RIGHT OR WRONG.
Meanwhile Mina, on whose behalf all these exertions were being made, was
dwelling quietly under the roof of her former governess, at whose door
she had appeared one dreary winter’s morning, pale, cold, heart-broken.
“Mina!” exclaimed Miss Caldera when she saw her enter the sitting-room;
“what in the world brings you here?”
“To ask what I am sure you will give me,—a welcome and a home;” and she
laid her face so sorrowfully and entreatingly against that of her
friend, she gazed with such a trusting, confiding, sad expression into
her countenance, that Miss Caldera refrained from asking a single
question, but took her old pupil, and that pupil’s child, home to her
heart and her hearth; and, from that time forth, her house was Mina’s
house, and her care and grief and pleasure and companion, Mina Ivraine,
who had been Mina Frazer, the wayward little Scotch girl of other and
happier days.
Of the interval succeeding her flight, as of all such intervals there is
little to tell—it passed Mina scarcely knew how: but she occupied
herself busily in translations, working at them not as she might in
other times have worked, under the influence of absurd visions and fits
of industry, beguiled by vain delusions, and swayed backwards and
forwards by extravagant hopes and overwhelming disappointments, but in
sober practical earnest, for she had ceased to be an idealist, she had
given over theorizing and fancying herself a genius; she had ceased
trying many things, having come to understand that success in any one
walk of life comes only to the patient plodder, who has energy to
determine and faith to wait and persevere; she saw she had made a
mistake before in attempting original matter at all, and a much greater
mistake in flying from language to language, instead of quietly
perfecting herself in one: so she now devoted her time and talents (for
though not a “genius,” as Cecilia had been wont sneeringly to call her,
she possessed a certain portion of ability) to one particular style of
translating; and meeting, in due course, with moderate success, she was
enabled, as in former times she might have said, “to earn enough to keep
herself and child off the parish.”
But she did not say so now, for she had learned not to despise small
profits: her wild spirit was tamed, subdued, crushed,—she hung on the
stalk like a broken flower; but as some plants only give out their
richest perfumes when dying, so the best part of her nature developed
when she seemed drooping and fading. Miss Caldera thought more of her
character then than she had ever previously done; she grew to understand
and love her more, to see distinctly the good which had been taken on
faith in days before; she had felt a strange love for the child, and a
greater love for the girl, but the love she bore the young wife was
stronger than all; it was not interest, and a kind of perpetual
solicitude and anxiety in and for her welfare, that knit the two
together now,—it was sympathy, respect, and esteem. It requires a great
deal to make people care for one another in prosperity; there is no fire
like that of adversity for bringing out the affections, for revealing
the secret tracings of the soul, for interpreting the mysterious
characters on the wall, for disclosing the hidden traits of the
mind,—none like it. You never obtain the full scent of the verbena leaf
till a rough touch has bruised it; you never see the full virtue and
sweetness of the human heart till sorrow has crushed it. Prosperity has
few real friends—adversity none save true ones; and one of the latter
Mina assuredly possessed: and gratefully the soul of the desolate and
wandering wife turned to her who so cordially welcomed her home, and
strove to make it comfortable and happy unto her.
“Do not pore over those books so, Mina dear,” the governess was wont to
say; “I have enough now for all of us, do not be too proud to share
everything I possess in the world as if you were my daughter or my
sister;” but Mina answered,
“Let me work, old friend,—it makes me feel a little independent, and
keeps me from thinking.”
Miss Caldera questioned greatly the accuracy of this latter statement;
she noted how, day by day, Mina grew paler and thinner: there was no
open malady to combat, nothing which could be taken hold of, nothing
Mina ever complained of, nothing for which it seemed any good to consult
a physician,—but still Miss Caldera did consult one.
“I only cure the body, my dear madam,” he answered; “it is impossible
for me to do anything here.”
