CECILIA BREWS MISCHIEF.
As we all know, “it is a bad rule that will not work two ways;” if it be
an “ill wind which blows nobody good,” it is undeniably a good wind
which blows nobody ill; wherefore, although to Cecilia it was no doubt a
matter of especial congratulation that a German Count, picked up at a
West-end restaurant, had induced Alfred Westwood to stray northward, yet
that event brought no end of trouble to the heart of Mina Ivraine. The
gentlemen were staying at a rural inn by the water’s edge: and, as the
Count had a friend some few miles off, to whose house he frequently
repaired, Cecilia—partly to gratify herself, greatly to annoy Mina—gave
the Englishman a sort of general invitation to Craigmaver, of which Mrs.
Ivraine’s former suitor was by no means backward to avail
himself—shyness and modesty having never, even in his youngest days,
been distinguishing features in the character of that estimable
individual.
He had dined once or twice at Craigmaver during a previous tour through
the Highlands—a tour previous to this one, though subsequent to that he
had taken at an earlier period, when engaged in his unsuccessful effort
in search of a wife. Scotland (some parts of it) suited him: he liked
the polished society, the luxury, the aristocratic style of
everything,—the mansions of those with whom, on that side of the Tweed,
he was brought into contact; for Cecilia, on the occasion of his first
visit, had given him letters of introduction to General Warmond; and
General Warmond had furnished him with similar missives to various
friends in different parts of North Britain: so, whenever the
_ci-devant_ clerk set his foot on Scottish ground, he found himself
translated into a different circle, and breathing a decidedly genteeler
atmosphere than that of Wapping or Belerma Square, or of any London
mansion to which he had ever been able to procure the _entrée_.
To say he would have sold his soul to dine with a lord, and hand a
duke’s hundreth and eleventh cousin, once removed, down to supper, is to
convey very little idea of the lengths to which his mania for “good
society” could have induced him to go; for Mr. Alfred Westwood did not
value his soul in the least: if he could have made money by selling it
in a good market, he would; he never considered its welfare for a single
instant, or permitted dread of its future prospects to influence him in
a single transaction of life: no, he would have done a great deal more
than that for good society—put his body and his purse in peril; and,
therefore, we cannot marvel that he occasionally indulged himself in
Highland trips and continental tours, and had built innumerable chateaux
in Espagne, about the performances, and glories, and enjoyments of some
indefinite period, when he meant to become a private gentleman, with
plenty of money in his pockets, and live amongst those in whom his heart
delighted.
Most people have their hobby—this was his; he did not ride it to death
simply because the opportunity for such a display of horsemanship was
never presented to him: but he did his best upon all occasions, and
availed himself of all invitations the fates sent him, with an untiring
perseverance that might have won admiration from a very hermit—and,
accordingly, he came to Craigmaver incessantly; and, from the hour of
his advent, Cecilia turned over a new leaf in her book of conduct
towards her visitors—the Ivraines to wit, husband and wife.
You could not have told how she managed to do it: but she did contrive
to render the former uncomfortable, the latter miserable: even whilst
affecting to praise and fondle Mina she let a drop of bitterness fall
unperceived from her lips, and mingle in her cup. Ernest’s pale-faced
wife perceived the moment this began that Cecilia’s nature remained
unaltered, and she longed to be gone, and she urged Mr. Ivraine to
depart; but, as she could assign no sufficient reason for her desire, as
the change seemed decidedly to be benefiting her health, and as Mr.
Frazer had not yet returned, although his arrival was daily expected,
Ernest decided not to comply with her request; and she lacked courage
and frankness to explain why she preferred it.
“What a cold dreary region of the earth Lincolnshire must be,” Mrs.
Frazer commenced one evening at dinner; “I thought we were icy enough
here, but Craigmaver possesses a sort of tropical climate in comparison
to that Mina describes as enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lorton; you had
better remain with us for the winter: it will kill my poor cousin to go
back and be frozen to death there.”
