 | CHAPTER XI.
ROGER'S LETTERS AND THE RESULT. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
ROGER'S LETTERS AND THE RESULT.
WHILE Mrs. Walter Scott was resting, Roger's letters
were brought in. There was one for Frank, which
he carried to his own room, and one for Magdalen,
who broke the seal at once and screamed with delight as Roger's
photograph met her view. He had had it taken for her in
Dresden, and hoped it would afford her as much pleasure to
receive it as hers had given him. He did not say that he
thought her position stiff, and her dress too old for her, though
he had thought it, and smiled at the prim, old-womanish figure,
sitting so erect in the high-backed chair. But he would not
willingly wound any one, much less the little girl who had
picked berries in the hot sun to pay for the picture. So he
thanked her for it, and inclosed his own, and gave his consent
to the Charlestown arrangement, and asked again that some
competent person should take charge of her wardrobe, which
he wanted in every respect “to be like that of other young
girls.” He underscored this line, and Hester, who read the
letter after Magdalen, felt her blood tingle a little, and knew
that her day for dressing Magdalen was over. As for Magdalen,
she was too much engrossed in Roger's picture to think
much of the contents of the letter.
“Oh, isn't he splendid looking; but I should be awfully
afraid of him now,” she said, as she went in quest of Frank.
She found him in his room, with a disturbed, disappointed
look upon his face. Roger had not made him a rich man on
his twenty-first birthday. He had only ordered that six thousand
dollars should be paid to him instead of five, as mentioned
in the will, and had said that inasmuch as Frank had another
year in college the four hundred should be continued for
the year and increased by an additional hundred, as seniors
usually wanted a little spending money. Frank's good sense
Roger was and always had been very generous with him; but
he knew, too, that he was owing here and there nearly a thousand
dollars, while, worse than all, there was for sale in Millbank
the most beautiful fast horse, which he greatly coveted
and had meant to buy, provided Roger came down handsomely.
Knowing that horses had been his father's ruin and
his grandfather's aversion, Frank had abstained tolerably well
from indulging his taste, which was decidedly toward the race-course.
But he had always intended to own a horse as soon as
he was able. According to the will, he could not use for that
purpose any of the five thousand dollars left to him. That was
to set him up in business, though what the business would be
was more than he could tell. He hated study too much to be
a lawyer or doctor, and had in his mind a situation in some
banking house where capital was not required, and with his
salary and the interest of what Roger was going to give him he
should do very well. That interest had dwindled down to a
very small sum, and in his disappointment Frank was accusing
Roger of stinginess, when Magdalen came in. She saw something
was the matter, and asked what it was, at the same time
showing him Roger's picture, at which he looked attentively.
“Foreign travel is improving him,” he said. “He looks as if
he hadn't a care in the world; and why should he have, with an
income of twenty or twenty-five thousand a year? What does
he know of poverty, or debts, or self-denials?”
Frank spoke bitterly, and Magdalen felt that he was blaming
Roger, whose blue eyes looked so kindly at him from the photograph.
“What is it, Frank?” she asked again; and then Frank told
her of his perplexities, and how much he owed, and how he had
expected more than a thousand dollars from Roger, and, as he
talked, he made himself believe that he was badly used, and
Magdalen thought so, too, though she could not quite see how
Roger was obliged to give him money, if he did not choose to
do so.
Still she was very sorry for him, and wished that she owned
Millbank, so she could share it with the disconsolate Frank.
“I mean to write to Mr. Roger about it, and ask him to give
you more,” she said, a suggestion against which Frank uttered
only a feeble protest.
As he felt then, he was willing to receive aid by almost any
means, and he did not absolutely forbid Magdalen to write as
she proposed; neither, when she spoke of the will, and her intention
to continue her search for it, did he offer any remonstrance.
He rather encouraged that idea, and his face began
to clear, and, before dinner was announced, Magdalen heard
him practising on his guitar, which had been sent from New
York by express, and which Hester likened to a “corn-stock
fiddle.”