For months Mina never alluded, directly or indirectly, to the subject of
her griefs; but at last, one summer evening, in the gathering
twilight—long after the news of the baronet’s death had reached them,
long after Mina had relinquished a vain hope which then stole into the
mind, that perhaps her husband might seek her now that enemy was
removed, when she felt her destiny for life was sealed, her fate in the
world’s great biography written, when she fancied her story was
finished, her drama (all save the last act which must be gone through by
all tragedians) performed—she sate down on a low stool at her friend’s
feet, and, beginning of her own accord, she told the whole tale through,
repeating it quietly and calmly as a man might—when his hair was grey,
and his steps tottering on the very brink of the grave, with passions
quenched and heart chastened and sorrows soothed and hatreds
overcome—speak in the evening of life of the fierce struggles and strong
loves and violent hatreds and heavy disappointments which had clouded
and brightened the morning of his existence. Time never takes the sting
completely out of grief, but there are few sorrows which, after the
lapse of twenty years, seem as bitter as they did at first; and if fifty
years, instead of only six brief months, had intervened since Mina’s
departure from Paradise, she could not have recounted the story of
_that_ night’s proceedings with less show of violent emotion.
_All_ seemed hushed, subdued, worn smooth by the action of the waves of
time. Miss Caldera marvelled, but said nothing until her former charge,
having, as it were, finished the book, closed the volume, ended the
narrative, bent her head on her friend’s hand and said,
“I don’t suppose I shall live very long,—I feel so tired and weary; and
when I am gone will you take care of my child? I should feel quite happy
if you would only promise me that.”
“Not yet, dear Mina, not yet,” answered Miss Caldera, tenderly passing
an arm around the slight figure of one whom sorrow had stricken so
early; “not yet,—you must live to return to your husband, to bring up
that child yourself, to be happy once more; never believe he did not
love you, that he repented his marriage for his own sake, that he
mourned for any one save you. Why did you leave him, Mina darling? why
do you not go back to him now?”
The words fell on the wife’s soul with a sort of shock: it was like
opening the volume again and reading it afresh with a new light; it was
like adding another act to a play, like being called upon to appear
again on the boards of life’s theatre after having bidden adieu to that
unsatisfactory stage for ever. Mina started at the question, and,
bursting into a flood of tears, answered,
“Oh! Miss Caldera, was not it his place to come to me? How could I
remain to be a stumbling-block in his path,—to be an obstacle between
him and his father’s gold? how could I stay after he had told me he was
sorry he had married me,—when, instead of being a blessing, it turned
out I was a curse? Oh! no; if he had regretted my absence, he would have
sought me ere this. Back again! no, no, I shall never see him
more,—never! and I do not want to see him.”
“Mina!” exclaimed Miss Caldera.
“It is true!” she replied; “I want to die and be troubled no more;
seeing him would only be a fresh sorrow,—I have enough already to carry
to the grave with me;” and she went sobbing out of the room, weeping as
the governess had never seen her weep since the morning she came a
fugitive wife, to demand shelter and protection at the hands of a
friend.
“It is well,” said Miss Caldera, half-sadly, as she watched her go;
“there is some hope still.”
From that day a sort of change came over Mina: she grew more restless,
she seemed less settled, less resigned, less tranquil; sometimes she
took her child to her heart with a kind of wild, passionate love,
different from her former calm tender affection, and again Miss Caldera
found her once or twice weeping beside the infant’s cradle.
“I had rather see her thus,” soliloquized the governess, as on one of
these occasions she retreated quietly from the apartment; “it is
better:” and perhaps it was a more natural, though more painful, state
of mind than the previous one.
“I will leave her to herself for a little while longer,” she determined;
“and if the desired result be not produced, I will give that explanation
myself, now I know exactly the cause of separation; but I had rather let
them manage it themselves, if possible; if not——”
We all know how fond ladies are of finishing off spoken sentences and
mental reflections thus; and therefore, as Miss Caldera added not
another syllable, you will please to understand, dear reader, that the
above “if not——” implied volumes of kind resolves the governess intended
to develop into actions, if any necessity existed for her so to do. But
she adopted the right plan in leaving Mina to follow the devices of her
own heart; for there are some things it is much better for a stranger
never to meddle prominently with, and any coolness between husband and
wife is one of them; in family matters, no friend or acquaintance can
interfere with advantage, safety, or profit; it is wisest to let kindred
“fight it out,” or “make it up,” just as suits them best, at their own
leisure, after their own fashion, and of their own accord; and, in
reference to matrimonial quarrels, an old Scotchman’s uncomplimentary
remark, with regard to women, may be safely applied to them, which
remark will serve at once to finish my sentence and to sum up its
purport, “They are kittle cattle to hae ony say to.”
So Miss Caldera thought; and she permitted Mina to pursue her own path
through life without let or hindrance, and never intruded on her
reflections, and never spoke a word of her husband, and thus a fortnight
dragged by. Mina could not well tell how, only she knew she had suffered
a great deal during its progress, bodily and mentally: there was a kind
of fever on her, which gave her a species of artificial strength; she
had a ceaseless racking headache, and rapid movement seemed to be the
only thing which drove it away for the shortest space, so Miss Caldera
perpetually urged her to go out, and she did go out occasionally and
walked till she was quite exhausted; then she came home and rested in a
large arm chair, and thought and thought till she grew almost
distracted. The governess noticed all this; but, like the prudent
bridegroom in Young Lochinvar, said never a word. During the whole of
her stay under her friend’s roof, at this period, Mina was left as
entirely as heart could desire “alone.” No one meddled with, no one
attempted to control or influence her, in the least; she was perfectly
free to act as she chose, and yet still, and in spite of all, she was
thoroughly wretched.
One day, as she was returning home from one of her short hurried
rambles, an old woman crouching in a gateway, squalid in misery, a sort
of animated skeleton, attracted her attention by a piteous appeal for
charity. Like many another who gives to the “object” rather than to the
“case,” Mina, without considering whether she were bestowing her alms
judiciously or not, dropped a sixpence into the outstretched trembling
hand; but, as she did so, to her extreme surprise, her fingers were
clutched convulsively, and a voice, scarcely human in its tone,
ejaculated “Mina Frazer!”
“I was Mina Frazer, once,” she answered, in great bewilderment; “but who
you are that know me so well, I cannot imagine; I do not remember you at
all.”
“Likely not,” replied the woman; “the rich have short memories, just as
short as the poor have long: you made some great match, I heard; did you
not?”
Great match! Mina smiled bitterly as she replied,
“I married a gentleman called Ivraine.”
“Yes, yes, Ivraine, I remember now; and you are very rich and happy?”
She fastened her eyes interrogatively on the lady’s face, and read the
answer to her last query from that tell-tale index to the heart’s most
secret sorrows.
“Not very rich,” Mina said.
“If you’ll promise me gold, I will tell you something you would have
given your life almost once to hear.”
“About him! about my husband!” was the exclamation which passed Mina’s
lips as she turned a shade paler than usual.
“Ah! that’s the way of it, is it?” cried the wretched old creature, who
had never relaxed her grasp of Mina’s glove for an instant. “No, my
pretty lady, it is not about your husband, but about one who once wanted
to be your husband, Alfred Westwood. Ah! do you remember me now?”
“I do,” said Mina, releasing herself by a great effort, and a look of
pain and abhorrence flushed her face as she turned to go away; but the
woman caught her dress when she attempted to do so, and held her tight
while she continued,
“Nay, nay, you need not be so hot about a message I only delivered as it
left my mistress’s lips; you would do well to listen to me now: promise
me gold, and I will tell you something worth hearing, something that
will profit you and yours.”
“I do not want to hear anything; I have no gold to give: let me pass,”
said Mina hurriedly.
“No gold, and yet a baronet’s wife!” sneeringly remarked the hag; “that
is strange, my Lady Ivraine.”
“Not more strange than true,” answered Mina, trying to shake the
skeleton fingers off her dress; and, succeeding at length in freeing
herself by a sudden jerk from the beggar’s grasp, she cut short what she
considered mere painful, impertinent questioning, by a precipitate
retreat.
Swiftly, however, though she walked, she was followed and tracked home,
for the woman, addressing a bare-legged urchin who chanced at the moment
to be passing, bade him “see where that lady went,” adding, as an
inducement for compliance, the promise, “if you bring me true word, I
will give you a penny;” after which effort of generosity, she subsided
into a fit of coughing, from which she was only roused by a policeman
ordering her to “be off out of that,” an admonition she slowly obeyed,
hobbling away, apparently, with great pain and difficulty.
It is to be presumed the lad she deputed to watch Mina to her abode,
faithfully discharged the duty entrusted to him, and also that he
received the promised reward, for a few days afterwards he came to Miss
Caldera’s abode, with a message from his employer, setting forth that,
“Mrs. Colefort, being on her death-bed, implored Lady Ivraine to come
and see her, as she wanted to tell her something which had been
troubling her conscience for a long time.”
The boy was so urgent in his entreaties for her to come, and persisted
so resolutely in besieging the hall door till she consented to do so,
that at length, greatly against her inclination, Mina agreed to go; and,
half sceptical concerning the truth of the tale, and quite certain that
she disliked the idea of meeting the woman again, she placed herself
under the guidance of the messenger and proceeded towards the place
where he informed her Mrs. Colefort dwelt, but of the precise locale of
which Mina knew about as much, or perhaps rather less, than the man in
the moon.
In and out, up and down, round and across, the boy doubled like a hare;
he had told Mina at starting, it was “only a step,” but she grew so
wearied before their journey was half over, that, finally, she stopped
her ragged companion and asked if he did not think they had better get a
cab.
“Cab!” he echoed; “I’d like to see the one that could go there;” which
consolatory speech gave Mina the idea she was not about to visit an
especially select part of the metropolis—and in five minutes more they
were in it.
No sage was required to tell the wife of the Lincolnshire baronet she
had got into a most particularly bad neighbourhood; and perhaps, had she
been a little more happily situated, had her mind been in a more
tranquil state, she might have hesitated to penetrate further, under the
sole protection of a ragged impudent urchin, who had the words thief and
pickpocket unmistakeably written on every feature of his prematurely old
face. But Mina was perfectly reckless and insensible to danger: it was a
new phase of existence presented for her consideration; it was something
so novel, that it drew her thoughts out of herself and forced her to
reflect about others. To the wretched there is unquestionably a balm
about the spectacle of wretchedness; it is not a good trait in human
nature that this should be so, but most assuredly so it is.
“This is the place,” said the boy at last, stopping before a mean low
house; and then crossing the threshold, he ran up the stairs and,
pushing open a door on the first floor, bade her enter.
“But I can never find my way back alone,” said Mina as he was about to
leave her; “if I give you a shilling now, will you wait and take me to
the nearest cab stand, and then I will give you another?”
“Yes, my lady,” said the boy, and he stood with praiseworthy gravity
watching her search for her purse, and apparently waiting for, and
eagerly expecting, its appearance.
Mina could not, however, discover a trace of it; she tried her pockets;
she turned them inside out, to detect if there were any hole through
which it might have dropped, and she was just beginning to consider
whether she had not left it at home when the faintest twinkle of a smile
about the corners of her guide’s mouth let light in on the subject.
She looked full in his face, and, though he tried to return her glance
with one of unflinching solemnity, she felt perfectly satisfied as to
what had become of her money; the thief stood before her, and yet she
was aware he might as well be in Canada, so far as her chance of
recovering it was concerned.
“My pocket has been picked!” she said; “do you know who did it?”
The lad gazed at her for a moment in silence, then breaking into a
perfect yell of laughter he darted down the stairs and out of the house,
stumbling in his rapid flight against some persons who were just
entering it. “I say, keep out of the gutter, gov’ner, can’t yer?” he
shouted, hastily recovering his balance, and addressing an individual
whom he had shoved off the narrow side-path into the dirty lane; then
suddenly adding, “Oh! my eye, it’s the feller gave me the month on the
stepper!” he fled away along the uneven pavement, crying, however, as he
ran,
“Oh! I know what you’ve come about,—to see Mother Colefort,—but she’s
receiving genteeler company than ever you were in.”
The “company” thus referred to had, in the meantime, entered the squalid
chamber wherein a fellow-creature lay apparently dying, and, passing up
to the side of the wretched pallet, said, in a low tone,
“You wished to see me, Mrs. Colefort,—here I am.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured the woman, “I thought you were never going to come;
I am very ill,—I may die,—but still I may get better, don’t you think
so?”
“I cannot tell,” answered Mina; “God alone knows that, for in His hands
are the issues of life and death.”
“And if I get better,” resumed the hag, unheeding Mina’s words, “I shall
need gold; and, if I make you rich, you must make me so too: there have
been others here about this very business, but I had rather tell you
than any of them. You said the other day you were not rich,” she added
abruptly; “what would you give to be so?”
“Much!” responded the lady, struck by her tone and manner; but ere she
had time to add another word, Mrs. Colefort hurriedly exclaimed,
“Here they come,—here they are again;” and Mina, turning, saw three
strangers enter the apartment, followed by one old familiar face.
“Miss Mina,” the owner of it cried, and, at the exclamation, all the
gentlemen looked surprised, and one in particular scrutinized every
feature of her whom Colin Saunders thus addressed.
“Surely,” he said, “this is no place for Lady Ivraine to be;” and at the
words Mina crimsoned to her temples.
“I came,” she answered, “to listen to the confession of a dying woman.”
“We are here to receive it,” remarked the stranger who had first
entered.
There was an awkward pause for a moment, and then the solicitor said,
“If you will allow me to conduct you out of this locality it will give
me the greatest pleasure to do so; if this poor creature desire to
relieve her conscience she has now an ample opportunity afforded her,
without intruding upon your time;” and, as Mina rightly interpreted this
speech into a polite request for her to depart, she passed forth from
the room, merely remarking ere she went,
“If there be anything money can procure which might render her situation
more endurable, I hope you will let me know;” and then she descended the
narrow stairs, followed by Mr. Twining.
They walked on in silence for a considerable period, and it was not till
they had reached a more respectable neighbourhood, and regained at once
a broader street and a purer atmosphere, that the attorney abruptly
began,
“Lady Ivraine, I have heard a great deal of you and your unfortunate
history; I am a man of business, old enough to be your father, and have
daughters of my own; will you, therefore, on all these accounts, excuse
my speaking plainly to you?”
Mina inclined her head in token of assent, and he proceeded,
“I feel a great interest in this affair for many reasons: I am quite
aware of all the sad circumstances preceding your departure from
Paradise, and the unhappy existence you must have led during the
lifetime of the late baronet; but that cause of misery being now
removed, I do think that, on every account, for your own sake, and for
that of your husband and child, you ought to return to Lorton; I am
advising you now as if you were my sister or daughter.”
“You are very kind,” said Mina; “but you say you are aware of all the
circumstances which induced me to leave Paradise; I cannot help
believing you are mistaken in that idea, and without a full knowledge
of——”
“Facts, I am not competent to advise, you would say,” he added,
finishing the sentence for her. “Well, perhaps not, but let me ask, are
_you_ fully aware of all that has occurred at Paradise since you quitted
it?—of Mrs. Close’s death, of Sir Ernest’s demise, of his son Henry’s
return, of the disinheritance of both his children, and the bequest to a
grandson,—the boy of his youngest born? Have you heard your husband is
literally penniless, that he is perfectly wretched, that his health is
very bad, that, in one word, you ought to be at his side now, if you do
or ever did love him? His sister-in-law, a sweet and gentle lady, is
there to aid your endeavours to make him forget his sorrows; will you
not be advised by one not much accustomed to advise ladies, it is true,
but who speaks none the less sincerely to you, who stand in need of some
competent counsellor, and in whose welfare your father’s faithful
dependant, Colin Saunders, has compelled me to take an unwonted
interest.”
He spoke the last words as he hailed a cab from a neighbouring stand.
“You are fatigued,” he added, noticing how her colour came and went and
her frame trembled; “I have, perhaps, intruded unwarrantably on you in
thus proffering advice; still, if you would grant me the favour of a few
moments’ conversation to-morrow morning, I think I could give you such
information as might induce you to start for Lorton at once.”
She paused for a second ere entering the vehicle, as if uncertain what
answer to return; then extending her hand she said, in a broken voice,
“Thank you very much for your great kindness; I shall be at home all day
to-morrow.”
When the cabman turned in the direction of Miss Caldera’s home, Mina
smiled faintly, as she inclined her head in answer to Mr. Twining’s
ceremonious old-fashioned bow.
“Well, there’s not a doubt of its being an uncommonly sweet face,”
soliloquized the attorney; “I do not marvel now at a son even of Sir
Ernest Ivraine marrying for love.”
Mina was at home the whole of the next day, but ill in bed and unable to
see Mr. Twining; the same answer was returned the following morning; and
when, after one day’s unavoidable absence, he rapped for the third time
at Miss Caldera’s residence, he was informed “Lady Ivraine had gone out
of town for a few days.”
Miss Caldera and he, perhaps, guessed whither, but the former stated she
was in no state of health to travel, whilst the latter affirmed he was
glad she had tried the experiment at all hazards.