A Private Letter Exposes a Dangerous Family Secret

Malcolm Frazer was quite correct when he said his uncle would ask Mr. Ivraine to make his house his home till he was able to journey back to the fens; for, under a rather unpromising exterior, John Merapie possessed a kind and truly English heart, and further, though he was a “city man,” who detested and railed at all sorts of “humbug,” he felt a little pleased to have for his guest an individual who was not merely the son of a baronet, but who would, if he only lived long enough, appear in due course as a baronet himself.

Then Ernest had no “humbug” about him, was not a bit of a dandy, seemed to understand the value of money, and did not wound the worthy merchant’s sensitiveness by the slightest touch of aristocratic hauteur; which word, when translated into our vulgar tongue, might frequently be found to mean 292underbred impertinence. No; John Merapie found he was a far more sensible agreeable kind of fellow to work with than many a rich business parvenu with whom he had occasionally dined, and altogether the Lincolnshire squire and the London quarter-millionaire ran so admirably together along that difficult and dangerous road called daily communication, that Mr. Alfred Westwood grew at length seriously uneasy, and finally felt quite as if an incubus was removed from his spirit when he heard Mr. Ivraine had at last fairly taken his departure, after receiving a cordial invitation from his late host to pay him a visit whenever he was “within twenty miles of Belerma Square.”

But notwithstanding his long absence and his good feeling towards his new acquaintance, Malcolm and Mina both noticed that the cloud which had rested on their uncle’s brow ere his departure for Holland, had returned thence with him, and a gloom seemed to hang over the entire household from the moment of his re-appearance, the mystery of which no member of the establishment, and no person, perhaps, in the circle of his acquaintances, save Mr. Alfred Westwood, was able to fathom.

That clever individual, however, having opened “by mistake” a letter for Mr. Merapie, which he 293knew was not on business, during his principal’s absence in Holland, had arrived, after its perusal, at the knowledge of a great secret; which knowledge put him in a position to triumph a little over Malcolm and Mina Frazer, and to feel that, to a certain extent, the whole family, from Mr. Merapie down to his refractory niece, was, after a fashion, in his “power.”

“I have often wished,” he said, after taking a copy of the epistle above referred to, “I have often wished to possess some ‘hold’ over them all, and that girl in particular; I have got one now, a capital lever, if only properly employed, and, please the fates, I’ll use it.”

And having arrived at this Christian determination, Mr. Westwood sallied forth and hunted over half the city shops to get an oblong seal with the announcement “I wait” cut thereon; and when, after great difficulty, he had succeeded in obtaining it, and a stick of pale blue wax, he returned to the office and closed up the missive again, which, by the way, was directed in a female hand, and marked “private.” And, as he chanced to be writing that very afternoon to Mr. Merapie, he forwarded the letter to him and sauntered thenceforth about his partner’s house in Belerma Square as if, to repeat 294Malcolm’s impatient expression, “it belonged to him.”

And though, during the course of the following month, he was too much occupied through the week with business, and too constantly engaged on Sundays watching Mina and Mr. Ivraine, to pursue his investigations as far as he desired, yet he never for one moment forgot what he had discovered, and what he wished further to discover; so, when in due course Mr. Merapie’s return and Ernest’s departure set him once again, as it were, at liberty, he hastened to make himself master of the whole subject by actual observation and personal investigation on the spot.

It was some five miles from London, under the spreading branches of an ancient walnut tree, standing leafless and bare, close to the entrance of one of those villas we see so perpetually advertised under the appellation of “genteel residences,” that knowledge, full and complete, reached the mind of Alfred Westwood; more full and complete truly than he had ever desired should dawn upon his startled comprehension: for, as he sauntered past the place in the chill cold light of a February afternoon, a phaeton, containing two persons, a lady and a boy, drove up to the gate; there was a momentary pause, whilst a 295person, who chanced to be coming out at the instant, opened it, and the glance which that pause enabled Mr. Westwood to catch of the lady’s face caused him to turn as pale as a corpse and tremble for a second like a woman.

He had barely time to pull his hat almost involuntarily over his eyes ere the vehicle and its occupants were gone. They had come, passed him, and departed like a dream of the morning; but Alfred Westwood knew it was no dream. “I wish to heavens it were,” he muttered, with clenched teeth and livid lips, as he strode after the female who had admitted the pair, and whom he recollected perfectly, as he recollected every thing and place and person on whom, with his extremely far-seeing, disagreeably searching eyes, he had once looked.

