BACK TO THE FENS.
It was an English Sunday morning, and, as the bell in the primitive
steeple of the rustic church of Lorton tolled forth its earnest summons
to the House of God, the worshippers came trooping along singly or in
groups of twos and threes; across fields of corn and clover and grass,
through shady lanes and quiet country roads, by the verdant margins of
rippling streams, from cottage, hall, and every rural nook, they came to
“assemble and meet together” in the holy place.
Just as we all finally reach, by divers paths, the grave, so, in like
manner—only more calmly and tranquilly—they pursued, by different
routes, their way to one common destination,—the temple of the Most
High—to hearken to the voice of him who strove to explain to them the
solemn mysteries of that eternity which bounds on all sides the horizon
and ends for ever the mortal vision of “man that is born of a woman.”
As the old sexton descended from the sort of pigeon box to which he was
wont to mount when any of the solemnities of his profession required his
presence there, a stranger lady, dressed all in mourning and her face
concealed from observation by a thick crape veil, entered the porch and
proceeded, like one who had some previous knowledge of the place, up a
narrow flight of steps conducting to a dingy little gallery, set apart
for and, in some sort, devoted to, the vocalists, or, which was briefly
termed by them, the “singing loft.”
“Would you not prefer a seat below, ma’am? Sir Hugh Xifer and family are
abroad, and I can put you into their pew,” said the man in a
confidential whisper, expecting, from the appearance of the lady,
half-a-crown in acknowledgment of his unsextonish politeness.
A little hand dropped the desired coin into his, which made no scruple
of closing upon it, though the day was one the rector frequently
selected for exhorting his flock against the sin of covetousness; but
the lady continued ascending the stairs, followed closely by the sexton,
who thought the least he could do in acknowledgment of her liberality,
was to show some attention, in the shape of a front, or, at all events,
cushioned seat.
Quietly rejecting, however, all his overtures of service, the stranger
took silent possession of a corner, and there, leaning her forehead
against her hand, remained sitting during the greatest portion of the
“Order of Morning Prayer.”
“There has been one like that inside this church before, or I am greatly
mistaken,” soliloquized the sexton, tranquilly surveying the gravestones
from a comfortable position, during the progress of the first lesson: “I
will just keep both my eyes pretty steadily on the lady and see the end
of it all;” which resolution keeping him awake, enabled him to hear,
though perhaps not to heed, an impressive discourse relative to greed of
gain and love of gossip and vexatious interference with the concerns and
trials of other people, which was one of a series, wherewith the
well-meaning rector sent the majority of his congregation to sleep,
Sunday after Sunday.
And she who thus caused one, at least, apparently attentive individual
to listen unto the worthy clergyman’s somewhat dreary exhortation, was
Mina Ivraine.
Sick and dispirited, weary and faint-hearted, tired in mind, exhausted
in body, she had come lonely and far, to see for herself how he looked,
determining then to go away for ever, write him a long letter, and die.
She did not wish to live. What, indeed, had she to live for? Her
parents, her dear old uncle the laird, and that other uncle who had
ever, in his own fashion, been kind and tender to her, were all dead;
long, long ago, the solemn sentence of “earth to earth” had been
pronounced over each of them: and earth to earth had surely returned,
and dust with dust was mingled.
The land of her birth had now ceased to be a pleasant memory, a sight of
it was a desire of her heart no more; Glenfiord she had strove never to
think of, Craigmaver had become a place, the very mention or remembrance
of which she detested.
And though three living ties remained, what were they? A brother toiling
under Indian suns, separated from her by oceans and deserts, time,
circumstances, poverty; a child whom she was now almost unable to
support; a husband who had repented of his marriage, from whose house
she had fled with such frantic speed, as if flight could snap the bond,
or set him free, or moderate his father’s displeasure, or do him good,
or her good, or unmarry either.
What had she to live for? she who had discovered, when it was too late,
how much she would then have given to possess even a tithe of the
affection she once desired to cast from her. Mina’s eyes filled with
tears as she asked herself that question; and, amidst the wild tumult of
human feelings, memories, sorrows, and regrets, the words which fell
from the clergyman’s lips were unheard by her, on whom the sexton kept a
vigilant watch to the end that she might not escape him.