“Do you consider it so very chilly, then, Mina?” demanded Mr. Ivraine,
in a perfectly indifferent tone, almost habitual to him; “I do not
recollect hearing you complain of it before.”
“Oh! you will never hear her complain of anything,” remarked the lady;
“she is, and was, and always shall be, one of the meekest and most
patient, and long suffering amongst women. I am sure it must have been
about Lorton those lines were written:
‘No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows:
The dreadful east is all the wind that blows.’
Who was it, Mina, composed the expressive couplet?”
“You told me the other day, when I first heard you repeat it,” said
Mina, speaking very distinctly, and looking appealingly at her husband
whilst addressing Cecilia, “that Pope was the author.”
“I, my dear?” echoed Mrs. Frazer, “impossible! You know I am not a bit
clever, or learned, or anything like what you are; I can play a few airs
and sing a few songs, but, as regards book learning, I plead guilty to
all sorts of feminine ignorances and short-comings: I never read Pope in
my life.”
“Neither did I,” responded Mina resolutely.
“You might have seen the couplet though, without going to head-quarters
for it,” remarked Mr. Westwood ill-naturedly enough, though the sneer
was not intended for Mrs. Ivraine: “for it is to be found in ‘Walker’s
Dictionary,’ if I recollect rightly, through which erudite work many
other similar gems are scattered.”
“I hope you do not mean to accuse Mina of ever having in her life
required to look at the inside of a dictionary,” said Mrs. Frazer;
“_pour moi_, I had far rather use a word out of place, or write it in
defiance of all known rules of orthography, than inflict upon myself the
task of wading through one of those dreadful volumes filled with columns
headed, ‘Bea,’ ‘Gri,’ ‘Lui,’ ‘Tra,’ and so forth. Grandpapa,” she added,
turning to old Mr. Gordon, of Locholen, who was one of the party, “was I
not born with a natural aversion to huge tomes and learned
treatises?—please say my shocking prejudice in that respect is an
hereditary weakness, not an acquired habit.”
“If you want to trace back the fault to me, and lay the blame on my side
of the house, I believe I must plead guilty,” said the white-haired old
gentleman, who was worth five hundred editions of his granddaughter,
superbly “got up” and elegantly bound though she might be, “for I never,
since leaving college, have opened any work, excepting the Family Bible
and my Prayer Book: the newspapers are my ‘light literature;’ and, I
believe, if we read them to give us a knowledge of what is going on in
this world, and the others to instruct us concerning the next, there is
no necessity to puzzle one’s brains with more: what do you say, Mr.
Ivraine?”
“That, if there be no use in reading, there is pleasure in it, at all
events.”
“Never could discover the pleasure yet,” remarked Mr. Gordon.
“But don’t you see, grandpapa,” cried Cecilia, “that Mr. Ivraine is a
_savant_, and Mina a—what do you call it?—a genius: Allan always said
she was. And now, to revert to my first proposition,” she continued,
addressing Mr. Ivraine, “will you remain the winter with us, and see
whether our climate be more genial than that of Lincolnshire?”
“I fear,” said Mr. Ivraine, with a smile, which covered much annoyance,
“that we shall have to endeavour to survive the severity of even an
English winter. It is extremely kind of you to desire a prolongation of
our already unreasonable visit; but, despite the many attractions of the
Highlands, it will be impossible to remain much longer at Craigmaver: I
have important business at home which may not be neglected.”
“Well, leave Mina with me as a sort of hostage for your return; I will
nurse her and take care of her, and doctor her, and make her a new
creature: to get her well would be quite a winter’s employment for me.
Though I am not a _bas bleu_, I have dabbled in medicines and looked
into that important department of feminine science, cookery for the
sick,—see how much better she looks already. If you lend her to me for
the winter, I promise that, when you come for her in the spring, there
shall be such an improvement that you will not know her. Please do give
me back my cousin just for a little, a very little while;” and Cecilia
looked so entreatingly at Mr. Ivraine and so lovingly at Mina as she
spoke, that nobody would have credited she had been striving to vex both
of them a few minutes previously.