Mrs. Walter Scott came down to dinner, very neatly dressed
in a pretty muslin of a white-ground pattern, with a little lavender
leaf upon it, her lace collar fastened with a coral pin, and
coral ornaments in her ears. Her hair was curling better than
usual, and was arranged very becomingly, while her long train
swept back behind her and gave her the air of a queen, Magdalen
thought, as she stood watching her. She was very gracious
to Magdalen all through the dinner, and doubly, trebly so
after a private conference with Frank, who told her of his disappointment,
and what Magdalen had said about writing to
Roger, as well as hunting for the will. Far more shrewd and
cunning than her son, who, with all his faults, was too honorable
to stoop to stratagem and duplicity, Mrs. Walter Scott
saw at once how she could make a tool of Magdalen, and by
being very kind and gracious to her, play into her own hands
in more ways than one. Accompanying Roger's letter was a
check for five hundred dollars, which Hester was to use for
Magdalen's wardrobe, and for the payment of her bills at
school as long as it lasted. When more was needed, more
would be sent, Roger said; and he asked that everything needful
should be furnished to make Magdalen on an equality with
other young girls of her age. Here was a chance for Mrs. Walter
needed. She could be economical, too, if she tried, she said
with her sweet, winning way; and if Mrs. Floyd pleased, she
would, while at Millbank, relieve her entirely of all care of
Magdalen's dress, and see to it herself.
“Better keep family matters in the family, and not go to
Mrs. Johnson, who knows but little more of such things than
you do,” she said to Hester, who, for once in her life, was
hoodwinked, and consented to let Mrs. Walter Scott take Magdalen
and the check into her own hands.
There were two or three trips to New York, and two or three
milliners and dressmakers' bills paid and receipted and said
nothing about. There were also bundles and bundles of dry
goods forwarded to Millbank, from Stewart's, and Arnold's, and
Hearne's, and one would have supposed that Magdalen was a
young lady just making her débût into fashionable society, instead
of a little girl of twelve going away to school. The receipted
bills of said bundles were all scrupulously sent across
the water to Roger, to whom Mrs. Walter Scott wrote a very
friendly letter, begging pardon for the liberty she had taken of
going to his house uninvited, but expressing herself as so
lonely and tired of the hot city, and so anxious to visit the
haunt sacred to her for the sake of her dear husband, Roger's
only brother. Then she spoke of Magdalen in the highest
terms of praise, and said she had taken it upon herself to see
that she was properly fitted out, and as Roger, being a bachelor,
was not expected to know how much was actually required
nowadays for a young miss's wardrobe, she sent him the bills
that he might know what she was getting, and stop her if she
was too extravagant.
This was her first letter, to which Roger returned a very
gracious answer, thanking her for her interest in Magdalen, expressing
himself as glad that she was at Millbank, asking her
to prolong her visit as long as she found it agreeable, and saying
he was not very likely to quarrel about the bills, as he had
very little idea of the cost of feminine apparel.
Roger was not naturally suspicious, and it never occurred to
him in glancing over the bills to wonder what a child of twelve
could do with fifteen yards of blue silk or three yards of velvet.
For aught he knew, blue silk and black silk and velvet were as
appropriate for Magdalen as the merinos and Scotch plaids,
and delaines and French calicoes, and ginghams, and little
striped crimson and black silk which the lady purchased
for Magdalen at reduced rates, and had made up for her according
to her own good taste.
In Mrs. Walter Scott's second letter she spoke of two or
three other bills which she had forgotten to enclose in her last,
and which were now mislaid so that she could not readily find
them. The amount was a little over one hundred dollars, and
she mentioned it so that he might know just what disposition
was made of his check while the money was in her hands.
Then it did occur to Roger that Magdalen must be having a
wonderful outfit, and for a moment a distrust of Mrs. Walter
Scott flashed across his mind. But he quickly put it by as
unworthy of him, and by way of making amends for the distrust,
sent to the lady herself his check for one hundred dollars,
which she was to accept for her kindness to Magdalen.
Mrs. Walter Scott was in the seventh heaven of happiness, and
petted Magdalen more than ever, and confirmed old Hester in
her belief that “she had joined the church or met with a great
change.”
The will was never mentioned in Hester's presence, but to
Magdalen Mrs. Walter Scott talked about it, not as anything
in which she was especially interested, but as something which
it was well enough to find if it really existed, and gave, as she
believed it did, more money to Frank than the other one
allowed him. Magdalen was completely dazzled and charmed
by the great lady whom she thought so beautiful and grand, and
whose long curls she stroked and admired, wondering a little
why Mrs. Irving was so much afraid of her doing anything to
straighten them, when her own hair, if once wet and curled and
dried, could not well be combed out of place. Magdalen believed
upon Mrs. Johnson and Nellie, who had once stood for her
ideas of queens and princesses. Now they were mere ciphers
when compared with Mrs. Walter Scott, who took her to drive,
and kept her in her own room, and kissed her affectionately
when she promised of her own accord “to look for that will
until it was found.”