“Mrs. Colefort,” he said, and the words, though spoken in a low tone, made her to whom they were addressed start as if a pistol had gone off at her ear. “Do you not remember me?” he added, finding she only stared in his face by way of reply to his abrupt salutation.

“Yes, sir,” she stammered, “but——”

“But you do not wish to remember,” he interrupted, his wonted self-possession having by this time completely returned to him: “well so be it; 296only one question fairly answered, and I am satisfied; who is that?”

“Who is what?” demanded the old woman, a gleam of her ancient cunning sharpening her wrinkled features.

“Pshaw!” returned Mr. Westwood; “who is the lady you admitted this instant into that villa place?”

“My mistress,” was the brief reply.

“And her real name,” he persisted; “recollect I am willing to pay for accurate information.”

“What will you give to know?” asked the woman.

“Five pounds,” replied the man who once had been a bankrupt.

“Five pence,” she contemptuously retorted; “it’s worth fifty guineas.”

“Five pounds or nothing,” said Westwood determinedly.

“Make it ten, and I’ll tell you,” she returned.

“If you won’t speak for five, you may hold your tongue,” was the response; “so take your choice, for I ask you for the last time, who is she?”

A purse glittering with steel beads was in Mr. Westwood’s hand as he uttered the foregoing sentence; and when, at its conclusion, he held forth 297five sovereigns and added the single word “Now,” the woman felt herself impotent to withstand the bribe, small though she considered it, and therefore cautiously answered, after stealing a look behind her,

“Mrs. Merapie.”

“The devil!” ejaculated Mr. Westwood, and he ground out a few oaths between his teeth, whilst Mrs. Colefort, with a sinister laugh, echoed,

“Yes, she is pretty nearly one; so John Merapie found, to his sorrow, before she had borne his name long.”

“And what name did she bear before that?” demanded Mr. Westwood fiercely.

“Her own, I suppose,—Margaret Maxwell.”

If the light had been a little clearer and her own eyes undimmed by the mist of age, the woman might have noticed that a sort of throe seemed to convulse Mr. Westwood’s frame as her answer grated on his ear. He winced under the sound of that name as if it had touched some concealed wound: the truth which the quondam housekeeper framed into such unconsciously telling words, appeared to blast him, as if a wind from some barren desert had passed over and scorched his soul.

Long after he had left the woman, long after he 298had returned to London, days after the brief interview in which he had learnt all he wished to know and a great deal more besides; in the busy ’Change, in his quiet house, everywhere, Alfred Westwood found himself inwardly repeating, over and over again, one single sentence—

“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”

And this sentence never grew old or familiar to his ear; he harped on it eternally, and yet still its meaning always came with a sort of shock upon his understanding.

“Margaret Maxwell—Mrs. Merapie.”

If a spell had been contained in this simple combination of letters, it could scarcely have produced a greater effect on the ci-devant clerk, who became for a time quite taciturn and reserved, who ceased to domineer over Malcolm or torment Mina, and never once strove to dissuade Mr. Merapie from permitting both the young people to go to the Highlands and enjoy themselves.

“What under the sun has come over Westwood?” demanded Malcolm of his sister, the evening before they started on their self-imposed pilgrimage northwards.

“He is growing old, dear,” answered Mina, who could afford to laugh at her uncle’s partner now she 299was in a good temper and going to leave him behind her; but neither her brother nor Miss Caldera, who was present, thought her suggestion a rational one, and the former, for once, felt almost inclined to agree with the governess, when she told Mina a little tartly, that she was a very absurd girl, and that she surely might have had sense enough to see that something must be decidedly going wrong at the office, when both her uncle and his partner were so grave.

“Heaven send they may weather the storm,” added Malcolm devoutly; “but, if there be any judging from faces, business clouds must be of the blackest down at Wapping; however, Uncle John is a first-rate craft, and the wind cannot always blow a-head; so, when I return from Craigmaver, I shall hope to find him in a friendly port, and consequently able and inclined to do what I want him to do—buy me a commission.”

“You ought to be made to work for one,” remarked Miss Caldera.

“All in good time, dear lady,” answered Malcolm, laughing; “I make no doubt I shall have to be very industrious, a human sort of busy bee at some future period or other.”

