University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
MAGDALEN AND ROGER.

MAGDALEN had waited for Frank until she grew so
nervous and restless that she crept back to her couch,
and, wrapping her shawl about her, lay down among
the pillows, still listening for Frank's footsteps and wondering
that he did not come. She had made up her mind at last.
After days and nights of throbbing headache and fierce heart-pangs
and bitter tears, she had come to a decision. She would
die so willingly for Roger, if that would save Millbank for him.
She would endure any pain or toil or privation for him, but she
could not sin for him. She could not swear to love and honor
one, when her whole being was bound up in another. She
could not marry Frank, but she hoped she might persuade him
to let Roger keep Millbank, while he took the mill and the
shoe-shop, and the bonds and mortgages. He would surely
listen to that proposition, and she had sent for him to hear her
decision, and then she meant next day to take the will from its
hiding place, and carry it to Roger, with the letter she guarded
so carefully. This was her decision, and she waited for Frank
until two hours were gone and the spring twilight began to
creep into the room, and still no one came near her. She
heard the dinner-bell, and knew it was not answered, and then,
as the minutes went by, she became conscious of some unusual
stir in the house among the servants, and grasping the
bell-rope at last, she rang for Celine, and asked where Mrs.
Irving was.

“In the library with Mr. Irving and Mr. Frank and Hester.
They are talking very loud, and don't pay any attention to the
dinner bell,” was Celine's reply, and Magdalen felt as if she was
going to faint with the terrible apprehension of evil which
swept over her.

“That will do. You may go,” she said to Celine; and then,

the moment the girl was gone, she rose from the couch, and
knotting the heavy cord around her dressing gown, and adjusting
her shawl, went stealthily out into the hall, and stealing
softly down the stairs, soon stood near the door of the library.

It was closed, but Hester's loud tones reached her as she
talked of the will, and with a shudder she turned away, whispering
to herself:

“Too late! He'll never believe me now.”

Then a thought of Aleck crossed her mind. She did not
think he was in the library; possibly he was in Hester's room;
at all events she would go there, and wait for Hester's return.
An outside door stood open as she passed through the rear hall
which led to Hester's room, and she felt the chill night air blow
on her, and shivered with the cold. But she did not think of
danger to herself from the exposure. She only thought of
Roger and what was transpiring in the library, and she entered
Hester's room hurriedly, and uttered a cry of joy when she saw
Aleck there. He was not smoking now. He was sitting
bowed over the hearth, evidently wrapped in thought, and he
gave a violent start when Magdalen seized his arm, and asked
him what had happened.

He heard her, though she spoke in a whisper, and turning his
eyes slowly toward her, replied:

“Somebody has found the will, and Roger is a beggar.”

“Oh, Aleck, I wish I was dead,” Magdalen exclaimed, and
then sank down upon the floor at the old man's feet, sobbing
in a piteous kind of way, and trying to explain how she had
found it first, and how she would give her life if she never had
done so.

In the midst of her story Hester came in, and Magdalen
sprang up and started toward her, but something in the expression
of the old woman's face stopped her suddenly, and grasping
the back of a chair, she stood speechless, while Hester gave
vent to a tirade of abuse, accusing her of ruining Roger, taunting
her with vile ingratitude, and bidding her take herself and

her lover back to where she came from, if that spot could be
found.

Perfectly wild with excitement Magdalen made no effort to
explain, but darted past Hester out into the hall, where the
first person she encountered was Frank, who chanced to be
passing that way. She did not try to avoid him; she was too
faint and dizzy for that, and when asked what was the matter,
and where she was going, she answered:

“To my room. Oh, help me, please, or I shall never reach
it.”

He wound his arm around her, and leaning heavily upon
him she went slowly down the hall, followed by Hester Floyd,
who was watching her movements. Not a word was spoken
of the will until her chamber was reached; then, as Frank
parted from her, he said:

“I think you know that Roger has the will; but I did not
give it to him. I would have kept it from him, if possible, and
it shall make no difference, if I can help it.”

He held her hand a moment; then suddenly stooped and
kissed her forehead before she could prevent the act, and
walked rapidly away, leaving her flushed and indignant and
half fainting, as she crept back to the couch. No one came
near her to light her lamp. No one remembered to bring her
food or drink. Everybody appeared to have forgotten and forsaken
her, but she preferred to be alone, and lay there in the
darkness until Celine came in to ask what she would have.

“Nothing, only light the lamp, please,” was her reply.

Then, after a moment, she asked:

“Are the family at dinner?”

“Yes; that is, Mrs. Irving and Mr. Frank. Mr. Irving is in
the library alone,” Celine said.

And then Magdalen sat up and asked the girl to gather up
her hair decently, and give it a brush or two, and bring her a
clean collar, and her other shawl.

Magdalen was going to the library to see Roger, who sat
just where Frank had left him, with his head bowed upon the

fatal paper which had done him so much harm. The blow had
fallen so suddenly, and in so aggravating a form, that it had
stunned him in part, and he could not realize the full extent of
his calamity. One fact, however, stood out distinctly before
his mind, “Magdalen was lost forever!” Frank had said openly
that she was to be his wife! She had come to a decision.
She would be the mistress of Millbank, without a doubt. But
he who had once hoped to make her that himself, would be far
away, — a poor, unknown man, — earning his bread by the
sweat of his brow. Roger did not care for that contingency.
He was willing to work; but he felt how much easier toil
would be if it was for Magdalen's sake that he grew tired and
worn. He was thinking of all this when Magdalen came to
his door, knocking so softly that he did not hear at first; then,
when the knock was repeated, he made no answer to it, for he
would rather be left alone. Ordinarily, Magdalen would have
turned back without venturing to enter; but she was desperate
now. She must see Roger that night, and she resolutely
turned the door-knob and went into his presence.

Roger lifted up his head as she came in, and then sprang to
his feet, startled by her white face and the change in her appearance
since he saw her last. Then she had stood before
him in the hall, winding the scarf around his neck, her face
glowing with health and happiness and girlish beauty, and her
eyes shining upon him like stars. They were very bright now,
unnaturally so he thought, and there was a glitter in them which
reminded him of the woman in the cars who had left her baby
with him.

“Magdalen,” he said, as he went forward to meet her. “I
did not think you had been so sick as your looks indicate.
Let me lead you to the sofa.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off and
sank into a chair close beside the one he had vacated.

“Don't touch me yet, Roger, oh Roger,” she began, and
Roger's heart gave a great leap, for never before had she called
him thus to his face. “Excuse me for coming here to-night.

I know it is not maidenly, perhaps, but I must see you, and
tell you it was all a horrible mistake. I did not know what I
was doing. Hester talked so much about that loose board in
the garret and something hidden under it, that once, a week ago
or more, it seems a year to me, I went up to shut a window;
my curiosity led me to look under the floor, and I found it,
Roger, and read it through, and Frank came and surprised me,
and then the secret was no longer mine, and I — oh, Mr. Irving,
I wanted to keep it from you, till — till — I cannot explain
the whole, and I don't know at all how it came into your hands.
Can you forgive me, Roger? I could have burned it at once
or had it burned, but I dared not. Would you have liked me
better if I had destroyed it?”

She stopped speaking now, and held her hands toward
Roger, who took them in his own and pressed them with a fervor
which brought the blood back to her cheeks and made her
very beautiful as she sat there before him.

“No, Magda,” he said, “I am glad you did not destroy it.
I would rather meet with poverty in its direct form than know
that you had done that thing; for it would have come to light
some time, and I should have felt that in more ways than one I
had lost my little girl.”

He was speaking to her now as he had done when she was a
child, and one of his hands was smoothing her soft hair; but he
was thinking of Frank, and there was nothing of the lover in
his caress, though it made Magdalen's blood throb and tingle
to her finger tips, for she knew he did not hate her as she had
feared he might.

“The will should never have been hidden,” he said.
“Hester did very wrong. Do you know the particulars?”

“I know nothing except that I found it and you have it,”
Magdalen replied, and briefly as possible Roger told her the
substance of Hester's story, smoothing over as much as possible
Mrs. Irving's guilt, because she was to be Magdalen's
mother-in-law.

Before he spoke of the letter left by his father, Magdalen

had taken it from her pocket and held it in her hand. He
knew it was the missing letter, but did not offer to take it until
his recital was ended, when Magdalen held it to him and said,
“This is the letter; it was in the box, and I kept it to give to
you myself in case you should ever know of the will. I have
not read it. You do not believe I would read it,” she added
in some alarm, as she saw a questioning look in his face.

Whatever he might have suspected, he knew better now, and
he made her lie down upon the sofa, and arranged the cushions
for her head, and then, standing with his back to her, opened
the letter, and read that message from the dead. And as he
read, he grew hard and bitter toward the man who could be so
easily swayed by a lying, deceitful woman. He knew Magdalen
was watching him, and probably wondering what was in
the letter, and knew, too, that she could not fully believe in
his mother's innocence without more proof than his mere assertion.
Of all the people living he would rather Magdalen
should think well of his mother, and after a moment's hesitancy
he turned to her, and said:

“I want you to see this, Magda. I want you to know why
I was disinherited, and then you must hear my poor mother's
letter, and judge yourself if she was guilty.”

He turned the key in the door, so as not to be interrupted,
and then came back to Magdalen, who had risen to a sitting
posture, and who took the letter from his hand while he adjusted
the shade so that the glare of the lamp would not shine
directly in her eyes as she read it.