A DISCOVERY.
Malcolm Frazer was quite correct when he said his uncle would ask Mr.
Ivraine to make his house his home till he was able to journey back to
the fens; for, under a rather unpromising exterior, John Merapie
possessed a kind and truly English heart, and further, though he was a
“city man,” who detested and railed at all sorts of “humbug,” he felt a
little pleased to have for his guest an individual who was not merely
the son of a baronet, but who would, if he only lived long enough,
appear in due course as a baronet himself.
Then Ernest had no “humbug” about him, was not a bit of a dandy,
seemed to understand the value of money, and did not wound the worthy
merchant’s sensitiveness by the slightest touch of aristocratic
_hauteur_; which word, when translated into our vulgar tongue, might
frequently be found to mean underbred impertinence. No; John Merapie
found he was a far more sensible agreeable kind of fellow to work with
than many a rich business _parvenu_ with whom he had occasionally
dined, and altogether the Lincolnshire squire and the London
quarter-millionaire ran so admirably together along that difficult and
dangerous road called daily communication, that Mr. Alfred Westwood
grew at length seriously uneasy, and finally felt quite as if an
incubus was removed from his spirit when he heard Mr. Ivraine had at
last fairly taken his departure, after receiving a cordial invitation
from his late host to pay him a visit whenever he was “within twenty
miles of Belerma Square.”
But notwithstanding his long absence and his good feeling towards his
new acquaintance, Malcolm and Mina both noticed that the cloud which had
rested on their uncle’s brow ere his departure for Holland, had returned
thence with him, and a gloom seemed to hang over the entire household
from the moment of his re-appearance, the mystery of which no member of
the establishment, and no person, perhaps, in the circle of his
acquaintances, save Mr. Alfred Westwood, was able to fathom.
That clever individual, however, having opened “by mistake” a letter for
Mr. Merapie, which he knew was not on business, during his principal’s
absence in Holland, had arrived, after its perusal, at the knowledge of
a great secret; which knowledge put him in a position to triumph a
little over Malcolm and Mina Frazer, and to feel that, to a certain
extent, the whole family, from Mr. Merapie down to his refractory niece,
was, after a fashion, in his “power.”
“I have often wished,” he said, after taking a copy of the epistle above
referred to, “I have often wished to possess some ‘hold’ over them all,
and that girl in particular; I have got one now, a capital lever, if
only properly employed, and, please the fates, I’ll use it.”
And having arrived at this Christian determination, Mr. Westwood sallied
forth and hunted over half the city shops to get an oblong seal with the
announcement “I wait” cut thereon; and when, after great difficulty, he
had succeeded in obtaining it, and a stick of pale blue wax, he returned
to the office and closed up the missive again, which, by the way, was
directed in a female hand, and marked “private.” And, as he chanced to
be writing that very afternoon to Mr. Merapie, he forwarded the letter
to him and sauntered thenceforth about his partner’s house in Belerma
Square as if, to repeat Malcolm’s impatient expression, “it belonged to
him.”
And though, during the course of the following month, he was too much
occupied through the week with business, and too constantly engaged on
Sundays watching Mina and Mr. Ivraine, to pursue his investigations as
far as he desired, yet he never for one moment forgot what he had
discovered, and what he wished further to discover; so, when in due
course Mr. Merapie’s return and Ernest’s departure set him once again,
as it were, at liberty, he hastened to make himself master of the whole
subject by actual observation and personal investigation on the spot.
It was some five miles from London, under the spreading branches of an
ancient walnut tree, standing leafless and bare, close to the entrance
of one of those villas we see so perpetually advertised under the
appellation of “genteel residences,” that knowledge, full and complete,
reached the mind of Alfred Westwood; more full and complete truly than
he had ever desired should dawn upon his startled comprehension: for, as
he sauntered past the place in the chill cold light of a February
afternoon, a phaeton, containing two persons, a lady and a boy, drove up
to the gate; there was a momentary pause, whilst a person, who chanced
to be coming out at the instant, opened it, and the glance which that
pause enabled Mr. Westwood to catch of the lady’s face caused him to
turn as pale as a corpse and tremble for a second like a woman.
He had barely time to pull his hat almost involuntarily over his eyes
ere the vehicle and its occupants were gone. They had come, passed him,
and departed like a dream of the morning; but Alfred Westwood knew it
was no dream. “I wish to heavens it were,” he muttered, with clenched
teeth and livid lips, as he strode after the female who had admitted the
pair, and whom he recollected perfectly, as he recollected every thing
and place and person on whom, with his extremely far-seeing,
disagreeably searching eyes, he had once looked.