“It will be greatly against your inclination, 300then,” retorted the governess: but, spite of the utterance of this truism, Malcolm and she parted remarkably good friends; and Mina, with a little tremor in her voice, promised, as she kissed the dear, quaint, steady friend, not to forget her, and to bring her back a cairngorm brooch from Scotland.

“Bring yourself, you wayward creature,” answered Miss Caldera, “and don’t leave your heart behind you.”

“Oh, no! I shall keep it safe for—Mr. Westwood,” were the girl’s last words ere, in a perfect ecstasy of delight, she bent her longing eager eyes northwards; for, steadily as the needle points to the pole, Mina’s thoughts and hopes and expectations turned ever unceasingly towards the land of her birth: to revisit it, to hear again well-remembered voices, to speak once more to those she loved, to wander as of yore over the hills, to see the grand old mountains piled against the clear blue heavens, had been the dream of her life, the wish of her soul for years: and now it was no longer to be a dream, an ungratified wish,—it would soon be a reality.

“I am so glad,” she said to Malcolm, “that I could cry.” And Mina did cry with joy to see the old familiar places once again, just as she had, in 301former times, wept in bitter anguish because compelled to leave them all behind her.

It was a lovely evening in the early spring when, after that long dreary separation and fatiguing journey, Mina caught at length a distant view of beautiful Craigmaver. The departing sun flung a warm rich tint over mountain and valley, over the peaceful lake, the silent firs, and the graceful birch trees that were just donning their first faint green attire. A feeling, such as she had not experienced for years, of youth and freshness and vigour and hope, swept across Mina’s heart as she leant forward and took in, at one earnest glance, every object in the landscape; but since the days when, a child by her father’s side, she had enjoyed that scene without a care or a thought of sorrow, a few corroding drops from the cup of experience had fallen on her spirit and saddened it; and thus, even in the midst of her joy, a memory of pain brought tears to her eyes and blinded them.

“Nothing is changed,” remarked Malcolm, as they drove along, “excepting that the trees have grown.”

Mina made no answer. Nothing except the trees, indeed, had changed, she knew, since last she had looked upon that place; but, since the old times, 302when they had been wont to visit the laird, her father had passed from earth for ever, and Glenfiord was not theirs now; and the girl called another country, home; and the inheritance that was to have been Malcolm’s had been purchased by strangers; and in the house and gardens and pleasure grounds, which her dead parent had owned and improved and prided himself on, she or hers had no right to set foot, unless by courtesy or sufferance. As a dark thread mingles ever in the web of human life, no matter of what gay, bright colours the rest of that web may be woven, so the sad thought of her lost home and of him who had dwelt there caused one or two tears of sorrow to fall with the many happy ones that came streaming from the girl’s dark eyes, as she and Malcolm drew nearer, still nearer, to the lonely lovely nook amid Highland mountains, where the head of the Frazer clan, the best, the truest, the worthiest descendant of a proud old race, dwelt peacefully.

“Look up, Mina,” cried her brother, “there they are on the lawn watching for us.” And, as he spoke, the old laird advanced to meet the vehicle.

There was a wild throbbing at her heart: as she sprang out, a mist fell upon every object within her range of vision; but still Mina, hanging on her 303uncle’s neck, heard his almost inarticulate words of tender welcome sounding in her ear, and, for one brief moment, she felt, as she had once said to Miss Caldera she should feel, “that she had not a thought of care, a wish on earth ungratified.”

“Are you just the same as ever?” demanded the laird, holding her a little from him and gazing intently into her agitated face, wet with weeping, yet still bright with smiles, “are you just the same as ever?”

“Not a bit better, uncle,” she answered.

“If you are no worse, I humbly thank God,” said the old man, looking upwards; “but are you sure,” he added, as though in doubt, “are you quite sure you have brought the old honest heart you once possessed back to us again?”

“It has never been away from you,” she earnestly replied; “my body was in England, but my spirit always remained here; and you, uncle, you are not in the least altered, but Allan has become a man: dear me! how he has changed.” And Mina stood for a moment contemplating him whom she had left a boy, and whom she returned to find as handsome and stately a specimen of the Highland gentleman as ever crossed the moors, or brought down, with unerring aim, the wild bird, which finds a perfumed 304home and a violent death amid the glowing purple heather.

“Yes, cousin mine,” responded Allan, “I am changed in many ways, and I have, alas! for me, become a man; but do not delude yourself into the belief that I am the only one time has touched, for I see you are “Little Mina” no longer, and the child of the mountains has become quite a young English lady; and Malcolm, I find, has managed to overtop me: we are all changed in appearance, two for the better, one for the worse, if you like to accept the vague compliment, cousin; I hope you will.”

“Is flattery an accomplishment you have learnt since we parted, Allan?” demanded Mina, suddenly, and the sharp question brought a glow on his cheek, even while he answered “No.”

“It is,” broke in the old laird; “he is more altered than you are, notwithstanding he has lived at Craigmaver, and you amongst the noisy London streets.”

“Send me to London in charge of my fair cousin then, sir, and see whether the din may not improve me,” was Allan’s response: but Mr. Frazer merely shook his head in reply, and led Mina off to the house, sighing as he did so.

Inside the mansion all remained just as his niece 305had left it: the deer’s heads and the old swords and gauntlets and pieces of ancient armour hung in the hall in the same places she remembered they occupied when she was a very little girl; the furniture in the drawing-room, the tapestry in the bedchambers, the polished oaken floors, the carved armchairs, the family portraits, the view from the windows, all were so like what they had been that, as she wandered through the apartments, Mina felt as if everything, save herself, must have stood still during the years that had seemed in London so countless, but which then she imagined she could clasp at once in her hand—so dream-like did that portion of the past appear, so real and tangible was the present. The shore of childhood came, for the instant, so close to that bordering upon womanhood, that, for the moment, Mina fancied they actually touched, and forgot the broad wide gulf stretching between the two, over which she had, in the dreary interim, crossed. As the mariner, after months and months of weary voyaging, recollects not, when he again beholds the cliffs of his native land, the pains and perils of the sea, so the period she had spent in England became a sort of blank, for the time being, in Mina’s memory; she rejoiced so fervently to come back once more to find all as she had left it.

306All! the girl soon discovered there was a something different in the old place; what, she could not tell: it was not that they, the inhabitants of that Highland home, were altered in affection towards her; it was not that her love for them had suffered any diminution; it was not that less concord reigned in the domestic circle; that disunion prevailed; that arguments arose. Mina could not find out what the “something” might be; and, as it seemed to be independent of her and hers, to be merely a shadow from some distant cloud, which threw a sort of darkness into that once perfectly sunshiny house, she gave up, after the first day or two, speculating concerning it; thus the weeks sped joyously on, and a flush of greater health than had for years past been seen there, mantled on her formerly pallid cheek; while Malcolm and she built air castles innumerable; and time passed, oh! with what swift noiseless feet; life seeming a sort of fairy dream to Mina during those quiet hours when she walked and sat with her uncle, and strolled about the gardens, talking to Saunders and looking at his flowers; when she and her brother and cousin rode quietly over the moors; and when Allan, in the solemn twilight, touched the keys of an old pianoforte, and sung songs so plaintive and beautiful that the girl used to bow her 307head on her hands and weep, she knew not why, to hear them.

For Allan Frazer had learned many an accomplishment besides flattery since the days when they last parted: he was skilled, not merely in field sports, but also in those other acquirements that make a man be deemed a welcome guest in the houses of the literary, the fashionable, the select. He could sketch with a firm, rapid, masterly hand the scenery of his native land; he could sing, in tones that stole somehow into the very innermost recesses of the heart, Scotch and Italian and Spanish airs; he was learned in many sciences, wrote works that publishers accepted, and poems ladies loved him for inditing; he had read and studied and thought; and when he went to Edinburgh, clever men sought him; and the most beautiful women of that metropolis would rather have danced with Allan Frazer than with many a lord or baronet, for he was the “fashion” there—Mina’s handsome, elegant, interesting cousin.

“How much you know, Allan,” she remarked to him one day, shortly after her arrival.

“I have paid a price for it,” he answered, with a strange smile.

Mina paused and looked doubtingly at him for a moment; then she said,

308“If I were not afraid of my words sounding tame, after the compliments uncle tells me you are accustomed to, I would say I never saw any one so improved in my life.”

“I have gained a good deal I could have done without, Mina,” he replied a little gravely, “and lost what I can ill spare.”

“Tell me what it is, Allan,” she pleaded, “perhaps it may keep me from envying you too much; tell me what it is.”

“Peace of mind,” he answered, with a sigh; and Mina, after gazing into his clouded face, feared that it really was so, though why it should be she found herself perfectly incompetent to tell.