She felt her husband never could forget the words Cecilia had uttered,
nor forgive her ill-judged flight, which, as she found when too late,
was calculated to do him no good after all. She fancied she was, could
be nothing more, to him; perhaps her child might be dear unto him at
some future period not very far remote, when she was at length sleeping
quietly, most probably in that very graveyard at which she occasionally
glanced through a dingy dirty window at her side.
And he, as well as a sort of obscuring film permitted her to discern his
features, seemed changed a little; he appeared, perhaps, a degree older
and thinner than of yore, but still Mina imagined happier also. There
was a lady, possibly his sister-in-law, with him, at whom he looked
frequently and pleasantly, as though she had been a gleam of sunshine.
Once, when he lifted a book she had dropped and presented it to her, he
smiled. Mina caught the perishable expression ere it faded from his
face, and, had it been a poisoned dagger, it could not have sent a
deeper, sharper pang to her heart. During all the time she had lived at
Lorton—seeing him, meeting him, talking to him hourly—she had never
beheld a look like that, so bright, so kind, so happy, light up for an
instant and change, whilst it rested there, the character of his
countenance.
She was right, Miss Caldera wrong,—he had repented him of his marriage;
not on her account, but his own: well, he should soon be free now. Death
would speedily effect that which Mina Ivraine had been impotent to
accomplish,—the breaking of a bond she had tied most recklessly with the
simple utterance of the monosyllable, “Yes.”
“What had I and my poverty to do with _them_?” she bitterly thought;
“why did I ever blight his happiness by casting the shadow of my sorrow
across it? why did I ever come amongst them? what am I doing here, even
now? I am nothing to any one, nothing, or worse than nothing: I will
go;” and with this intent she arose, ere the clergyman had concluded his
sermon, to depart.
But, somehow, when she emerged from the dark gallery into the broad
sunlight and was greeted by a warm breath of summer and beauty and
perfume, a faintness and sickness overpowered her.
There was a humming as of many voices in her ears; all objects reeled
before her sight; then sunshine and summer and beauty faded from her
eyes, and Mina Ivraine, for the first time in her life, sank perfectly
unconscious to the ground in the porch of that very church which, years
previously, she had mournfully entered, a new made, most unhappy wife.
“Just as I thought,” complacently remarked the sexton, casting aside her
veil and gazing for a moment on the altered face: “she is not like what
she used to be; but, if all accounts be true, he’ll be glad enough to
see her any way,” and the old man, lifting her, with an audible comment
to the effect, “that he could carry a dozen of the same weight,” bore
her off to a shady spot under a spreading lime-tree, and then,
re-entering the church, speedily brought forth the miser’s son to see
what was lying there.
“And this is she,” said one who raised the drooping head and chafed the
powerless hands and looked sorrowfully into the colourless face; “oh!
Ernest!”
He had stood at first gazing on his wife like one in a dream, bereft of
thought and sense and everything, save the power of sight; but, when the
spell was broken by those simple words, he sprang wildly forward and,
catching her up in his arms as though she had been a child, hurried off
with his burden towards “Paradise,” almost more rapidly than his sister
could follow.
“What in the world, Baronet Ivraine and brother of mine, are you
bringing home with you?” inquired Henry, in some surprise, stepping
forth from the drawing-room window on to the terrace to gain a nearer
view of the object which had attracted his attention; but Ernest,
without answering, entered the apartment and deposited Mina on the
nearest sofa.
“The truant come back!” exclaimed the other softly, glancing for the
first time on the countenance of his brother’s wife; “and a very sweet
pretty truant it looks, Ernest: where did you find it?”
“Do be quiet, Henry,” said she whom Colin Saunders had styled “that
angel-faced woman,” pushing her husband aside; “leave her to me, you
would kill her: do go away for a little, and take Ernest with you;” and,
like one accustomed to revive the fainting body and the weary heart, she
knelt down by the side of the couch and applied all sorts of
restoratives; and at length Mina, opening her eyes and gazing fearfully
around the apartment, murmured forth,
“Where am I? I must go.”
“Never far from me,” said a low sweet voice; and the poor
broken-spirited wanderer, faintly conscious that a pair of loving eyes
had looked pityingly upon her, fell back once again into a deep swoon.