“Mrs. Colefort,” he said, and the words, though spoken in a low tone,
made her to whom they were addressed start as if a pistol had gone off
at her ear. “Do you not remember me?” he added, finding she only stared
in his face by way of reply to his abrupt salutation.
“Yes, sir,” she stammered, “but——”
“But you do not wish to remember,” he interrupted, his wonted
self-possession having by this time completely returned to him: “well so
be it; only one question fairly answered, and I am satisfied; who is
that?”
“Who is what?” demanded the old woman, a gleam of her ancient cunning
sharpening her wrinkled features.
“Pshaw!” returned Mr. Westwood; “who is the lady you admitted this
instant into that villa place?”
“My mistress,” was the brief reply.
“And her _real_ name,” he persisted; “recollect I am willing to pay for
accurate information.”
“What will you give to know?” asked the woman.
“Five pounds,” replied the man who once had been a bankrupt.
“Five pence,” she contemptuously retorted; “it’s worth fifty guineas.”
“Five pounds or nothing,” said Westwood determinedly.
“Make it ten, and I’ll tell you,” she returned.
“If you won’t speak for five, you may hold your tongue,” was the
response; “so take your choice, for I ask you for the last time, who is
she?”
A purse glittering with steel beads was in Mr. Westwood’s hand as he
uttered the foregoing sentence; and when, at its conclusion, he held
forth five sovereigns and added the single word “Now,” the woman felt
herself impotent to withstand the bribe, small though she considered it,
and therefore cautiously answered, after stealing a look behind her,
“Mrs. Merapie.”
“The devil!” ejaculated Mr. Westwood, and he ground out a few oaths
between his teeth, whilst Mrs. Colefort, with a sinister laugh, echoed,
“Yes, she is pretty nearly one; so John Merapie found, to his sorrow,
before she had borne his name long.”
“And what name did she bear before that?” demanded Mr. Westwood
fiercely.
“Her own, I suppose,—Margaret Maxwell.”
If the light had been a little clearer and her own eyes undimmed by the
mist of age, the woman might have noticed that a sort of throe seemed to
convulse Mr. Westwood’s frame as her answer grated on his ear. He winced
under the sound of that name as if it had touched some concealed wound:
the truth which the quondam housekeeper framed into such unconsciously
telling words, appeared to blast him, as if a wind from some barren
desert had passed over and scorched his soul.
Long after he had left the woman, long after he had returned to London,
days after the brief interview in which he had learnt all he wished to
know and a great deal more besides; in the busy ’Change, in his quiet
house, everywhere, Alfred Westwood found himself inwardly repeating,
over and over again, one single sentence—
“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”
And this sentence never grew old or familiar to his ear; he harped on it
eternally, and yet still its meaning always came with a sort of shock
upon his understanding.
“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”
If a spell had been contained in this simple combination of letters, it
could scarcely have produced a greater effect on the _ci-devant_ clerk,
who became for a time quite taciturn and reserved, who ceased to
domineer over Malcolm or torment Mina, and never once strove to dissuade
Mr. Merapie from permitting both the young people to go to the Highlands
and enjoy themselves.
“What under the sun has come over Westwood?” demanded Malcolm of his
sister, the evening before they started on their self-imposed pilgrimage
northwards.
“He is growing old, dear,” answered Mina, who could afford to laugh at
her uncle’s partner now she was in a good temper and going to leave him
behind her; but neither her brother nor Miss Caldera, who was present,
thought her suggestion a rational one, and the former, for once, felt
almost inclined to agree with the governess, when she told Mina a little
tartly, that she was a very absurd girl, and that she surely might have
had sense enough to see that something must be decidedly going wrong at
the office, when both her uncle and his partner were so grave.
“Heaven send they may weather the storm,” added Malcolm devoutly; “but,
if there be any judging from faces, business clouds must be of the
blackest down at Wapping; however, Uncle John is a first-rate craft, and
the wind cannot always blow a-head; so, when I return from Craigmaver, I
shall hope to find him in a friendly port, and consequently able and
inclined to do what I want him to do—buy me a commission.”
“You ought to be made to work for one,” remarked Miss Caldera.
“All in good time, dear lady,” answered Malcolm, laughing; “I make no
doubt I shall have to be very industrious, a human sort of busy bee at
some future period or other.”
“It will be greatly against your inclination, then,” retorted the
governess: but, spite of the utterance of this truism, Malcolm and she
parted remarkably good friends; and Mina, with a little tremor in her
voice, promised, as she kissed the dear, quaint, steady friend, not to
forget her, and to bring her back a cairngorm brooch from Scotland.
“Bring yourself, you wayward creature,” answered Miss Caldera, “and
don’t leave your heart behind you.”
“Oh, no! I shall keep it safe for—Mr. Westwood,” were the girl’s last
words ere, in a perfect ecstasy of delight, she bent her longing eager
eyes northwards; for, steadily as the needle points to the pole, Mina’s
thoughts and hopes and expectations turned ever unceasingly towards the
land of her birth: to revisit it, to hear again well-remembered voices,
to speak once more to those she loved, to wander as of yore over the
hills, to see the grand old mountains piled against the clear blue
heavens, had been the dream of her life, the wish of her soul for years:
and now it was no longer to be a dream, an ungratified wish,—it would
soon be a reality.
“I am so glad,” she said to Malcolm, “that I could cry.” And Mina did
cry with joy to see the old familiar places once again, just as she had,
in former times, wept in bitter anguish because compelled to leave them
all behind her.
It was a lovely evening in the early spring when, after that long dreary
separation and fatiguing journey, Mina caught at length a distant view
of beautiful Craigmaver. The departing sun flung a warm rich tint over
mountain and valley, over the peaceful lake, the silent firs, and the
graceful birch trees that were just donning their first faint green
attire. A feeling, such as she had not experienced for years, of youth
and freshness and vigour and hope, swept across Mina’s heart as she
leant forward and took in, at one earnest glance, every object in the
landscape; but since the days when, a child by her father’s side, she
had enjoyed that scene without a care or a thought of sorrow, a few
corroding drops from the cup of experience had fallen on her spirit and
saddened it; and thus, even in the midst of her joy, a memory of pain
brought tears to her eyes and blinded them.
“Nothing is changed,” remarked Malcolm, as they drove along, “excepting
that the trees have grown.”
Mina made no answer. Nothing except the trees, indeed, had changed, she
knew, since last she had looked upon that place; but, since the old
times, when they had been wont to visit the laird, her father had passed
from earth for ever, and Glenfiord was not theirs now; and the girl
called another country, home; and the inheritance that was to have been
Malcolm’s had been purchased by strangers; and in the house and gardens
and pleasure grounds, which her dead parent had owned and improved and
prided himself on, she or hers had no right to set foot, unless by
courtesy or sufferance. As a dark thread mingles ever in the web of
human life, no matter of what gay, bright colours the rest of that web
may be woven, so the sad thought of her lost home and of him who had
dwelt there caused one or two tears of sorrow to fall with the many
happy ones that came streaming from the girl’s dark eyes, as she and
Malcolm drew nearer, still nearer, to the lonely lovely nook amid
Highland mountains, where the head of the Frazer clan, the best, the
truest, the worthiest descendant of a proud old race, dwelt peacefully.
“Look up, Mina,” cried her brother, “there they are on the lawn watching
for us.” And, as he spoke, the old laird advanced to meet the vehicle.
There was a wild throbbing at her heart: as she sprang out, a mist fell
upon every object within her range of vision; but still Mina, hanging on
her uncle’s neck, heard his almost inarticulate words of tender welcome
sounding in her ear, and, for one brief moment, she felt, as she had
once said to Miss Caldera she should feel, “that she had not a thought
of care, a wish on earth ungratified.”
“Are you just the same as ever?” demanded the laird, holding her a
little from him and gazing intently into her agitated face, wet with
weeping, yet still bright with smiles, “are you just the same as ever?”
“Not a bit better, uncle,” she answered.
“If you are no worse, I humbly thank God,” said the old man, looking
upwards; “but are you sure,” he added, as though in doubt, “are you
quite sure you have brought the old honest heart you once possessed back
to us again?”
“It has never been away from you,” she earnestly replied; “my body was
in England, but my spirit always remained here; and you, uncle, you are
not in the least altered, but Allan has become a man: dear me! how he
has changed.” And Mina stood for a moment contemplating him whom she had
left a boy, and whom she returned to find as handsome and stately a
specimen of the Highland gentleman as ever crossed the moors, or brought
down, with unerring aim, the wild bird, which finds a perfumed home and
a violent death amid the glowing purple heather.
“Yes, cousin mine,” responded Allan, “I am changed in many ways, and I
have, alas! for me, become a man; but do not delude yourself into the
belief that I am the only one time has touched, for I see you are
“Little Mina” no longer, and the child of the mountains has become quite
a young English lady; and Malcolm, I find, has managed to overtop me: we
are all changed in appearance, two for the better, one for the worse, if
you like to accept the vague compliment, cousin; I hope you will.”
“Is flattery an accomplishment you have learnt since we parted, Allan?”
demanded Mina, suddenly, and the sharp question brought a glow on his
cheek, even while he answered “No.”
“It is,” broke in the old laird; “he is more altered than you are,
notwithstanding he has lived at Craigmaver, and you amongst the noisy
London streets.”
“Send me to London in charge of my fair cousin then, sir, and see
whether the din may not improve me,” was Allan’s response: but Mr.
Frazer merely shook his head in reply, and led Mina off to the house,
sighing as he did so.
Inside the mansion all remained just as his niece had left it: the
deer’s heads and the old swords and gauntlets and pieces of ancient
armour hung in the hall in the same places she remembered they occupied
when she was a very little girl; the furniture in the drawing-room, the
tapestry in the bedchambers, the polished oaken floors, the carved
armchairs, the family portraits, the view from the windows, all were so
like what they had been that, as she wandered through the apartments,
Mina felt as if everything, save herself, must have stood still during
the years that had seemed in London so countless, but which then she
imagined she could clasp at once in her hand—so dream-like did that
portion of the past appear, so real and tangible was the present. The
shore of childhood came, for the instant, so close to that bordering
upon womanhood, that, for the moment, Mina fancied they actually
touched, and forgot the broad wide gulf stretching between the two, over
which she had, in the dreary interim, crossed. As the mariner, after
months and months of weary voyaging, recollects not, when he again
beholds the cliffs of his native land, the pains and perils of the sea,
so the period she had spent in England became a sort of blank, for the
time being, in Mina’s memory; she rejoiced so fervently to come back
once more to find all as she had left it.
All! the girl soon discovered there was a something different in the old
place; what, she could not tell: it was not that they, the inhabitants
of that Highland home, were altered in affection towards her; it was not
that her love for them had suffered any diminution; it was not that less
concord reigned in the domestic circle; that disunion prevailed; that
arguments arose. Mina could not find out what the “something” might be;
and, as it seemed to be independent of her and hers, to be merely a
shadow from some distant cloud, which threw a sort of darkness into that
once perfectly sunshiny house, she gave up, after the first day or two,
speculating concerning it; thus the weeks sped joyously on, and a flush
of greater health than had for years past been seen there, mantled on
her formerly pallid cheek; while Malcolm and she built air castles
innumerable; and time passed, oh! with what swift noiseless feet; life
seeming a sort of fairy dream to Mina during those quiet hours when she
walked and sat with her uncle, and strolled about the gardens, talking
to Saunders and looking at his flowers; when she and her brother and
cousin rode quietly over the moors; and when Allan, in the solemn
twilight, touched the keys of an old pianoforte, and sung songs so
plaintive and beautiful that the girl used to bow her head on her hands
and weep, she knew not why, to hear them.
For Allan Frazer had learned many an accomplishment besides flattery
since the days when they last parted: he was skilled, not merely in
field sports, but also in those other acquirements that make a man be
deemed a welcome guest in the houses of the literary, the fashionable,
the select. He could sketch with a firm, rapid, masterly hand the
scenery of his native land; he could sing, in tones that stole somehow
into the very innermost recesses of the heart, Scotch and Italian and
Spanish airs; he was learned in many sciences, wrote works that
publishers accepted, and poems ladies loved him for inditing; he had
read and studied and thought; and when he went to Edinburgh, clever men
sought him; and the most beautiful women of that metropolis would rather
have danced with Allan Frazer than with many a lord or baronet, for he
was the “fashion” there—Mina’s handsome, elegant, interesting cousin.
“How much you know, Allan,” she remarked to him one day, shortly after
her arrival.
“I have paid a price for it,” he answered, with a strange smile.
Mina paused and looked doubtingly at him for a moment; then she said,
“If I were not afraid of my words sounding tame, after the compliments
uncle tells me you are accustomed to, I would say I never saw any one so
improved in my life.”
“I have gained a good deal I could have done without, Mina,” he replied
a little gravely, “and lost what I can ill spare.”
“Tell me what it is, Allan,” she pleaded, “perhaps it may keep me from
envying you too much; tell me what it is.”
“Peace of mind,” he answered, with a sigh; and Mina, after gazing into
his clouded face, feared that it really was so, though why it should be
she found herself perfectly incompetent to tell.