University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
ALICE GREY.

WHILE the events we have narrated were transpiring at
Millbank, the New York train bound for Albany had
stopped one summer afternoon at a little station on
the river, and then sped on its way, leaving a track of smoke
and dust behind it. From the platform of the depot a young
girl watched the cars till they passed out of sight, and then,
with something like a sigh, entered the carriage waiting for her.
Nobody had come to meet her but the driver, who touched his
hat respectfully, and then busied himself with the baggage. The
girl did not ask him any questions. She only looked up into
his face with a wistful, questioning gaze, which he seemed to
understand; for he shook his head sadly, and said, “Bad again,
and gone.”

Then an expression of deep sorrow flitted over the girl's
face, and her eyes filled with tears as she stepped into the carriage.
The road led several miles back from the river
and up one winding hill after another, so that the twilight
shadows were fading, and the night was shutting in the
beautiful mountain scenery, ere the carriage passed through
a broad, handsome park to the side entrance of a massive
brick building, where it stopped, and the young girl sprang
out, and ran hastily up the steps into the hall. There was
no one there to meet her. Nothing but silence and loneliness,
and the moonlight, which fell across the floor, and made the
young girl shiver as she went on to the end of the hall, where
a door opened suddenly, and a slight, straight woman appeared
with iron-grey puffs around her forehead, diamonds in her ears,
diamonds on her soft white hands, and diamonds fastening the
lace ruffle, which finished the neck of her black-satin dress.
She was a proud-looking woman, with a stern, haughty face,
which relaxed into something like a smile when she saw the
young girl, who sprang forward with a cry, which might perhaps
have been construed into a cry of joy, if the words which
followed had been different.

“O, auntie,” she said, taking the hand offered her, and putting
up her lips for the kiss so gravely given — “O, auntie, why
did father send for me to come home from the only place where
I was ever happy?”

“I don't know. Your father's ways are ways of mystery to
me,” the lady said; and then, as if touched with something like
pity for the desolate creature who had been brought from “the
only place where she was ever happy,” to this home where she
could not be very happy, the lady drew her to a couch, and
untied the blue ribbons of the hat, and unbuttoned the gray
sack, doing it all with a kind of caressing tenderness which
showed how dear the young girl was to her.

“But did he give you no reason, auntie? What did he say
when he told you I was coming?” the girl asked vehemently,
and the lady replied:

“He was away from Beechwood several days, travelling in
New England, and when he came back he told me he had left orders
for you to come home at once. I thought, from what he
said, that he saw you in New Haven.”

“I never saw or heard of him till Mr. Baldwin came, and
said I was to leave school for home, and he was to be my escort.
It's very strange that he should want me home now.
Robert told me she was gone again. Did she get very bad?”

The voice which asked this question was sad and low, like the
voices of those who talk of their dead; and the voice which
answered was low, too, in its tones.

“Yes, she took to rocking and singing night as well as day,
and that, you know, makes your father nervous sooner than
anything else.”

“Did she want to go?”

“No; she begged to stay at first, but went quietly enough at
the last.”

“Did she ever mention me, auntie? Do you think she missed
me and wanted me?”

“She spoke of you once. She said, `If Allie was here, she
wouldn't let me go.”'

“O, poor, poor darling! O, auntie, it's terrible, isn't it?”

Alice was sobbing now, and amid her sobs she asked:

“Was father gentle with her, and kind?”

“Yes, gentler, more patient than I have known him for years.
It almost seemed as if something must have happened to him
while he was gone, for he was very quiet and thoughtful when
he came home, and did not order nearly as many brandy slings,
though he smoked all the time.”

“Not in her room!” and the girl looked quickly up.

“No, not in her room, — he spared her that; and when she
first began to rock and sing, he tried his best to quiet her, but
he couldn't. She was worse than usual.”

“Oh, how dreadful our life is?” Alice said again, while a
shiver as if she were cold ran over her. “I used to envy the
girls at school who were looking forward with such delight to

their vacations, when I had nothing but this for my portion. It
is better than I deserve, I know, and it is wrong for me to murmur;
but, auntie, nobody can ever envy me my home!”

