt there.
“You may be angry or not, Mina,” the faithful friend said at length,
“but so long as I speak to you, I will say just what I think; for many
reasons, I believe you are wrong to be so stiff towards Mr. Westwood,
who is so fond of you. Mina, for my sake, will you reflect on all I have
said?”
“Good gracious!” said the girl, squeezing back, after her determined
fashion, a tear that almost trembled on her eyelashes, “good gracious!
you have made me think about Mr. Westwood and ‘marrying and giving in
marriage’ till I am sick of the theme, and the conclusion I long ago
arrived at, Malcolm, you remember, put into words for me the other day.
He said, men considered matrimony, when they reflected upon it at all,
as a thing which might come, not as women did, as a thing which must
come; that it is one incident in the drama of men’s lives, but forms the
entire plot in the drama of ours; that, if you would let me think of it
as of an event which, if it suited, was well, and if it did not, why
well still,—it would be better and happier and more respectable
altogether. He says, that’s the way he contemplates the step
matrimonial, and that he does not see why, simply because I am his
sister, I should not view it in the same light.”
“Malcolm can push his way in the world, if he will; he must never be a
dependant amongst strangers: he is a man and may struggle; you could
not.”
“I could,” retorted Mina, “but I need not, for my uncle will always
provide for me.”
“Mina Frazer,” said Miss Caldera, laying an earnest hand on her shoulder
and looking half sorrowfully into the flushed youthful face, “do not be
too sure of that; life’s chances and changes are awful to contemplate. I
once would have laughed, had any one told me I should ever have to work
for my daily bread; but desolation came into my home. You have not the
patience or the nature to bear, as it has been my lot imperfectly to do;
you would not like to think you would ever be situated as I am; but
remember, dear, when reverses come, that, though a woman tenderly
trained and matured finds it hard to toil and work, yet that still she
must live. I had a father to leave a competence to his only daughter,
and yet you know a little of the burden I have borne.”
“I am as sure,” said Mina, gazing up sadly into the countenance of the
weary woman, “I am as sure of Uncle John as I could be of my dear father
if he were now alive.”
“And still, dear Mina, his love was impotent to preserve you from
beggary; strong it was, I doubt not, but it had not power to keep him
alive to guide and love and struggle for you.”
There was a pause, and then Mina said in a subdued voice,
“I wish I could do any one thing to show how I love you, except marry
that horrid man, indeed I would do it.”
“Will you be a little more polite to him then, Mina, and endeavour to
get Malcolm to be so too?” implored Miss Caldera.
“I will, just to please you,” said the girl; “for you’re a dear, kind,
steady, provoking old friend, whom I shall never quarrel with for more
than an hour at a time so long as I live, never!” And as Mrs. Frazer
entered the room at this moment, Mina left it a little sorrowfully and a
great deal more thoughtfully than usual.
Indeed she reflected so much on the subject that she resolved to warn
her brother at the very first opportunity, and, as we have seen, did
warn him; but her words, instead of soothing that young gentleman, only
moved his spirit unto irritation, all the greater, perhaps, because he
felt them to be true; and he resolved, during the course of his walk,
that, instead of speaking to his uncle, as he had intended, immediately
on Mr. Merapie’s return from Holland, he would go to Scotland until, as
he mentally expressed it, “the storm blew over,” and take Mina with him.
“Then,” he concluded, as he paced home through Arras Street, in the
fading light of a January afternoon, “he will have forgotten all about
my unlucky exploit, and I will promise to be his dutiful nephew, and
turn out a pattern of obedience and grace and so forth, and he will buy
me a commission; and, if Westwood be not ‘settled’ some way by that
time, why of course, when I am more in favour, I can speak with a better
chance of success than would be possible at present: that is just what I
will do forthwith,—write to Craigmaver and tell Allan and the laird what
I want.”
And, having sketched out this vague beautiful design, Malcolm Frazer
raised his eyes from the slippery pavement and noticed casually, as
people do notice such things in London, that a tall gentlemanly looking
man was walking slowly and thoughtfully a few steps before him.
“Decidedly an aristocrat,” was the result of Malcolm’s brief survey, for
he had imbibed from his mother, the city merchant’s daughter, an idea
that fine figures and long pedigrees are inseparable; and having arrived
at this conclusion, the young Scotchman, who had a love for Aristocrats,
second perhaps only to his love for himself, continued to scrutinize the
stranger with some interest.
That individual was so much engrossed with his own reflections, that he
never noticed one of those slides which, spite of the police,
mischievous boys will make for their amusement in quiet streets, and,
walking unsuspectingly upon it, down he came; before he was aware he had
slipped, he was lying full length on the pavement at Malcolm’s feet.
“Halloa!” cried out that young gentleman in true sailor fashion, and
“Halloa!” echoed a cabman, who was slowly coming down the narrow street,
and who pulled up and jumped off his box to the rescue.
“Knowed he was ill hurt,” said he to Malcolm, “by the way I saw his head
coming against the ground.”
“A deuced ugly business,” remarked Malcolm; “his head is cut, and, it
seems to me, his arm broken.”
“Is he a friend of your’s, sir?” inquired a person who now joined the
group to render assistance, as the Londoners always do on such occasions
with hearty good will; “the fall has completely stunned him: is he a
friend of your’s?”
“Never saw him in my life before,” was the rejoinder.
“Better put him in the cab, then, and drive without delay to the nearest
hospital,” suggested a clergyman, standing amidst a knot of passers by
and idlers, who had by this time collected to enjoy the excitement.
“Better look in his pocket for an address and take him there,” growled
out a policeman, coming forward, as if to aid in the search.
“No, no!” cried a doctor; “the hospital’s close at hand, drive him
there.”
“Shall I, sir?” demanded the cabman of Malcolm, to whom he somehow
looked for his fare.
“No,” said the latter angrily; “stand back,” he continued, addressing
the crowd generally, and the policeman particularly: “I am a gentleman
myself, and I won’t submit to see a gentleman’s pockets rummaged or
himself dragged off to an hospital. I’ll take the charge of him on
myself: help me to lift him into the cab, driver; so,—now walk your
horse very slowly over to number 12, Belerma Square;” and, as he spoke,
Malcolm Frazer, who, spite of his absurd speech, would have done the
same good turn for the meanest gillie that ever crossed a Highland moor,
and who was possessed of an honest manly heart, and any amount of sailor
frankness, entered the vehicle and strove with tenderness and
solicitude, such as a woman might have displayed, to prevent the jolting
injuring the sufferer, who, at the moment, however, was insensible to
everything.
“Now you just be off about your business,” said the policeman savagely
to a lot of boys who remained looking after the cab with open mouths,
“be off about your business, if you have any, and if you haven’t, you
had best make it one to be moving, or I may make it mine to stir you,”
which vague threat produced so speedily the desired effect, that in five
minutes he found himself pacing along the street utterly alone in his
glory.
Mina was standing at one of the drawing-room windows as the cab stopped
before the door of number 12; and, when she beheld her brother assisting
the driver to lift something wonderfully resembling a human being out of
the vehicle, and up the half dozen stone steps, she, moved by that
curiosity which her mother Eve had transmitted to her, and also by that
pity which every woman feels for the suffering and the afflicted,
hastily quitted her post of observation, and ran down into the hall to
ascertain what this new arrival meant, and if anything dreadful had
occurred.
“Malcolm, what _is_ the matter?” she inquired.
“Don’t torment me, Mina,” rejoined Malcolm, who, on the strength of
being desperately out of breath, and in a profuse perspiration from his
late philanthropic labours, felt himself raised on a sort of moral
eminence above his sister. “Don’t torment me, Mina, but open that door,
and send one of the servants over for Dr. Richards, and don’t talk, but
come and make yourself useful if you can.”
And thus fraternally exhorted, Mina—whilst her brother paid the cabman
so liberally, as not merely to extort three touches of the hat and two
“thank you, sirs” from that individual, but also to cause him to mutter,
as he drove off, in confidence to his horse, that he was a gentleman and
no mistake, though he lived in such a place—did make herself useful; and
truly there was need that she should, since Mrs. Frazer could not bear
the sight of a wound, and the housekeeper was, if possible, worse than
her mistress, and her assistant was out in quest of a doctor, and Miss
Caldera was giving a French lesson some two miles off: there was need
that she should.
“Bad case,” said the doctor when he entered.
“Not hopeless, though,” exclaimed Malcolm.
“Well, no; but he must not be moved again: pity you had not carried him
upstairs at once.”
“There is no necessity,” interposed Mina; “a bed can be made up here.”
“Let it be done then,” said Dr. Richards, one of the briefest and
gruffest of his profession; but as Mina left the room to obey his
command, he added, nodding approvingly to Malcolm, “always knew she was
none of the fainting sort.”
And Mina got matters arranged so speedily and satisfactorily, that even
the acid man of medicine was moved unto complimenting her; and he turned
every mortal out of the room save Malcolm and herself, and made her hold
a candle for him whilst he bandaged, and set, and went so rapidly and
(Mina thought) so roughly through all sorts of surgical processes, that
the girl at last grew quite faint and sick, and would fain have
abandoned her post; but the doctor and Malcolm both telling her, though
in somewhat various modes, that as she had been sent on the earth she
must make herself useful there, she remained at their bidding to do all
she could for the sufferer, who, when he was at all restored to
consciousness, first groaned in perfect agony, and then inquired,
“Where am I?”
“My dear sir,” growled forth Dr. Richards, “will you keep yourself
quiet, if you please, and not speak a single word;” an injunction the
patient obeyed whilst the pain of his arm kept him mute; but during a
moment of ease, he whispered to Mina, who was bathing his forehead with
some mixture the doctor had given her,
“Do tell me what place this is?”
“My uncle’s,” said the girl, in a voice which convinced him, more than
fifty assurances could have done, that he was amongst those who are to
be found in all climes and countries and ranks and classes; amongst
those who enhance the pleasure of life, and soften its bitterness;
amongst those of whom we meet a few everywhere, and part from
mournfully, and greet joyfully, and call with thankful trusting
hearts—friends.