To which succeeded long illness and prostration, both of mind and body;
and for weeks Mina hovered betwixt life and death in a closely shaded
room, watched and nursed and tended by one who brought a sort of
sunshine with her into the dreariest places and the saddest hearts.
Oh! blessed be God, the maker of this lovely earth, for some of the
women he has placed upon it, for the soft dark eyes and the tender
voices and the noiseless feet and the gentle hands and the soothing
words and the true, steadfast, honest hearts that seem to make
themselves ever quietly happy in rendering others so.
Those who cannot count amongst their acquaintances one such, are poor,
though possessed of houses and lands; for better than silver and gold is
it to call by the name of “friend,” one whose path may be traced by the
good she has unostentatiously performed; who possesses the magic
power—bestowed upon so few, but appreciated by all—of turning, wherever
her footsteps wander, tears into smiles, lamentations into rejoicing;
who loves truly, steadily, constantly, in “sunshine and in shade,” and
who never alters, save perhaps to seem a little kinder and nearer when
the dark hour of misfortune arrives unto those whom she has known in
brighter hours.
One of these meek angels in woman’s guise assuredly was Ellen Ivraine;
wherever she went, she carried gladness with her; from whatsoever place
she departed, blessings and regrets followed her: the most unamiable of
her own sex, the most censorious of the other, had never been heard to
speak evil of the almost perfect lady. Faults, even those who loved her
best were persuaded dwelt in her nature; but what did that signify, when
no one could discover what they were, unless, indeed, the most complete
unselfishness and the most unbounded charity towards the foibles and
failings of others might be classed as sins amongst those dwelling in a
world where selfishness is deemed almost a virtue, and charity (not of
the purse alone, but of deed and word and purpose) is a thing so much
prated of and little practised, that it is rarely met with, though
perpetually preached.
And as a sister might have watched and rejoiced beside the couch, and
over the return of a loved and suffering one, so did she, that rich and
well-born lady—who could, had such been her desire, have passed her life
amidst the bright and gay and happy—soothe and comfort and minister unto
the wayward and faithless one, who had never believed in such a woman
till she met her, who had never previously been possessed of aught save
one true female friend, and that one, though so good of purpose and
faithful of heart, so unlike this one,—so totally dissimilar.
“Where is my child?” were the first words Mina uttered when, after days
and days, consciousness dimly returned; and, as a stranger placed her
daughter beside her, the next question came tremblingly forth,
“And who are you?”
“One who should have been your friend long ago,” was the response, “and
who will be so now,—your sister, dear Mina, wife to your husband’s
brother.”
“Niece to the Earl of——”
“No, no,” hastily interrupted the other, “only Ellen Ivraine, who heard
of you long ago, and talked of, and sorrowed for, and wept because of
you. Our fathers were both soldiers,—both commoners; where I have only
one earl you can point to a line of ancestors, tracing back, for aught I
know, to the Deluge. No, no,” she repeated more earnestly, “never let
aught of that kind come between us: Mina to me you shall always be, and
Ellen Ivraine till death I must remain. We are both women, both mothers,
have both suffered, and, if that be not sufficient to make us friends,
we have married two brothers, and must, consequently, whether we will or
no, be sisters;” and, as she concluded her rapid sentence, she pressed
her lips so lovingly on Mina’s forehead that the poor weakened invalid,
twining her arms about the slender neck, laid her tired head on that
loving breast, and wept there like a child in the embrace of its mother.
Thus, when she got a little better, she told her all the weary story,
from beginning to end,—the woman’s heart of the listener comprehending
and pitying every minute feeling of the narrator.
As Mina had never previously talked to mortal she spoke to her: there
was not a thought of her soul,—a wish, a folly, a sensation, so far as
she herself was cognizant thereof,—that she did not lay bare before the
clear, steady, sensible, yet gentle, eye of her new friend—her
unswerving advocate.
She concealed nothing, exaggerated nothing, extenuated nothing; if ever
a plain unvarnished tale were told, it was that heard by the wife of the
younger brother, and spoken by the lips of her who had once been the
heart-broken bride of the elder.
What she could not have said to her husband, had a lifetime of happiness
been offered to her as the reward of doing so, she managed to explain to
her sister-in-law; and, when the whole story was finished,—when Mina at
length, having nothing more to add, raised her eyes imploringly to that
sweet face, as if entreating it never to look coldly upon her, the elder
lady, drawing her closer to her, answered,
“I see and feel, and understand it all,—I comprehend your heart and its
unfounded doubts and its strong affections and its vague foolish
fancies, better, far better, than its possessor; but never question his
love again: be assured it was for you, and only for you, he regretted
his marriage; let me make peace between you,—only talk to him one half
so openly as you have spoken to me, and life need never again be to you
what unhappily life has hitherto been. I am an impartial judge of his
character, Mina, and I tell you, in all sincerity, I believe your heart
would as soon cease to love your child as that of Ernest Ivraine swerve,
in more than outward appearance, from the strong, devoted attachment he
always felt for you before you married him, during the period of your
residence here, after that thoughtless, foolish creature sowed disunion
between you. I know what you have been to him during your absence; I
feel what you will become and remain to him so long as memory and
sensation last,—until death, dear Mina, and—after.”
And in a few brief words that kind-hearted lady told Ernest all.
“Go to your wife and hear the story from her lips,” she added; “she, not
I, should be the one to speak of these things to you.”
It was not because there was the faintest trace of anger lingering in
his breast that he hesitated to comply with his sister’s request; he
felt as though Mina never would talk to him as she had talked to that
gentle woman, as if he should not know what to say to her, as if long
habits of reserve could not be shaken off in a moment, as if Mina were
still to him an unsolved mystery,—a creature that, even whilst he loved,
he should never be able to understand; but Mrs. Ivraine would take no
denial, she insisted that “talk it out together they ought, that have an
explanation with Mina he must,” and accordingly, very reluctantly and
half-sheepishly, like an awkward, timid schoolboy, he went.
It was a glorious September day, and Mrs. Ivraine had placed the invalid
close to a window opening on the terrace, all fringed and brilliant with
an unwonted display of autumn flowers; there was something in the
appearance of that wasted form which struck home at once to the soul of
the miser’s son; a hundred memories rushed to his mind as he entered the
apartment: he thought of the time when he had first seen her, of all
that had occurred since then, of her sufferings, of her patience, of the
tale his sister-in-law had but just told him, of the wretched life he
had compelled her to endure for the sake of a legacy which he never
obtained; he remembered the words he had spoken,—the words which drove
her from that very habitation; he felt softened and touched by her
voluntary return to him in his poverty, by the affection she must have
borne him when she crept back so secretly to Lorton to see him “ere she
died.” And as all these recollections swelled up in his bosom his
sternness melted away, and his reserve almost departed; and, drawing
near to the chair she occupied, he said, taking her wasted little hand
in his,
“And so, Mina, you have come home to share the fortunes of a beggar;
Ellen tells me you have heard Sir Ernest Ivraine is little better than a
pauper, and it turns out you have married a man who, in the middle of
life, must either work for a competency or else starve.”
“I never married you for money, Ernest,” she began, “never; did not she
tell you that, too? I knew, before I became your wife, you were not
rich, might never be so. Because of the love he bore my father, because
of his having known me from the time I was a child, Colin Saunders
thought it his duty to tell me all; he knew my temper and feared I might
not be able to submit patiently, but I thought I would try; and I did
try very hard, and I could have submitted and borne everything patiently
for your sake till the end, had I not believed you would have been
happier without me, that I was the sole obstacle between you and great
wealth; then I felt it only right to free you as far as I could. I never
meant to return again, but to go away and let you all forget me. I
thought if I were out of sight your father would grow fond of you, and
that then you might be happy again: it was all of no use though. Yet,
even now, I cannot help fearing it was I who prevented your being rich,
that it is because of me you are a beggar.”
She uttered the last few words hurriedly, and looked eagerly in her
husband’s face to read if he thought so too, and if he were very sorry
for it.
“No, Mina, no,” he answered; “if you had never existed, if I had never
met you, if we had never been married, if I had never loved you better
than anything else in the world, it would have been just the same. Henry
was always my father’s favourite son, and from the moment he cleared a
conspicuous passage for himself in the world’s wide, crowded
thoroughfare, my fate was sealed. Perhaps—I do not know—but perhaps, had
I remained unmarried, the money might have been bequeathed to Henry
instead of to his son, but that is the only difference it could possibly
have made. I spent the best years of existence waiting for a
chance,—Henry’s success turned the scales against me, and I lost.”
“And you are quite sure of that,—quite sure it was he, not I,” she said,
laying an entreating hand on his arm.
Once he had shaken it off,—once he had done so amongst the blue Highland
hills, close to the free silent moors, which the heart of his wife had
loved so much in childhood. Once he had shaken it angrily off, but he
did not do so now, amidst the fens and swamps, in the home Mina had
trembled to enter; he clasped it between his own and answered,
“Sure, quite sure, dear Mina; but had it been otherwise——”
“A gentleman in the dining-room, Sir Ernest, wishes to see you
immediately, on important business,” interrupted a servant, at this
juncture flinging open the door; and, on the strength of this urgent
summons, he departed, leaving behind him, however, such joy as, for
years previously, Mina had never felt.
“If there could only have been time given for him to have finished that
sentence,” she thought as she closed her eyes and leaned back in the
chair, buried in grateful musings.
Reclining in that old-fashioned chair, her slight figure supported by
crimson cushions, which made her pale face look paler by contrast, the
dark eyelashes lying long and heavy on her cheek, and a sort of placid
expression, like that which so frequently beautifies the features of the
early dead, pervading her whole countenance, Mina certainly did
wonderfully resemble a corpse, or, at all events, a person fast
travelling the road to the tomb, who had almost reached the final goal;
her dark hair having become unfastened, fell over her neck and shoulders
as it used to do when she was a child bounding across the lawns at
Glenfiord; but the flush had paled from her cheek since then, and left
it white as marble: she looked so unlike anything destined for length of
days, so worn, emaciated, fragile, that one who had been unsuspectedly
gazing on her through the open window, unable longer to restrain his
feelings, stepped hurriedly into the room and, wringing his hands
piteously together by the side of the chair, cried, in a sort of choking
voice,
“My bairn! my bairn! my dear Miss Mina, going to dee, going ta leave us
a’ and dee?”
“No, Colin,” Mina answered, opening her eyes and smiling—oh! so
differently from her wont—on the old man who thus apostrophized her;
“no, Colin; I have changed my mind about that;” and she shook back her
curls somewhat in her old wilful way, as she added, “people don’t want
to leave the earth when they are happy on it, so I have changed my mind
about dying.”
“And you are happy?” he said; “then you have heard all.”
“All what?” she demanded.
“About the money; your great fortune.”
“My fortune! what are you talking about, Colin?”
“Then you have not heard,” he answered, “and maybe I ought not to have
told you, Miss Mina; but, since I have made a beginning, I may as well
make an end, and let ye know your uncle’s marriage turns out to have
been just no marriage at all, and there’s one hundred and sixty thousand
pounds to the good still, we expect to get for you and Mr. Malcolm.”
Mina started from her seat at the words. Mrs. Ivraine had given her
strict injunctions not to attempt walking, even across the room, without
assistance, fancying she was too weak to try the experiment; but the
intelligence seemed to have put new life into her frame.
“Are you speaking the truth, Colin Saunders?” she cried: “all that
fortune for me? all my own? are you sure?”
“It’s truth, if it were my last words,” he answered.
She uttered one loud cry of delight, and, darting out of the room, the
first person she encountered in the corridor was he of whom she was
rushing in search.
“Oh! Ernest,” she said, flinging her arms around his neck, “Colin tells
me I am to have eighty thousand pounds, which will clear off all
mortgages, and I am so glad; just say one thing—you are not sorry you
married me now.”
The words implied a reproach, though she did not mean that they should
do so. Ernest Ivraine drew her closer towards him, but made no reply.
She felt his frame trembling with strong emotion: he bent his head on
his wife’s shoulder and, for the first time for years, for the first
time since boyhood, wept.
It was a sufficient response; and, from that day forth, not even a
shadow of a cloud rested between them to mar their peace, for Mina had
at length fulfilled the purpose she had uttered before marriage. “I will
enter even the miser’s home and try whether I cannot render that home
happier unto _him_.”