Her white fingers were pressed to her eyes, and the tears
were streaming through them, as she sat there weeping so bitterly,
the fair young girl whom Magdalen Lennox had envied for
her beauty, her muslin dress, her mother, her home! Alas!
Magdalen, playing, and working, and eating, and living in the
great kitchen at Millbank, had known more of genuine home
happiness in a month than poor Alice Grey had known in her
whole life. And yet Alice's home presented to the eye a most
beautiful and desirable aspect. There were soft velvet carpets
on all the floors, mirros and curtains of costly lace in all the
rooms, with pictures, and books, and shells, and rare ornaments
from foreign lands; handsome grounds, with winding walks and
terraced banks and patches of flowers, and fountains, and trees,
and rustic seats, and vine-wreathed arbors, and shady nooks,
suggestive of quiet, delicious repose; horses and carriages, and
plenty of servants at command. This was Alice's home, and
it stood upon the mountain-side, overlooking the valley of the
Hudson, which could be seen at intervals winding its way to
the sea.

An old Scotch servant, who had been in the family for years,
came into the library where Alice was sitting, and after warmly
welcoming her bonny mistress, told her tea was waiting in the
little supper room, where the table was laid with the prettiest
of tea-cloths, and the solid silver contrasted so brightly with the
pure white china. There were luscious strawberries, fresh from
the vines, and sweet, thick cream from Hannah's milk-house,
and the nice hot tea-cakes which Alice loved, and her glass of
water from her favorite spring under the rock, and Lucy stood
and waited on her with as much deference as if she had been a
queen.

Alice was very tired, and soon after tea was over she asked
permission to retire, and Nannie, her own waiting-maid, went
with her up the broad staircase and through the upper hall to

her room, which was over the library, and had, like that, a bay-window
looking off into the distant valley.

Nannie was all attention, but Alice did not want her that
night. She would rather be alone; and she dismissed the girl,
saying to her with a smile, “I had no good Nannie at school
to undress me and put up my things. We had to wait on ourselves;
so you see I have become quite a little woman, and
shall often dispense with your services.”

With her door shut on Nannie, Alice went straight to her
window, through which the moonlight was streaming, and kneeling
down with her head upon the sill, she prayed earnestly for
grace to bear the loneliness and desolation weighing so heavily
on her spirits.

Although a child in years, Alice Grey had long since learned
at whose feet to lay her burdens. Her religion was a part of
her whole being, and she made it very beautiful with her loving,
consistent life. Her school companions had dubbed her the
little “Puritan,” and sometimes laughed at her for what they
called her straight-laced notions; but there was not one of them
who did not love the gentle Alice Grey, or who would not have
trusted her implicitly, and stood by her against the entire
school.

Alice knew that she was apt to murmur too much at the
darkness overshadowing her home, and to forget the many
blessings which crowned her life, and she now asked forgiveness
for it, and prayed for a spirit of thankfulness for all the
good Heaven had bestowed upon her. And then she asked
that, if possible, the shadow might be lifted from the life of one
who was at once a terror and an object of her deepest solicitude
and love.

Prayer with Alice was no mere form to be gone through; it
was a real thing, — a communing with a living Presence, — and
she grew quiet and calm under its influence, and sat for a time
drinking in the beauty of the night, and looking far off across the
valley to the hills beyond, — the hills nearer to New Haven,
— where she had been so happy. Then, as she felt strong

enough to bear it, she took her lamp, and went noiselessly
down the wide hall and through a green-baize door into narrow
passage which led away from the front part of the building.
Before one of the doors she paused, and felt again the same
heart-beat she had so many times experienced when she drew
near that door and heard the peculiar sound which always made
her for a moment faint and sick. But that sound was hushed
now, and the room into which Alice finally entered was silent
as the grave; and the moon, which came through the windows
in such broad sheets of silvery light, showed that it was empty
of all human life save that of the young girl who stood looking
round, her lip quivering and her eyes filling with tears as one
familiar object after another met her view.

There was the cradle in the corner, just where it had stood
for years, and the carpet in that spot told of the constant motion
which had worn the threads away; and there, too, was the
chair by the window, where Alice had so often seen a wasted
figure sit, and the bed with its snowy coverings, to which sleep
was almost a stranger. Alice knelt by this bed, and with her
hand upon the crib which seemed to bring the absent one so
near to her, she prayed again, and her tears fell like rain upon the
pillows which she kissed for the sake of the feverish, restless
head which had so often lain there.

“Poor darling,” she said, “do you know that Alice is here
to-night in your own room? Do you know that she is praying
for you, and loving you, and pitying you so much?”

Then as the words “if Allie was here I shouldn't have to go
away,” recurred to her mind, she sobbed, “No, darling, if Allie
had been here you should not have gone, and now that she is
here, she'll bring you back again ere long, and bear with all your
fancies more patiently than she ever did before.”

There was another kiss upon the pillow as if it had been a
living face, and Alice's fair hands petted and caressed and
smoothed the ruffled linen, and then she turned away and
passed again into the passage and through the green-baize door,

back into the broader hall, where the air seemed purer, and she
breathed free again.

The morning succeeding Alice's return to Beechwood was
cool and beautiful, and the sun shone brightly through the
white mist which lay on the river and curled up the mountain-side.
Alice was awake early, and when Nan came to call her
she found her dressed and sitting by the open window, looking
out upon the grounds and the park beyond.

“You see I have stolen a march upon you, Nannie,” Alice
said; “but you may unlock that largest trunk, and help me put
up my things.”

The trunk was opened, and with Nannie's assistance Alice
hung away all her pretty dresses, which were useless in this retired
neighborhood, where they saw so few people. The tucked
muslin, which Magdalen had admired in the picture, Nan folded
carefully, smoothing out the rich Valenciennes lace and laying
it away in a drawer, to grow yellow and limp, perhaps, ere it was
worn again. Alice's chief occupation at Beechwood was to
wander through the grounds or climb over the mountains and
hills, with Nan or the house dog Rover as escorts; and so she
seldom wore the dresses which had been the envy of her schoolmates.
She cared little for dress, and when at last she went
down to the breakfast room to meet her stately aunt, she wore
a simple blue gingham, and a white-linen apron, with dainty little
pockets all ruffled and fluted and looking as fresh and pure as
she looked herself, with her wavy hair, and eyes of violet blue.

Her aunt, in her iron-gray puffs, and morning-gown of silvery
gray satin, was very precise and ceremonious, and kissed her
graciously, and then presided at the table with as much formality
as if she had been giving a state dinner. There were strawberries
again, and flaky rolls, and fragrant chocolate, and a nice
broiled trout from a brook among the hills, where Tom had
caught it for his young lady, who, with a schoolgirl's keen appetite,
ate far too fast to please her aunt, who, nevertheless, would
not reprove her that first morning home. Breakfast being

over, Alice, who was expecting her father that day, went
to his room to see that it was in order. It adjoined the apartment
where she had knelt in tears the preceding night, and
there was a door between the two; but, while the other had
been somewhat bare of ornament and handsome furniture,
it would seem as if the master of the house had racked
his brain to find rare and costly things with which to deck his
own private room. There were marks of wealth and luxury
visible everywhere, from the heavy tassels which looped the
lace curtains of the alcove where the massive rosewood bedstead
stood, to the expensive pictures on the wall, — French
pictures many of them, — showing a taste which some would
call highly cultivated, and others questionable. Alice detested
them, and before one, which she considered the worst, she had
once hung her shawl in token of her disapprobation. She was
accustomed to them now, and she merely gave them a glance,
and then moved on to a pencil sketch, which she had never
seen before. It was evidently a graveyard scene, for there
were evergreens and shrubs, and a tall monument, and near
them a little barefoot girl, with a basket of flowers, which she
was laying on the grave. Alice knew it was her father's drawing,
and she studied it intently, wondering where he got his
idea, and who was the little girl, and whose the grave she was
decorating with flowers. Then she turned from the picture to
her father's writing-desk, and opened drawer after drawer until
she came to one containing nothing but a faded bouquet of
flowers, such as the girl in the picture might have been putting
on the grave, and a little lock of yellow hair. Pinned about
the hair was a paper, which bore the same date as did that letter
which Roger Irving guarded with so much care.

Alice had heard of Roger Irving from Frank, who called him
“uncle” when speaking of him to her. She had him in her
mind as quite an elderly man, with iron-gray hair, perhaps, such
as her auntie wore, and she had thought she would like to see
Frank's paragon of excellence; but she had no idea how near

he was brought to her by that faded bouquet and that lock of
golden hair, which so excited her curiosity.

