Chapter XIII: A Woman’s Weapons

“Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.” So said one who encountered many trials, felt the sting of poverty, endured the sorrows of life, knew the bitterness of remorse, and died with his genius only half-recognised—only half-developed: but if he had only been treated to a sight of the bad side of that sex, every member of which, if pretty or accomplished or amiable or graceful, he idealised into angels—he would surely have recanted, and declared that though man can give all sorts of annoyance to his fellow, beggar him, imprison him, torture and mutilate his frame, degrade him into something similar to, if not quite, a beast, all the sorrow and irritation he is capable of producing fade into total insignificance, when compared with the agony woman can inflict on woman.

Heaven only knows how they do it, for the adepts in the art of feminine persecution keep the _modus operandi_ a profound secret from the lords of the creation and the uninitiated of their own sex; like the mysteries of freemasonry, which everybody sees and hears of, and nobody (save the brethren) understands, the thing is perpetually being practised, and yet, unless it comes into the world with people, they cannot learn the knack. There are some poisons so subtle and insidious, that their presence can only be detected by their deadly consequences; and, in similar manner, the little venomed darts female tongues are capable of flinging at some innocent victim, can only be traced by the wounds they inflict. The result is produced—that is evident to the most careless and unsensitive; but how? oh! that is quite another question—entirely beyond me to explain. Cecilia Warmond could have told had she liked; but then, being one of the patentees, so to speak, of the cruel invention, she kept the means in the background; permitted no eye, save her own, to see the peculiarly delicate verbal mechanism which possessed the rare power of clothing deformity with beauty, concealing a thorn with a rose, presenting some dreadful potion in the semblance of a tempting draught, shrouding a sneer as a compliment, sending forth a falsehood under the simple disguise of truth.

The Pope who infused poison into the blood of his victim, under pretence of clasping his hand with cordial friendship, would surely have out-Heroded Herod in subtlety of deceit and fertility of expedients had he been a woman instead of a Pope. If it had pleased fate to change his sex and position, and transfer him from the Vatican to some French chateau or gorgeous palace, to give him flowing locks, a beardless chin, a soft yielding feminine manner, and a portion of woman’s exhaustless tact and alarming rapidity of invention—if fate had unhappily done all this, I say, surely the noble art of mental scorpion-scourging would, centuries ago, have been pronounced incapable of further improvements: ladies must have been content thenceforth to walk in the old-beaten track, and follow, in humble admiration, the footsteps of their great predecessor.

But he was only a Pope; so, finding himself impotent to wound the minds of his victims, he contented himself with killing their bodies: he paused, unwillingly, at a fixed point, beyond which none but women’s feet have ever passed; it is the unenviable distinction of Eve’s daughters that some amongst them can effect what it would be worse than useless for men to attempt. Let us be humbly thankful, however, there are but few who possess the gift. What a world it would be if every third or fourth gentle, graceful being possessed the power of fluttering, with beautiful out-spread wings, towards her enemy, and stabbing her to the heart under cover of a loving flattering caress! What a world it would be, when no law can punish the criminal, no friend procure redress for the victim; when the whole business is conducted more surely, more quietly, more secretly than the inquisition trials of old; when no one, save the sufferer, is even aware what instruments of hidden torture are thus planted in the “heart’s dark chambers;” when it is totally impossible for her to tell how they came there at all, and why she permitted herself to be mentally racked and thumb-screwed in a country where, for not much greater offences, inflicted on the less important part of her nature—the body—her opponent would assuredly be hanged.

The power of uttering a clever sarcasm, the ability to be wittily satirical, are dangerous weapons to be placed, unsheathed, in female hands; but they are harmless playthings in comparison with the sharp little invisible stiletto, to which these remarks refer, and from which Mina Frazer received many a private stab during the course of two weary months she spent at Craigmaver, after the death and funeral of her mother.

It would have been hard to tell what gratification Cecilia derived from the exercise of this power. We see boys who, before they can well speak, delight in impaling flies on pins and watching their agony, and who, carrying the humane propensity up with them to manhood, take literally a pleasure in witnessing human suffering, even that most revolting form of it, a public execution. Perhaps it was on the same principle Mrs. Frazer revelled in beholding the mental anguish she was capable of inflicting by a word, a tone, a look; at all events she did exult to set Mina writhing,—a task it was, unfortunately, easy to perform.

Had it been anything open, the girl could have encountered it; in a smart skirmish of tongues, in that kind of polite warfare, which the vulgar wage with clenched hands and undignified blows, Mina might not have come off the worst; at all events, she would have had the pleasure of retaliating, for she could occasionally fling a missile, in the shape of an angry retort, at the head of an adversary as well as anybody. In the open field she dreaded no one; if vanquished, people saw how it was done; she had, at least, the comfort of knowing against what and whom she was fighting, but in Cecilia’s guerilla practice, she was a complete novice; it was a style of thing she had never been accustomed to: she could not tell from behind what curious intellectual ambush the shot was fired, in what secure nook the enemy found refuge, what sort of armour would suffice to shield her from injury, what species of weapon might prove serviceable in defence. She was fairly bewildered and stood stupidly passive, while the shafts, unseen by other eyes, winged their unerring course towards her, always lodging, no matter how swift the aim or unpromising the ground, right in the spot intended, where they remained quivering for days after.

It was the bitterest ordeal, Mina fancied, she could ever be called upon to pass through. When Allan was at home, indeed, things were more endurable; but then he very rarely was at home, and Cecilia had so completely gained the old laird’s affections, that she could almost have persuaded him white was black, and accordingly she did induce him to believe there had been a something rather defective in dear Mina’s training, something which considerably detracted from her numerous virtues, something which did not make her friends less fond of her, but only caused them to feel a little anxious and uneasy concerning her future welfare.

“If she had been brought up at Craigmaver, under your watchful tender care,” insinuated the lady; and this being an embodiment of Mr. Frazer’s own idea, he sighed, and Cecilia sighed, and the old laird wished his “little girl” were more like his “dear daughter.”

“She falls far short of that,” he once said, sadly; but then added—his old love for the child of his dead nephew gushing up again in his soul, clear and bright, notwithstanding all the rubbish Cecilia had so perseveringly thrown on the top of it—“but she is a dear, good, quiet little creature, notwithstanding, and I wish—I wish we could do anything for her; her fate has been a very unfortunate one, Cecilia.”

What was “to be done” with her had been, indeed, a very vexed question in Mrs. Frazer’s mind for a considerable period; to keep her as a Craigmaver fixture she was resolved she would not; but then where could she be transported to, unless Malcolm grew discontented with his quarters and turned his attention towards seeking some settled lucrative employment. Cecilia therefore resolved, contrary to her usual custom—for she was generally as considerate towards gentlemen as the reverse towards ladies—to make Craigmaver anything rather than a pleasant abiding place for him; but, before she had time to carry her benevolent intention fully into effect, or had leisure to do more than just surprise him on one or two occasions, a circumstance occurred which induced her to consider such a line of conduct unnecessary, and to believe there were other means by which Mina might be got rid of.

“Cecilia,” said the laird one fine autumnal morning as they sauntered round the garden together, “Cecilia, read that letter and give me your opinion: what ought we to do?”

Mrs. Frazer took the missive in her slender fingers and glanced over it in her usual rapid manner. It was dated from a fashionable Edinburgh hotel; it was penned on the thickest and best of paper; it was written in a firm gentlemanlike hand; it contained plausible words and plenty of them: from “Dear sir” to “Yours, faithfully.” Cecilia comprehended every syllable, and, almost before she had taken in the signature, she exclaimed,

“Oh! let us have him here, by all means.”

“Do you mean, ask him to Craigmaver?” demanded the laird, a little doubtfully.

“_Oui, vraiment_,” she answered; “he will be enchanted with our Highland scenery: having an object in view, he cannot be bored with our lonely situation; then you will be able to judge of him for yourself. I think it a most frank and straightforward epistle.”

“But Mina——”

“Oh! when you have invited him, it will be time enough to tell her. You see it is evident there has been a coolness, or something of that kind, between them; it is better not to ask her at all about the matter, but just let us see what he is like, and, if you approve of him, permit affairs to take their own course. After you have answered this letter, I will break the subject to her: it would be such a desirable match, such an opening for poor Malcolm, such a comfortable home for dear Mina, darling child; how glad I should be for her to be happily settled—as I am,” she ingenuously added, taking the old laird’s hand and pressing it. “Do let us have him here; not exactly as an accepted suitor, you understand, dear papa (Cecilia always ignored the grandfather), but as the Londoners—the milliners, I mean—say about their goods, on approbation; if he do not suit, we can render his visit agreeable and send him away again; but if, _au contraire_——”

The lady did not finish the sentence, but looked so perfectly beautiful and graceful, standing among the flowers of the garden, that the old laird never thought of uttering another syllable in the way of dissent; and Cecilia “kept up the steam” by harping on about how pleased she was and how she hoped he was as nice as his letter, and how she had always thought it would be a “desirable thing” for Mina long before her uncle’s death, when they used to be talking of him at Glenfiord, and how she felt, even then, that the “little silly thing” was suffering some strange prejudice to blind her.

In short, Cecilia got the all-important letter of invitation written, for which Mr. Alfred Westwood’s soul had yearned, which he read and smiled over and then sneered at, in his usual polite manner, while sitting in one of the best apartments of the best Edinburgh hotel.

It was a lovely trait in the character of Mr. Westwood, as it is in the characters of many individuals, that “the more he could not get a thing, the more he wished for it;” he hated to be what he, in city phrase, termed, “done:” and to be rejected by a woman, to have “No,” said once, twice, thrice, to him by a little contemptible girl, whom he had seen grow up under his very eyes,—the thing was not to be borne. He would master her yet, he vowed, and, as he himself said, he had never yet broken a vow, save one.

What that one was, he knew, but, though it concerned the Frazers considerably, they did not, and he by no means intended to enlighten them. He wanted to marry Mina Frazer for three reasons: first, because she disliked him and had seen through and scorned him; second, because he did feel something near akin to love for her,—not love, not strong affection—he was incapable of that—but a little admiration, a very sufficient fancy; third, because he should be marrying into a good connexion: with Mina’s family and his own fortune, they might have almost any society they chose. He meant to retire from business in a little while, buy an estate, become a country gentleman, and talk of his Scottish relatives who lived at Craigmaver and were next neighbours to the Earl of Lobenclu.

He had taken ample time to reflect about the matter; he had made many and secret inquiries, not merely concerning the Highland establishment, the members composing it, and the visitors who flocked to it, but also about the very servants and labourers. He had got a little information anent Ernest Ivraine and his prospects. Money, we all know, can open the gate of every home, save heaven, and place the curious in possession of the secrets of all households; so, fortified by a vast amount of apparently unnecessary knowledge, encouraged by the fact of Mrs. Frazer’s demise, Malcolm’s continued inaction, and Mina’s peculiar position; satisfied, in brief, that he was “doing the right thing at the right time,” Alfred Westwood penned a long and artful letter to Mr. Frazer, senior, setting forth his earnest affection for his niece, confessing she had, at one time, seemed not very much inclined towards him, but venturing a hope that now she might perhaps view him in a rather more favourable light. Then he entered into a detail of pecuniary and other matters; told all he could do for Mr. Malcolm Frazer; said that, although disparity of years certainly did exist, he hoped intensity of affection might melt that obstacle away; frankly confessed that, in point of family, he could advance no claim, save that of respectability; and wound up by requesting to know if the Laird of Craigmaver would permit him to renew, with his sanction, his addresses to his niece.

This was the letter Cecilia read and decided should be politely answered, as we have seen.

“Mina,” she said to that much enduring young lady the day previous to that on which Mr. Westwood had said he should arrive, “Mina, an old friend of yours is to be here to-morrow.”

“An old friend of mine!” echoed Mina; “who may that be?”

“Why could you not have said, ‘who may _he_ be?’ at once and saved me the trouble of correcting your form of speech?” demanded Cecilia in a kinder and livelier tone than usual, watching to see the effect her words produced.

“He!” ejaculated Mina; “he!”

“How you say it,” laughed the lady, “and how you blush, and how frightened you look; but he is not an ogre, darling—this same Mr. Alfred Westwood—rest assured of that.”

“Alfred Westwood! Oh! Cecilia, this is your doing,” cried Mina passionately; “but I tell you this much, I have borne a great deal from you, I have kept silence when my heart has been breaking, I have never said I was unhappy, though often and often I have wished to be lying beside my dead mother, out of the way of annoyance and humiliation: but stay in the house with Mr. Westwood, I will not.”

“Take it quietly, _ma mignonne_,” sneered Cecilia; “don’t distort your pretty face nor injure your lungs with such excessive loudness of enunciation, I entreat.”

“Do not madden me, Cecilia,” burst in Mina; “you have no feeling, you have no heart, you are not like a woman. Oh! if I had known you once as I know you now——”

“Well, dear, what should you have done?” demanded her tormentor.

“Nothing that I have done,—nothing; but I am resolved about this, and I shall go at once to my uncle and tell him that, if Mr. Westwood come here, I go.”

“Surely you could never dream of depriving us of the immense advantage of your society,” said the other; “but supposing you are so cruel, where should you go?”

“As far as possible from you,” retorted Mina, with quivering nostrils, feeling her own impotency, yet unable to restrain the expression of her anger any longer; “if I only knew a spot on the earth on which you had ever set your foot, I would avoid it as I might a pestilence.”

“You are an ungrateful little virago,” said Cecilia, laughing as one might at the fury of a wayward child; “such a storm about nothing.”

“It may be nothing to you, but it is much to me,” answered Mina; “but I will not talk any more to you, I will go to my uncle:” and before Cecilia had fully made up her mind whether to prevent her executing her purpose, or to spur her on to accomplish it, Mina settled the question by darting out of the drawing-room, where the brief dialogue had taken place, and rushing, _sans ceremonie_, into the opposite apartment, where Malcolm, Allan, and the laird were just about thinking of leaving the decanters of prime old wine, and sauntering in to join “the ladies:”—there she went.

“I have come, uncle,” she began, “to tell you that, if it be true Mr. Westwood is coming here to-morrow, I should like to leave Craigmaver to-night. I know perfectly well what brings him; I understand it all. I cannot stay to meet him again: I will not do it.”

“He is only coming here as a visitor—as an invited guest, Mina,” commenced the laird, but his niece interrupted him with,

“He is coming here to strive to make me marry him, and I won’t. He offered, in the first shock of our beggary, to wring an annuity for mamma and a commission for Malcolm out of Mrs. Merapie, if I only would be his wife, and I said ‘no’ then: is it likely, when _she_ is dead, I would say ‘yes’ now? I told him always I would not—always; and the last time we parted we had a sort of quarrel, and——”

A perfect storm of reproaches here burst forth on Mina’s head,—almost invectives from her brother, remonstrances from the laird, wondering expressions from Cecilia: she had, so they affirmed, blighted her brother’s prospects; sacrificed her mother to her own extraordinary prejudices; maintained a secresy and reserve reprehensible in the highest degree; treated a high-minded man with a contempt and unkindness for which no words of condemnation were sufficiently strong: she had exhibited a degree of perverseness, of which they had believed her incapable, and permitted herself to give way to a fit of passion that was really alarming: in fact, there was no sin in the catalogue she had not committed. And truly, standing amongst them—her face flushed, her frame trembling, her manner excited—she did look like one who, though she knew herself to be in the wrong, was determined to persevere therein, urged forward by a bold defiant obstinate spirit.

Cecilia Warmond was one who would have sown doubt and distrust between the nearest of friends, the most unsuspicious of relatives: she had contrived to loosen the tie which bound the old laird to his niece; she had managed to lessen whatever love Malcolm ever possessed for his sister; she was a worm in the heart of that heaven-born blossom—domestic affection—gnawing and gnawing away for ever, eating the good and beauty out of the flower by imperceptible degrees: how she enjoyed that scene she knew—how she kept heaping fuel on the fire Mina felt. But at length the crisis of the affair was produced by Malcolm vehemently exclaiming,

“Why did you never hint before that an accommodation with Mrs. Merapie was possible; that Mr. Westwood had offered to be mediator in the matter; that there was any hope held out for me; that there was a possibility of procuring a handsome competence for our mother? Mina, I could not have believed you capable of such deceit—such secresy—such——”

“You all want to be rid of me,” sobbed Mina, bursting into a passion of tears; “there is not one in the world who cares for me—not one. Oh! father,” she cried, lifting her hands with a wild despairing gesture, “if I only could have gone with you _then_!”

She ran hurriedly out of the apartment and up the stairs, seeking some quiet place to weep in solitude.

“Mina, child, come and tell me all about it,” said Mr. Allan Frazer—who had left the dining-room at the commencement of the argument with a black cloud on his brow, stopping her in her rapid career—“what is it my little cousin? speak to me, Mina.”

“No, no, Allan Frazer, I do not want to speak to you again ever,” she cried, breaking away from him; and turning down the stairs, again she quitted the house, and went wandering through the gardens—wandering and weeping—till the old laird, who loved her, as he said, in spite of her faults, sought and found his little girl, and talked to her, as he might have done years and years ago at Glenfiord.

But Mina was a child no longer, and he had ceased to be the uncle of former days; it was not that the truth and honesty and sincerity of his heart had been impaired—that they were ever likely to be impaired—that his sterling goodness and the straightforwardness of his guileless purpose were capable of variation; no—but Cecilia had stepped between them. He believed her immaculate; a paragon amongst females; a being who was free from any sin, save that original taint transmitted to her by Mother Eve; and Mina could not accuse her to him; she could not tell him what she thought of his grandson’s wife; she could not clear herself by blaming that faultless creature; she could not say, “Uncle, you are deceived; you are nursing a scorpion, which has stung me, which may sting you.” Cecilia was perpetually between them,—dogged their footsteps, checked the impulses of their hearts, made them reserved, distant, uncommunicative; and, accordingly, the interview terminated—as such interviews frequently do—in dissatisfaction to both. Mina listened to him—that was all; not in the frank, confiding, trustful spirit of former days, but as to one whom an enemy was prompting on to torment her; and she answered, so he thought, waywardly and unreasonably and selfishly; and, though Mina became calm, and he kind, yet there was a gloom on the countenances of both, a shadow on the hearts of uncle and niece, when, after a long, painful, useless interview, they re-entered the house together.

The next day Allan Frazer went to Edinburgh, and Mr. Alfred Westwood arrived at Craigmaver from it; and, though there was a cold, sullen, settled aversion visible in Mina’s manner towards him, he felt, on the whole, perfectly satisfied with his reception. It had been very easy for Mina to say she would go; but as she had no place to go to, no one to go with, she was forced to remain—to be looked on as a person in disgrace by the household generally, to note how Mr. Westwood ingratiated himself more and more each day with her uncle, how fascinating Cecilia made herself to him, how captivated he seemed by her. She noted all in silence; she never spoke when it was possible to avoid doing so; but she thought, till her brain whirled and her head ached and her heart sickened—of what she was to do—of where she was to go, for she saw Craigmaver was never destined to be a happy home for her, and she knew there was no other open but one that she could not accept—from the very mention of which she desired to flee. Mr. Westwood progressed not at all in his wooing; and Malcolm speedily found himself, as he expressed it, “thrust to the wall” by bright beautiful Cecilia, who, under pretence of rendering Alfred Westwood’s visit “agreeable” to him, contrived to make herself eminently so.

But he saw through her: for about the first time in her life the general’s daughter encountered an individual, who, in depth of character, in power of dissimulation, in cleverness, heartlessness, and hypocrisy, was more than a match for her; who could walk in and out of her magic circle unharmed; who could flutter near the flame and not be scorched; who could admire, and still despise—flatter, and secretly sneer; who acknowledged her to be the most beautiful and captivating amongst women, even whilst he laughed inwardly at her for being only a woman—a very vain, very unamiable, very treacherous, dangerous woman. He did not hate, or dread, or avoid her: he amused himself with complimenting her; with making her imagine he, like all the rest of the world, considered her a sort of divinity,—by watching every turn and twist and wind of her deceitful nature: he listened quietly when she delicately implied—scarcely hinted—one day, when conversing about Mina’s perverseness, “that she was not quite worthy of him;” he pretended to believe her when she said she “loved her cousin like a sister;” he declared no mortal woman ever sung as she sung; he admired her and everything she did, and administered small doses of flattery so judiciously, that his words sounded more like solemn truths than specious falsehoods; he completely blinded her and the laird; and, at first, almost succeeded in bringing round Malcolm, but did away with the effect of that by “taking the patron on him too soon,” and also by covertly assisting Cecilia to sneer at the brother, to the end that he—finding in what a position poverty placed them both—might urge on Mina to accept her suitor; for Mrs. Frazer wanted the girl to marry Mr. Westwood, and she wanted Mr. Westwood to admire her.

She desired to be rid of Mina, to have a bone of silent contention removed from betwixt her husband and self; to have no female to divide the palace of Craigmaver with her; to have done with an insignificant little intruder whom Allan would not let her make a slave of: and, as she could not perceive any other “eligible opening,” she wished to send her off under charge of Mr. Westwood, and to send Mr. Westwood off, firmly believing there never was, on the face of this round earth, so completely fascinating, accomplished, beautiful a creature as Mrs. Allan Frazer, who had witched away his heart from him, and left not even an atom thereof to be ever after possessed by Mina.

It is difficult to describe such a character; almost impossible to tell by what means she tried to effect her object. It sounds paradoxical to say she coquetted with a man for whom she did not care one straw; whom she could not have married, even if she had; whom she would not have wedded had she been single: it is hard to convey in words an exact idea of the results, a mixture of inconsistency, vanity, heartlessness, frivolity, and cleverness may produce. Perhaps, reader, you have happened to meet with such an one in your pilgrimage through life,—a woman, and yet not a woman; an angel in outward form, a syren, an enchantress, who spent her life in trying to make other people unhappy, who cared for little save admiration, who strove to win hearts for the purpose of breaking them, and who was, to sum up all into one brief sentence, as Malcolm Frazer once stated, “the most confounded flirt that ever existed.”

If you have not, no description could make you deem Cecilia’s character otherwise than a fictitious one; if you have, then you can understand how it came to pass that Alfred Westwood, seeing down into her—reading the trumpery matter enclosed in such magnificent binding,—tracing every thought, feeling, wish—preserved his heart perfectly uninjured, spite of the blaze of attractions to which it was perpetually exposed; and found himself growing each day a little fonder of the girl who would not care for him, and who, let her have what other faults she might—let her be, in other respects, black as Erebus—was innocent as a lamb of having ever, even once in her life, thought of what Allan Frazer stigmatized, and justly, as a horrid word—flirting. But all would not do: Mina was quiet, but she was also determined; and when matters became unendurable at Craigmaver, she left it by means and in manner following.