“If Mina choose,” began Ernest, but his wife hastily interposed,
“No, no! thank you, Cecilia, very much; but I had rather return: England
is my home, you know, now, and——”
“Lorton your Paradise, and Mr. Ivraine your husband,” interrupted
Cecilia, with just the faintest shadow of impatient satire. “What a
perverse little cousin you are, to be sure, and what a model of a good
obedient wife; but, remember, I have not relinquished my point yet;”
and, as she concluded, she took Mina by the hand and led her off into
the drawing-room, when she commenced teaching her beautiful boy to dance
the Guaracha, and kept up a perpetual hum and jingle of instruction and
castanets, till the three gentlemen joined the party; then she would
have them all off to the green house to see a new _Regina strelitza_,
and some lilies, and a _Hoya cornosa_, which covered one entire side of
the conservatory; but Mina was tired and would not go, so she left the
child to amuse her, and carried the others away to the gardens in
triumph.
“I cannot imagine,” she remarked to Mr. Westwood as they walked slowly
back to the house together, whilst Mr. Gordon and the miser’s son paused
to watch the operation of sulphuring a wasps’ nest which a gardener was
commencing _con amore_, “I cannot imagine what Mr. Ivraine cares about;
excepting scenery, I have never seen him interested in anything, and his
passion for that seems to have died out. Can you discover anything for
which he has a _penchant_?”
“For money,” replied Mr. Westwood; “gold is the Ivraine fever, I
understand.”
“Yet I have heard him speak depreciatingly of it; and you know he wedded
a portionless girl,” she answered.
“True,” he remarked, and walked on a few steps in silence.
“I never saw so unimpressible a being,” said Cecilia, “so reserved,
impenetrable, and, as the Edinburgh advertizers say about their houses,
‘self-contained’ a creature before: I had fancied, from his letter to
Allan, that he was in a state of distraction about his wife’s health;
but no,—I have done every earthly thing I could for her, yet he seems
scarcely pleased; and it is not that he thinks it impossible for too
great attention to be evinced towards her, for when I have jestingly
ridiculed her, just the least little atom in the world, to try if he
could be roused out of his lethargy, or moved to anger, he never
interposed a word, but retained that immovable look and unruffled
manner. I never saw any one in all my life who so perplexed me; he
married for love, and he does not seem to care about his wife; he
brought her here to save her life, and now he does not appear gratified
she is so much better: I wish I could understand him; I do not like to
be baffled;” and Cecilia looked really very indignantly and despairingly
up at a bird flying away through the deep azure of that lovely summer’s
evening, as if it had any possible connection with the subject, or could
suggest any idea to her fertile brain: she was marvellously ruffled, and
Alfred Westwood saw it.
“Did it never occur to you,” he asked, in a careless sort of way, “that
he might be made jealous?”
“He! no,” retorted Cecilia pettishly; “I should never think of wasting
valuable time in attempting such an impossibility.”
“I fancy he could, for all that,” answered Mr. Westwood; “you might just
try it, by way of an interesting experiment, you know.”
Cecilia did not reply, but she bounded off into the house to see what
her “dear little Mina” was doing. Her companion followed her graceful
movements with a sneer: he read her through and through; he turned over
page after page in the book of her mind, and studied the volume with
some curiosity and some weariness.
“There is not a great deal in her,” he mentally exclaimed; “cleverness,
hypocrisy, and vindictiveness are the leading traits of her character;
but vanity spoils all: she might do anything, if it were not for that
foible. Ah! vanity is the crying sin of women!” and Mr. Westwood,
who—being perfectly free from the weakness himself—of course might be
considered an impartial judge on such a question, ran his fingers
through his hair and caressed his perfumed whiskers and looked
approvingly at his faultlessly white hands; after which performances, he
entered the drawing-room and accepted a cup of coffee Cecilia presented
to him, with a smile so bright that no one could have suspected a dark
heart lay underneath so fair and smooth a surface.
Yes, she poured coffee out for him and Mina, and subsequently for Mr.
Ivraine, and tea for Mr. Gordon, who detested the Turkish beverage, “the
only matter,” he said, “he and his grandchild ever were known to
disagree about.” And then, after the cups and saucers had been removed,
when the light was just beginning to melt into a kind of transparent
vapour, when her little boy had been duly kissed and despatched to bed,
Mr. Westwood requested her to sing him one song before he departed, and
old Mr. Gordon, snugly ensconced amongst the cushions and pillows of one
of the remoter couches, called out,
“Yes, do, my dear; do sing something for us, Cecilia,” having exhausted
himself and his politeness with which effort, he dropped over into a
quiet unsuspected nap instanter, whilst Mrs. Frazer turned towards the
piano with a smile, which Mr. Westwood interpreted to bode no good to
some parties present.
He had been watching her face like a barometer during the entire
evening; and, as he knew the meaning of its every expression, he took
that smile as a sign of impending mischief.
“I will get out of reach of the storm,” he soliloquized, and sank into a
chair beside the window, near enough the piano to overhear any words
which might be spoken there, yet sufficiently distant to avoid becoming
aught beyond a listener; “it will burst soon;” and, even as he thought
so, the first clap of the tempest he had assisted to raise saluted his
ear.
“What a pity,” said the lady as she arranged her dress in graceful folds
about the music-stool, and turned over the leaves of an Italian song,
“what a pity Allan is detained in Edinburgh; it is so provoking: he will
be so sorry. I suppose, Mr. Ivraine,” she suddenly added, with a light
laugh and in a peculiarly tripping tone, “I suppose, Mr. Ivraine, you
never heard of the nice quiet flirtation your demure little wife and my
dear clever husband had in the days of old, ere either was tied?”
Her silvery tongue had not glided more rapidly over this sentence than
had her eyes from the face of Mina to that of the reserved Englishman;
and it was with a feeling of triumphant malice she perceived the painful
flush which crimsoned the cheek of the former and the dark shade that
settled on the brow of the latter.
Mina noticed the change the words instantly wrought in the expression of
her husband’s face, and, scarcely pausing to reflect, she answered
hastily,
“I do not exactly know what you consider a flirtation, Cecilia, but——”
“Now, now, my dear, do not begin to clear yourself; it is quite
unnecessary: I am not in the least jealous,” interrupted Mrs. Frazer,
still speaking in the same light tone of badinage, while she ran, with
incredible brilliancy, through a chromatic passage.
“Indeed you have no occasion to be,” rejoined Mina earnestly.
Once again the rapid fingers swept over the keys of the piano, and then
their possessor, turning towards Mina, laid a playful hand on her
burning cheek and said, half-laughingly, half-seriously,
“Not in the least degree jealous, dear cousin, not even the tiniest
morsel in the world.”
“No one need be so of me,” returned Mrs. Ivraine, striving to suppress a
sob which almost suffocated her; “no one in the world, Cecilia.”
“A very proper humble speech for a good modest child to make,” rejoined
Mrs. Frazer; “but I am not so sure of that. What does Mr. Ivraine say?”
she demanded, glancing suddenly at that gentleman, who, with folded arms
and gloomy brow, had stood contemplating the countenances of the two
women during the foregoing little dialogue; “what does Mr. Ivraine say?”
Mr. Ivraine said nothing: if he had been deaf and dumb he could not have
treated her question with more apparent indifference, for he never
answered it, even by a look, as he strode past the chair Mr. Westwood
occupied, through the open window, and so out on to the turf-like lawn,
which commanded so wide and beautiful a prospect.
“Did I ever do you an injury, Cecilia?” reproachfully inquired Mina, not
heeding, in the pain of the moment, the presence of the man whom most on
earth she disliked.
“No!” responded the other, with affected astonishment; “why?”
“Why!” repeated Mina. “Oh! Cecilia, did you not speak so on purpose; do
not you, cannot you, see you have done me a great one now?”
Mrs. Frazer coloured slightly at the words, but she quickly rejoined,
“Dear me, child, I am very sorry: I had no idea your melancholy looking
husband was such a jealous creature; had you, Mr. Westwood?”
“Oh! he is not jealous; no, no,” sobbed forth Mina, her self-command
fairly forsaking her; “but I wish you had not said that.”
“Well, so do I,” returned Cecilia, “and, by way of proving my
repentance, I will just put matters straight again;” and, so saying, she
darted off like a bird, ran lightly across the garden, and reached Mr.
Ivraine’s side in a state of utter breathlessness, caused greatly by
affectation and partly by tight-lacing. She laid one jewelled hand
persuasively on his arm, whilst she pressed the other on what she
herself would have termed her fluttering heart; and being, of course,
far too much exhausted by her great exertions to utter one connected
syllable ere they reached the drawing room, she permitted her guest to
remain in profound ignorance of what she required till she had him and
Mina once again before her.
“Allan declares I am always saying or doing something foolish,” she
panted forth: “and my poor cousin here (see how pale the child looks
now) is quite unhappy about the foolish words I spoke a few moments
since: you must not be angry with her, indeed you must not; it was most
absurd in me to allude to such a ridiculous matter at all; you must just
consider it what it was—a heedless jest. You cannot think how unhappy I
shall be if my little Mina is made uncomfortable by my want of sense and
thought. I am sure I shall not be able to sleep if you do not promise to
forget all about it: indeed, indeed, I shall be most miserable if these
foolish words of mine cause a single doubt to you, or tear to my
husband’s cousin.”
“I regret, madam,” said Ernest stiffly, “that you should have given
yourself so much trouble about so slight a matter; you may rest
perfectly tranquil, however, on the subject, for my wife has but little
inclination towards weeping, and I have none whatever towards doubting.”
“There now,” cried Cecilia triumphantly, kissing Mina, “did not I tell
you, sweetest, I would make it straight? Oh! indeed I may not, as Allan
asserts, have much talent, or sense, or whatever you call it—what you
have, you know—genius I mean, but still I never met any one yet who
could say ‘No’ to the lady of Craigmaver,—not even your quiet, reserved
husband here, Mina; so now, as my heart has set all matters right which
my tongue put wrong before, I will sing you the song this little affair
interrupted, and here, at least, melody shall prevail, and harmony be
the order of—_my_ home.”
She raised her eyes for a moment to the face of Mr. Ivraine, then
dropped the long lashes over them again as she moved gracefully towards
the instrument; but that one swift glance told her she had succeeded in
her endeavours: she had sown distrust between those two; she might, with
her thrilling voice, make harmony in her home if she chose; but with a
few laughing words, uttered in a low musical voice, she had produced
discord in their abode—brought misery unto both.
Well might Alfred Westwood affirm that woman never sang before as she
could do; but music possessed no power to lull into repose the demon
that had obtained the mastery over Mr. Ivraine’s soul. The strains rose
and fell: she poured forth perfect floods of minstrelsy, and then her
voice died away in the softest cadences; she modulated and paused, and
hovered and hung on sweet low expressive passages, like one endowed with
soul and sentiment and feeling. Whilst she was singing the moon came
stealing out of the east, and flung its pale light into the apartment,
making Mina’s countenance look of a ghastly white, and giving to
Cecilia’s a sort of unearthly beauty. As the last note of a simple
Scotch ballad melted away into the still night air, the lady of
Craigmaver removed her hands from the keys whence she could draw such
melody, and, looking up earnestly at the face of the Queen of Night, she
said, in the half-reflective, half-childish tone in which she was wont
to utter such sentences,
“Only to think of all the things, and people, and places that quiet moon
can see, and how calm and placid she looks notwithstanding. If we could
only notice as much of the inner life as she does of the outer, how
miserable we should feel: what a strange world it would be, Mr. Ivraine,
if we were able to read the hearts of each other.”
“We should learn little good from the perusal of some,” returned the
gentleman drily; “yet it were a consummation most devoutly to be wished
that the secret thoughts of all of us could be laid bare, and there
would then, perhaps, be less dissimulation, affectation, and hypocrisy
in this world than is, unhappily, the case at present.”
Mr. Westwood smiled grimly when this speech met his ear, and he mentally
murmured—
“A pretty palpable hit at two present, and by no means a bad one
either,—not that Mina deserved the blow; poor Mina! she would have been
happier had she married me: I would have made her so, even though——What
an artificial creature it is,” he added, as Cecilia answered,
“Very true; it is miserable to consider what a deal of deceit there must
be in the world; I have never met with any of it: but, then, my life has
been peculiarly fortunate—married and single almost unclouded by a
shade. Pretty moon,” she continued, striking a minor chord softly as she
spoke, “pretty, cold, melancholy moon, how much of past enjoyment you
always recal to my mind. Do you remember, Mina, how I taught you a
certain form of invocation on those lovely summer evenings we went out
boating—those evenings when——oh! dear me, what am I talking about?” she
abruptly exclaimed, rising from the music stool, “what a foolish head
mine is—I do forget so. Come, Mr. Westwood, and see this moonlight on
the lake; ah! ’tis shining over Edinburgh just the same, where my dear
good husband is: I wish he would come home: I wonder what can be
detaining him;” and, as she uttered these last words, the warm night air
breathed on her temples, for Mr. Westwood and she were standing amongst
the flowers, contemplating the wild, grand, majestic scene which
surrounded the last and sole possession of the Frazer clan—Craigmaver.
For a moment Mr. Ivraine paused irresolute, then turned as if about to
follow them.
“Ernest,” began Mina, the words coming entreatingly forth from her
trembling lips, while she laid her hand on his arm to detain him,
“Ernest, do not go: I want to speak to you.”
Had that thin wasted hand been a noxious reptile he could not more
angrily have shaken it off, while he said, in a deep stern voice,
“You need not, Mina: it is useless; there has always been a something
between us: I thought, long ago, you never cared for me; I now know that
it is so, and understand how and why it comes to pass.”
And as he passed forth from that luxuriantly furnished room into the
garden, rich in all sweet perfumes, where the moonbeams lay soft and
calm and bright, Mina sank down on a chair, and, burying her face in her
hands, thought, in the bitterness of her heart, that her punishment for
one false step was falling heavy and sore upon her; for, even whilst she
saw his affection for her changing, or decreasing, or torn violently
away, a painful conviction stole into her mind that, in that lonely
Lincolnshire home, separated from all other attachments, far from all
other kindness, sympathy, and regard, she had learnt, almost
unconsciously, to cling to and love him.
After a little while, Mr. Gordon woke up, and the group on the grass
came back into the house. After a day or two, also, Allan Frazer
returned, and Alfred Westwood’s German Count having wearied of the
neighbourhood, that interesting individual repaired still further north
in search of some more “good society;” but nothing caused any change in
Ernest Ivraine’s manner towards his wife. Externally, perhaps, there was
no perceptible difference; but she felt the alteration sensibly:
walking, driving, talking, musing, it was a constant, painful thought.
Sometimes she hoped, when they left Craigmaver, matters would be
different, that the effect of those words would pass away from her
husband’s soul, that he might care for and trust her again; but, no!
when, at length, the Highlands and Allan and Cecilia and beautiful
Craigmaver were all left behind, and Mina began eagerly to watch whether
the cloud cleared off at all as they retreated further and further from
that fated spot, she saw with dismay that the darkness was never likely
to be dispelled, for the nearer they drew towards Lorton the deeper it
grew: and now that the necessity for conventional politeness before
strangers no longer existed, his manners became colder and colder, and
his reserve increased to such a degree that, finally, he scarcely ever
addressed a sentence to her; and she, lacking courage to explain the
state of the case to him (and, indeed, such an explanation would at that
period have been worse than useless), relapsed into a melancholy moping
being, who had no single hope in life—save to die.