“My little pet, you make me so happy,” she had said; and
Magdalen, flushed with pride and flattery, thought how delightful
it would be to give the recovered document some day into
the beautiful woman's hands and receive her honeyed words
of thanks.
Those were very pleasant weeks for Magdalen which Frank
and his mother spent at Millbank; the pleasantest she had ever
known, and she enjoyed them thoroughly. The parlors were
used every day, and Magdalen walked with quite an air
through the handsome rooms, arrayed in some one of her new
dresses which improved her so much, and made her, as Frank
said, most as handsome as Alice Grey. At her particular request
she had a white muslin made and tucked just like Alice's
in the picture, and then went with Frank to Springfield, and
sat as Alice sat, with her head leaning on her hands, flowers
in her lap, and her wavy hair arranged like Alice's. It was a
striking picture, prettier, if possible, than Alice's, except that in
Magdalen's face there was an anxious expression, a look of
newness, as if she had come suddenly into the dress and the
position; whereas Alice was easy and natural, as if tucked muslins
and flowers were everyday matters with her. Magdalen was
not ashamed of her photograph this time, and she sent a copy
to Roger, with the letter which she wrote him, and in which she
made Frank the theme of her discourse. There was nothing
roundabout in Magdalen's character. She came directly at
what she wanted to say, and Roger was told in plain terms
that Magdalen wished he would give Frank a little more money,
that he had debts to pay, and had said that if he could get
them off his mind he would never incur another, but would
through college. If Roger would do this, she, Magdalen,
would study so hard at school and be so economical, that perhaps
she could manage to save all he chose to send to Frank.
Mrs. Irving had bought her more clothes than she needed,
and she could make them last for two or three years, — she
knew she could.
This was Magdalen's letter; and a week after Frank's return
to college he was surprised by a request from Roger to send
him a list of all his unpaid bills, as he wished to liquidate them.
There were some bills which Frank did not care to have come
under Roger's grave inspection; but as these chanced to
be the largest of them all, he could not afford to lose the
opportunity of having them taken off his hands; and so
the list went to Roger, with a self-accusing letter full of
promises of amendment. And kind, all-enduring Roger tried
to believe his nephew sincere, and paid his debts, and made
him a free man again, and wrote him a kind, fatherly letter,
full of good advice, which Frank read with his feet on the
mantel, an expensive cigar in his mouth, and a mint julep
on the table beside him.
Meantime Magdalen had said good-by to Millbank, and was
an inmate of Charlestown Seminary, where her bright face and
frank, impulsive manner were winning her many friends among
the young girls of her own age, and the quickness which she
evinced for learning, and the implicit obedience she always
rendered to the most trivial rule, were winning her golden
laurels from her teachers, who soon came to trust Magdalen
Lennox as they had seldom trusted any pupil before her.
Mrs. Walter Scott lingered at Millbank until the foliage, so
fresh and green when she came, changed into scarlet and gold,
and finally fell to the ground. Every day she stayed was clear
gain to her, and so she waited until her friends had all returned
to the city, and then took her departure and went back to New
York, tolerably well satisfied with her visit at Millbank. She
had made a good thing of it on the whole. She had managed
for she did not like to be in debt. She had secured herself a
blue silk and a black silk, and a handsome velvet cloak, to say
nothing of the hundred dollars, which Roger had sent for services
rendered to Magdalen, and what was better for her peace
of mind, she had made herself believe that there was nothing
very wrong in the transaction. She would have shrunk from
theft, had she called it by that name, almost as much as from
midnight murder, but what she had done was not theft, nor yet
was it dishonesty. It was simply taking a small part of what
belonged to her, for she firmly believed in the will, and always
would believe in it, whether it was found or not. So she
sported her handsome velvet cloak on Broadway, and wore her
blue-silk dress, without a qualm of conscience or a thought
that they had come to her unlawfully.
| CHAPTER XI.
ROGER'S LETTERS AND THE RESULT. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward | |