 | CHAPTER LVII.
CHRISTMAS-TIDE. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward |  |
57. CHAPTER LVII.
CHRISTMAS-TIDE.
IT was the second Christmas after Magdalen's bridal,
and fires were kindled in all the rooms at Millbank,
and pantries and closets groaned with their loads and
loads of eatables; and Hester Floyd bustled about, important
as ever, ordering everybody except the nurse who had come
girl, whose name was Laura Magdalen, and who, with her
warm milk and cold milk, and numerous paraphernalia of baby-hood,
kept the kitchen a good deal stirred up, and made Hester
chafe a little inwardly. But, then, she said “she s'posed she
must get used to these things,” and her face cleared up, and
her manner was very soft and gentle every time she thought of
the crib in Magdalen's room, where, under the identical quilt
the poor heathen would never receive, slumbered another baby
girl, Magdalen's and Roger's, which had come to Millbank
about six weeks before, and over whose birth great rejoicings
were made. Jessie Morton was its name, and Guy and Alice
had stood for it the Sunday before, and with Aunt Pen were
to remain at Millbank through the holidays, and help Magdalen
to entertain the few friends invited to pass the week under
Roger's hospitable roof.
The world had gone well with Roger since he came back to
Millbank. Everything had prospered with which he had anything
to do. The shoe-shop had been rebuilt, and the mill was
never more prosperous, and Roger bade fair soon to be as rich a
man as he had supposed himself to be before the will was found.
On his domestic horizon no cloud, however small, had ever
rested. Magdalen was his all-in-all, his choicest treasure, for
which he daily thanked Heaven more fervently than for all his
other blessings combined. And, amid his prosperity, Roger
did not forget to render back to Heaven a generous portion of
his gifts, and many and many a sad heart was made glad, and
many a poor church and clergyman were helped, quietly, unostentatiously,
and oftentimes so secretly that they knew not
whence came the aid, but for which they might have given up
in utter despair and hopelessness.
Magdalen approved and assisted in all her husband's charities,
and her heart went out after the sad, sorrowful ones, with
a yearning desire to make them as happy as herself. Especially
was this the case that Christmas time, when to all her other
extra gifts to the poor and needy who, through all the long
winter, would be more comfortable because of her generous
remembrance.
When the list of guests to be invited for the holidays was
being made out, she sat for a moment by Roger's side, with
her eyes fixed musingly on the bright fire in the grate. Mr.
and Mrs. Franklin Irving's names were on the list, with that of
Grace and the young clergyman to whom she was engaged,
and Roger waited for Magdalen to say if there was any one
else whom she would have.
“Yes, Roger, there is. Perhaps you won't approve, but I
should like to ask Mrs. Walter Scott, if you don't object too
much. She has a dreary time at best, and this will be a change.
She may not come, it's true; but she will be pleased to know
we remember her.”
Roger had entertained the same thought, but refrained from
giving expression to it from a fear lest Magdalen would not
like it, and so that day a cordial invitation to pass the holidays
at Millbank was forwarded to the boarding-house in New York
which Mrs. Walter Scott was actually keeping as a means of
support. Her oil had failed, as well as the bank which held
her money. “There might be something for her some time,
perhaps, but there was nothing now,” was the report of the
lawyer employed to investigate the matter, and then she began
to realize how utterly destitute she was. Frank could not help
her, and as she was too proud to ask help of Roger, she finally
did what so many poor, discouraged women do, opened a
boarding-house in a part of the city where she would not be
likely to meet any of her former friends, and there, in dull,
dingy rooms, with forlorn, half-worn furniture and faded drapery,
all relics like herself of former splendors, she tried to earn
her living. The goods which she managed to smuggle away
from Millbank served her a good turn now, and pawnbrokers
and buyers of old silver and pictures soon made the acquaintance
of the tall lady with light hair and traces of great beauty,
Roger and Magdalen had been to see her once, and
Frank had been many times; but Bell never deigned to notice
her, though she was frequently in New York, and once drove
past the boarding-house in a stylish carriage with her velvets
and ermine around her. Mrs. Walter Scott did not see her,
and so that pang was spared her. She had finished her book,
but the publishers one and all showed a strange obtuseness
with regard to its worth, and it was put away in her trunk,
where others thing pertaining to the past were buried.
The invitation from Millbank too her by surprise and made
her cry a little, but she hastened to accept it, and was there
before her daughter-in-law, and an occupant of her former
room. She was old and broken, and faded, and poor, and
seemed very quiet, and very fond of Magdalen's baby, which
she kept a great deal in her room, calling herself its grandma,
and thinking, perhaps, of another little one whose loss no one
had regretted save Frank, the father. He came at last with
Bell, who was very polite and gracious to her mother-in-law,
whom she had not expected to meet.
“Of course I am sorry for her,” she said to Magdalen, who
was one day talking of her, and wishing something might be
done to better her condition. “But what can I do. She
refuses to receive money from me, and as for having her in my
house no power on earth could induce me to do that.”
Alas! for Bell. Man proposes, but God disposes, and the
thing which no power on earth could induce her to do was to
be forced upon her whether she would have it or not.
The Christmas dinner was a sumptuous one, and after it was
over the guests repaired to the parlors, where music and a little
dance formed a part of the evening's entertainment. Mrs.
Walter Scott was playing for the dance. Her fingers had not
yet forgotten their skill, and she had good-naturedly offered to
take the place of Grace Burleigh, who gave up the more willingly
because of the young clergyman looking over a book of
engravings and casting wistful glances toward her. Whether it
none could tell, but there was suddenly a cessation of the
music, a crash among the keys, and Mrs. Walter Scott turned
toward the astonished dancers a face which frightened them, it
was so white, so strange, and so distorted. Paralysis of one
entire side was the verdict of the physician who was summoned
immediately and did all he could for the stricken woman, from
one-half of whose body the sense of feeling was gone, and who
lay in her room as helpless as a child. Gradually her face
began to look more natural, her speech came back again, thick
and stammering, but tolerably intelligible, and her limp right
hand moved feebly, showing that she was in part recovering.
For three weeks they nursed her with the utmost care, and
Bell stayed by and shrank from the future which she saw before
her, and from which she wished so much to escape. In her
womanly pity and sympathy Magdalen would have kept the
paralytic woman at Millbank, but Roger was not willing that
her young life should be burdened in this way, and he said to
Frank and Bell:
“Your mother's place is with her children. If you are not
able to take care of her, I am willing to help; but I cannot
suffer Magdalen to take that load of care.”
So it was settled, and Bell went home to Boston and prepared
an upper room, which overlooked the Common, and then came
back to Millbank, where they made the invalid ready for the
journey. Her face was very white and there was a look of
dreary despair and dread in her eyes, but she uttered no word
of protest against the plan, and thanked Roger for his kindness,
and kissed the little Jessie and cried softly over her, and whispered
to Magdalen: “Come and see me often. It is the only
pleasant thing I can look forward too.”
And then Frank and Roger carried her out to the carriage
which took her to the cars, and that night she heard the winter
wind howl around the windows of the room to which she felt
that she was doomed for life, and which, taking that view of it
seemed to her like a prison.
“The Lord is sure to remember first or last,” old Hester said,
as she watched the carriage moving slowly down the avenue,
“and though I can't say I would have given her the shakin'
palsy if I'd of been the Lord, I know it's right and just, and a
warnin' to all liars and deceitful, snoopin' critters.”
Still Hester was sorry for the woman, and went to see her
almost as often as Magdalen herself, and once stayed three
whole weeks, and took care of her when Mrs. Franklin was
away. Bell did not trouble herself very much about her mother-in-law,
or spend much time with her. She gave orders that she
should be well cared for and have everything she wished for,
and she saw that her orders were obeyed. She also went once
a day to see her and ask if she was comfortable; but after that
she felt that nothing further was incumbent upon her. And so
for all Mrs. Walter Scott knew of the outer world and the life
she had once enjoyed so much, she was indebted to Grace,
who before her marriage passed many hours with the invalid,
telling her of things which she thought would interest her, and
sometimes reading to her until she fell asleep. But after Grace
was gone Mrs. Walter Scott's days passed in dreary loneliness
and wretched discontent. She had no pleasure in recalling the
past, and nothing to look forward to in the future. The remainder
of her wretched life she knew must be passed where she
was not wanted, and where her son came but once a day to see
her and that in the evening just after dinner, when he usually
fell asleep while she was trying to talk to him.
Bell would not suffer Frank to go into the city evenings unless
she accompanied him, for she had no fancy for having him
brought to her in a state of intoxication, as was once the case.
And Frank, who was a good deal afraid of her, remained obediently
at home, and, preferring his mother's society to that of
his wife, stayed in the sick room a portion of every evening;
then, when wholly wearied there, went to his own apartment
and smoked in dreary solitude until midnight.
Such was Frank's life and such the life of his mother, until
there came to her a change in the form of a second shock,
her features so badly that she insisted that the blinds should be
kept closed and the curtains down, so that those who came
into her room could not see how disfigured she was. And so
in darkness and solitude her days pass drearily, with impatient
longings for the night, and when the night comes she moans
and weeps, and wishes it was morning. Poor woman! She is
a burden to herself and a terrible skeleton to her fashionable
daughter-in-law, who in the gayest scenes in which she mingles
never long forgets the paralytic at home, sinking so fast into
utter imbecility, and as she becomes more and more childish
and helpless, requiring more and more care and attention.
The curse of wrong-doing is resting on Bell as well as on her
husband and his mother, and though she is proud and haughty
and reserved as ever, she is far from being happy, and her
friends say to each other that she is growing old and losing her
brilliant beauty. Frank often tells her of it when he has been
drinking wine. He is not afraid of her then, and after he
found that it annoyed her he delighted to tease her about her
fading beauty, and to ask why she could not keep as young
and fresh and handsome as Magdalen. There was not a
wrinkle in her face, he said, and she looked younger and handsomer
than when he first came home from Europe and saw her
at the Exhibition.
And well might Magdalen retain her girlish beauty, for if
ever the fountain of youth existed anywhere it was in her home
at Millbank. Exceedingly popular with the villagers, idolized
by her husband, perfectly happy in her baby, surrounded by
every luxury which wealth can furnish and every care lifted
from her by old Hester's thoughtfulness, there has as yet been
no shadow, however small, upon her married life, and her face
is as fair and beautiful, and her voice as full of glee as when she
sat with Roger by the river side and felt the first awakenings of
the love which has since grown to be her life.
And now we say farewell to Millbank, knowing that when
sorrow comes to its inmates, as it must some day come, it will
for there is perfect love and faith between the husband and the
wife, with no sad, dreary retrospects of wrong to make the
present unendurable.
| CHAPTER LVII.
CHRISTMAS-TIDE. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward | |