Chapter XI: Mina “in Training.”

A space of three months has passed away since the conclusion of the preceding chapter, unmarked by any events, save such as may be chronicled in a few brief lines—spoken of and dismissed in a single passage.

It seemed at first as if the violence of the blow had neutralised its painful effects—as though the dreadful shock, the abrupt descent, the desperate fall, had produced—after the momentary pain—a sort of mental stupor, numbness, or apathy, which rendered the sufferers, for a period, almost insensible to the anguish they endured, and prevented their comprehending the nature and extent of the misfortune which had befallen them; and, before they awoke from this torpor, so long a time had elapsed that the first sting of the reverse was past—the first force of the blow expended. Bitterness enough remained behind assuredly; but it was not the unbearable bitterness which had filled their hearts to overflowing during the dreary twenty-four hours succeeding their bereavement and loss of fortune.

There is something healing in the mere passage of time, something soothing in the very flutter of his wings; so the mourners discovered when, at last, they recovered sufficiently from the sort of stupefaction into which they had been thrown, to be able to raise their heads a little and look, as some of the Irish who occasionally cross the Channel in search of employment express it, “the trouble in the face.”

For the all-important “time-being,” they were by no means badly off; there was the amount Allan Frazer had settled, when a young subaltern, on his wife, still untouched, and, so long as one thousand pounds lasted, the “battle of life” promised to be anything rather than a losing game, a hopeless struggle, a weary, unprofitable fight.

“But when it was done?”

Mina once propounded this question and was met by Malcolm with a “Pooh, pooh, child! then I’ll provide for you.”

“How?” she further ventured, and he concluded the conversation by answering, “How! any how,” and walked out of the room, softly whistling the “British Grenadiers;” for Malcolm was now more independent than ever he had been. His mother never said he spent too much; never wondered where the last ten pounds had gone; never refused further advances, thought everything he did and said was right; lay helpless on a sofa in West End lodgings, visited by a doctor whose charges in town were only a guinea a time, and in the country only a guinea a mile; and distracted Mina by rushing into and countenancing expenses which made fearful inroads into the thousand pounds, and foretold that, before any immense time had elapsed, the amount standing to their credit on the books of a bank in Fleet Street would be easily described and easier counted as nought.

When, at length, Mina began to look with fearful eyes at their enormous expenditure, the evil had proceeded too far to be checked; Malcolm found the life he was leading too easy and pleasant to be readily abandoned; Mrs. Frazer still thought money would “turn up,” that the thousand pounds would last for ever, that there was no use in such “niggardly economy;” in fact, with all canvass set, she and her son were evidently bent on sailing down upon the black shore—poverty: and what could Mina—who, of course, had no control of the money—do?

Very little, but spend nothing herself and drift along the current leading to destruction as patiently and resignedly as might be.

The trial of woman’s life was already upon her; and in the hard school of daily discipline, in expensive lodgings near Eaton Square, with money flying about and squandered as Mina had never seen money squandered before, she commenced to learn the verb “to bear” through; it took her years and years thoroughly to master the task, but patience does a deal, and everything in this life, we know, must have a beginning; even the “British constitution” had one, why not Mina Frazer’s patience?

She was being put into “training” at last, so Miss Caldera said. What a pity young hearts, like young horses, require to be “broken in;” what a “breaking down” it frequently proves; what a common-place affair it makes of life, being driven through it “in harness.” How differently people view the world when wandering untrammelled at their own sweet wills, free to stay, free to roam, free to stop, and free to go, from what they deem it, when stern necessity compels their daily journey along a certain “line of rail:” how the flowers lose their perfume; how dark the sky grows; how weary the road seems. What an altogether unsatisfactory affair life appears, hacking, hacking eternally on. The wild colt of the Indian prairie, bounding over the plains free and unconfined, bears not less resemblance to the stupid, ill-used beasts of burden we sigh to look at in the city streets, than does the poverty-stricken wretch, whom misfortune has rendered patient, and sorrow quiet, to the glad impulsive youth, who left his father’s roof some years previously, hopeful, buoyant, rejoicing, to go forth and make “his fortune.”

He did not mean _that_ fortune, however, but so it has “turned out.”

No doubt it is all for some good end, to serve some inscrutable purpose, that these perpetual “breakings in” are permitted; and no doubt it was, as Miss Caldera asserted, “very good for Mina” to be instructed in the art of bearing, for the girl was unquestionably learning a great deal very rapidly.

Malcolm said her knowledge was extremely disagreeable, called her his “prudent little sister,” said she had a real Scotch head, capable of working out any account and crammed full of £ _s._ _d._, that “she was a sordid calculating monster,” and many other equally polite names; and when she would have persisted, he told her she was too pretty to turn miser, and not to trouble herself about the money, for that when it was gone he would get more.

Mina, however, had an idea that it would be too late for him to go and look for further supplies when their present stock was quite exhausted; and, accordingly, one evening when Mrs. Frazer, being more ill than usual, had retired earlier than was her wont, leaving Malcolm, as he expressed it, “to the tender mercies of his sister,” the latter most determinedly opened fire upon him in the following words:

“Malcolm, do you know how much money we have spent in the last four months?”

“Now, for pity’s sake, Mina, do cease eternally harping on that ‘monetary’ question,” he pleaded; “see, I’ll play a game at chess with you, or hold silk while you wind it, or listen to you reading a sermon, or do any other disagreeable thing you choose to name, if you will only, my dear, wise little sister, shirk that subject, upon which, it seems to me, you have gone perfectly insane.”

“If you will listen to me to-night, I will promise not to tease you again,” she returned; “it really is quite necessary for us to talk about the matter: do you know, Malcolm, how much we have spent?”

“No I don’t,” he responded; “a pretty smart sum, I dare say, for the expenses have been rather heavy: a couple of hundreds, possibly.”

“Just three hundred and fifty pounds,” she answered.

“Nonsense, child; how could that amount have gone?”

“That I cannot tell,” she answered; “but it is gone for all that, and if we live the next eight months at the same rate as we have been living for the last four, there will not be a shilling of the thousand left at the end of the year, and——”

“And we shall be fifty in debt besides,” supplied Malcolm; “was not that what you were going to add, little Solomon? Well, don’t torment about the matter; I will do something before the eight months expire—I will indeed.”

“Had not you better do something now, Malcolm?” she demanded: “I wish that while the money is there you would buy a commission.”

“Buy a folly,” interrupted the young man; “and pray, my dear, how should I live when I had procured it?”

“On your pay,” she suggested.

“That’s impossible,” he said; “I always calculated when I spoke about Uncle John buying me a lieutenantcy, that he would also allow me a hundred a year or so besides to enable me to keep up a gentlemanly appearance: no, I cannot enter the army without private means; I must look out for a genteel and lucrative government appointment; in fact, I have mentioned my wishes to two or three persons, and I mean to set about the business in real right-down earnest whenever we return from our intended visit to Craigmaver: and talking of Craigmaver reminds me that I must write to Mr. Ivraine; have you any message?”

“Why what are you going to write to him about?” she demanded.

“You are as curious as Mother Eve, Mina,” replied her brother; “but since you must know, I have been requested by Colin Saunders to procure him an English situation, either as gardener, caretaker, or “useful body,” and it has occurred to me that Mr. Ivraine might very possibly know of some one wanting to meet with a person like him; therefore,” continued Mr. Frazer, carefully selecting an unexceptionable sheet of highly glazed letter paper—he need not have been so particular if he had only known the sort of place it was going to—putting the same before him, and commencing forthwith a wild irregular scrawl, which would have settled his chances for ever of promotion in a merchant’s office, though, very possibly, it might have done well enough for a government one,—“therefore I am going to write to him.”

Mina laid down the trifling piece of work she held in her hands, and watched her brother scribbling away in silence till he reached the bottom of the sheet; then, as he paused for a moment, she inquired,

“What has happened at Craigmaver that Colin can want to leave it.”

“Why, little one, he says that he and the new mistress don’t ‘sort,’ or, at least, he implies that fact; and, besides—but pshaw! there is the letter,” he added, pulling a species of “whitey brown” epistle out of his pocket-book, and flinging it towards her, “read it, and understand it for yourself.”

She lifted the missive, but did not open it for a minute.

“Well, Mina, on what other subject do you require information?” demanded her brother, noticing her eyes still fixed upon him.

“Nothing particular; only is there no other way you could get a place for poor Colin without troubling Mr. Ivraine?”

“No, there is not,” he somewhat angrily retorted, “at least, none which appears so easy and altogether desirable. Mr. Ivraine made me promise that if I thought he could ever be of the slightest use to me, I would write to him at once; and I feel sure he will be able to procure something good for Colin; and, if you were not a little idiot, you would see he is a desirable acquaintance, and one I ought to endeavour not to lose sight of.”

“If he do not write to you, Malcolm, I would not force myself on him,” she timidly returned. “Remember how changed our position is, and——”

“If you do not cease lecturing and tormenting me, Mina, I shall have to cease talking to you at all; you have acquired so many ridiculous ideas—you are becoming so absurdly particular, so fastidious and provoking, that there is really scarcely any doing with you. You do not want to remain in London, because so much money is spent, and yet still you demur about going to Craigmaver to save; you implored me not to accept any favour from Alfred Westwood, even if he offered to assist me, and insinuated that it was mean to put myself under an obligation to a person whom I considered beneath us in birth and station; and now you want me not to make a trifling request to a man who owes his life almost to me, and who exerted himself like a brother about our affairs, solely because my uncle died before leaving us what would have made us independent for life. The truth is, Mina, I do not understand you, and believe that disappointment at not being a great heiress has utterly soured your temper, never a particularly mild or contented one. There, there, don’t begin to cry; it is a deuced hard thing a fellow cannot do what he likes, without being meddled with by a nonsensical girl, and that, when he does say what he thinks for once, he must be treated to an ocean of tears; but weep or not weep, Mina, I do repeat, you have tried me greatly, and that I really don’t profess to have patience to bear such perpetual dictating, particularly from you, and I won’t bear it, that’s more.”

And Malcolm very determinedly turned over the sheet and went on with his letter, whilst Mina rose and quietly left the apartment, without answering him even by a look.

It was scarcely nine o’clock, but still she took a candle and ascended to her bedroom, where, sitting down before the dressing-table and, crossing her arms upon it, she drooped her head on the support thus afforded, and remained in this position immovable for hours. She was not weeping now; she was thinking, with a racking pain in her temples and an oppression about her heart, of their almost hopeless prospects, of her mother’s state of health, of her brother’s unkind expressions, of some fruitless efforts of her own, of their present home, and the proposed journey northwards.

It was one of those periods when fifty things, all unpleasant, are thought of simultaneously; when there seems no hope in the future, no enjoyment in the present, no brightness in the past; when every disagreeable occurrence rises to the memory; when every pleasant reminiscence fades totally from the recollection; when all around, above, below, looks cloudy, stormy, unpromising; when the heart lacks courage to face the gathering tempest, and the soul wants faith to believe the sun will ever break through the darkness again; when there appears no good, no use, no happiness in anything; when the mind grows dangerously active in conjuring up phantoms wherewith to terrify itself; when life spreads out a huge blank page—blank, save for the word “unhappiness” written across it; when no succour can be discerned approaching from any quarter; when, although the tired brain confesses there is “no use in thinking,” it still persists in going on thinking and wearying itself to death.

The fit rarely lasts long, it is true; it produces no apparent injury, inflicts no permanent harm, therefore no one sympathises with these states of mental depression. They are hard to endure, for all that, however—so Mina felt; though, had any one asked her what had occurred particularly to annoy her, she could scarcely have answered the question in a satisfactory manner, still she was more thoroughly wretched as she sat there with her face concealed from view than she had ever been in her life before. The worst malady of the body is that for which doctors can discover no sufficient cause, which affects the patient he can hardly tell how; and, in like manner, any vague mental unhappiness is always more difficult to endure than the anguish arising from some decided misfortune.

The one can be grappled with and overcome, perhaps; at all events, it can be grappled with, being tangible, whilst the other flits about so as to elude the touch of the most skilful and experienced amongst those who make it their business to search out the secret griefs of the heart and eradicate them therefrom.

Men fight with men, but the bravest shrink appalled from the mere representation of that which reason assures them exists only in fancy—a ghost. I have known persons who would have walked without flinching up to the cannon’s mouth, confess to having hesitated facing what, by the dim moonlight, bore the semblance of an apparition.

Well hath the secret sorrow of every home been styled a skeleton; if it were a living creature, possessed of flesh, bones, muscles, it would be speedily routed out of the citadel; as it is, no hand can be laid on it, no one can ever exactly say, “There it stands.” It glides from room to room, steals into the soul and out of it again, skulks in the heart’s dark corners, and defies the might of man to drive it from its stronghold.

But that mental depression produced by a variety of causes, which occasionally bows down the spirit, cannot last long; and thus, at length, the first bitterness of wounded feeling having past, the girl raised her head, and, pushing back the masses of long waving dark hair which, falling loose and unrestrained over her eyes, obscured her sight, she looked for an instant half dreamily at the candle burning dimly down into the socket, and then at Colin Saunders’ epistle that she had almost unconsciously retained in her hand.

It was indeed, inside and out, a unique missive; written on the coarsest of paper, with the thickest of pens, and the palest of ink, in a straight up-and-down crabbed hand; easy to read, however, notwithstanding, as the character—straightforward, honest, and simple—of him who indited it.

Scripture passages were somewhat strangely intermixed with details of what he was “fit for,”—the heavenly kingdom forming the burden of one passage, and the amount of temporal wages he would be “content with,” being the intelligence conveyed in the next. The account of how his daughter Jenny, who married James Frith, the English butler, as Mr. Malcolm might recollect, was about returning to London and starting together with her husband (whose master had just died and left him four hundred pounds) a sort of boarding-house, was succeeded by reflections on the mutability of all earthly things and the importance of looking after the affairs of eternity. Then followed a pretty plain hint that Craigmaver was not what it used to be, and that the young laird’s wife was too grand and fine to “put up with” humble bodies like himself: and the whole epistle wound up with requesting Malcolm to procure him a home among the “strangers,” for that he could not think of serving any one in Scotland, except “one of the old clan.”

After a cramp signature came a postscript, begging his dutiful remembrances to “Miss Mina,” and hoping the mistress was better, and that Mr. Malcolm would excuse the liberty he had taken of writing to him and of getting the address off a letter the laird was sending to Miss Mina, and he said he should not have thought of troubling him about a poor man’s business, had he not “been the son of his old master.”

Tears, such as she had not shed for months previously, moistened the page as Mina read the quaint effusion Saunders had penned, after his day’s work, in his little cottage at Craigmaver. What a change must have occurred there, to make him dream of leaving “the old place,” Mina guessed; and where he could not stay she must go: she would never say another syllable against that or any other thing her brother chose to propose; she would try herself, silently and quietly, to avert the misfortunes she saw threatening on every side. There was one thing certain, her hopes whispered—Malcolm would not wish to remain in Scotland very long, and she resolved to do what she could before leaving London, to see the result of her latest experiment, and to hold her peace about money matters and seem as patient as it was in her nature to seem. Perhaps her brother was right; she had tormented him a little too much: men, she always heard, did not like to be interfered with; but still she thought he had been rather unkind, and she wished, oh! so much, he had not written to Mr. Ivraine.

There was no help for it, however; she would never meddle with him again: and, after all, it was merely a folly on her part; why should he not correspond with any one he liked? it had nothing to do with her; it was altogether a matter of business. So she mused, looking at the expiring candle abstractedly, till it gave one long bright leap up into a flame, after which it died out altogether: then she crept to rest and soon, tired out, sank to slumber. It might have prevented her falling asleep quite so soon, had she known that, prompted by the spirit of opposition, her brother had inserted in his “business” despatch a clause to the effect that “his mother and Mina sent their kind remembrances to Mr. Ivraine.”

But she did not know; and Malcolm had never heard what Mr. Westwood implied during the course of his final conversation with Mina. Perhaps, if she had told him, he might not have written at all; but she did not like to repeat the words which stung her so bitterly at the time: so Malcolm, in ignorance, sealed up the letter, and Mina, in ignorance, slept tranquilly, and arose quite resigned about that matter, but to find her mother worse, to hear speedy change of air recommended by the doctors, to acquiesce in rapid arrangements for her removal by easy stages to the bracing Highland air, and finally to go away to Miss Caldera and tell her all about it.

“Oh! dear old friend,” she said almost in despair, “we are to leave for Scotland almost immediately.”

“Do you remember how glad you were at the prospect of a similar journey this time last year?” demanded the governess.

“I have learnt a great deal since then,” answered the girl, sorrowfully.

“Lay it to heart,” was the emphatic reply; “it may profit you much hereafter.”