Her father had always been a mystery to her. That there
was something in his past life which he wished to conceal, she
felt sure, just as she was certain that he was to blame for that
shattered wreck which sometimes made Beechwood a terror and
a dread, but to which Alice clung with so filial devotion. There
was very little in common between Alice and her father. A
thorough man of the world, with no regard for anything holy
and good, except as it helped to raise him in the estimation of
his fellows, Mr. Grey could no more understand his gentle
daughter, whose life was so pure and consistent, and so constant
a rebuke to him, than she could sympathize with him in
his ways of thinking and acting. There was a time when in
his heart he had said there was no God, — a time when, without
the slightest hesitancy, he would have trampled upon all God's
divine institutions and set his laws at naught; and the teachings
of one as fascinating and agreeable as Arthur Grey had been
productive of more harm than this life would ever show, for
they had reached on even to the other world, where some of his
deluded followers had gone before him. But as Alice grew into
girlhood, with her sweet face and the example of her holy Christian
life, there was a change, and people said that Arthur Grey
was a better man. Outwardly he was, perhaps. He said no
longer there was no God. He knew there was when he looked
at his patient, self-denying daughter, and he knew that Grace
alone had made her what she was. For Alice's sake he admitted
Alice's God, and, because he knew it helped him in various
ways, he paid all due deference to the forms of religion, and
none were more regular in their attendance at the little church
on the mountain side than he, or paid more liberally to every
religious and charitable object. He believed himself that he
had reformed, and he charged the reform to Alice and the memory
of a golden-haired woman whom he had loved better than
he had since loved a human being, save his daughter Alice. But
far greater than his love for his daughter was his love of self,

and because it suited him to do it he took his child from school
without the shadow of an excuse to her, and was now making
other arrangements for her without so much as asking how she
would like them. He did not greatly care. If it suited him it
must suit her; and, as the first step toward the accomplishment
of his object, he removed from Beechwood the great trial of his
life, and put it where it could not trouble him, and turned a deaf
ear to its entreaties to be taken back to “home” and “Allie”
and the “crib” its poor arms had rocked so many weary nights.
He knew the people with whom he left his charge were kind and
considerate. He had tested them in that respect; he paid them
largely for what they did. “Laura” was better there than at
Beechwood, he believed; at all events he wanted her out of his
way for a time, and so he had unclasped her clinging arms from
his neck and kissed her flushed, tear-stained face, and put her
from him, and locked the door upon her, and gone his way,
thinking that when he served himself he was doing the best
thing which Arthur Grey could do.

He was coming home the night after Alice's arrival, and the
carriage went down to the station to meet him. There was
a haze in the sky, and the moon was not as bright as on the
previous night, when Allie rode up the mountain side; but it
was very pleasant and cool, and Mr. Grey enjoyed his ride, and
thought how well he had managed everything, and was glad he
had been so kind and gentle with Laura, and sent her that
basket of fruit, and that pretty little cradle, which he found in
New York; and then he thought of Alice, and his heart gave a
throb of pleasure when he saw the gleam of her white dress
through the moonlight as she came out to meet him. There
was a questioning look in her eyes, — a grieved, sorry kind of
expression, — which he saw as he led her into the hall, and he
kissed her very tenderly, and, smoothing her chestnut hair, said
in reply to that look:

“I knew you would hate to leave school, Allie; but I am
going to take you to Europe.”

“To Europe? Oh, father!” And Alice gave a scream of
joy.

A trip to Europe had been her dream of perfect happiness,
and now that the dream was to be fulfilled, it seemed too good
to be true.

“Oh, auntie!” she cried, running up to that stately lady,
who, in her iron-gray puffs and black satin of the previous night,
was coming slowly to meet her brother, — “Auntie, we are going
to Europe, all of us! Isn't it splendid?”

She was very beautiful in her white dress, with her blue eyes
shining so brightly, and she hung about her father in a caressing
way, and played and sang his favorite songs; and then,
when at last he bade her good-night, she shook her curly head,
and, holding fast his hand, went with him up the stairs to his
own room, which she entered with him. She felt that he did not
want her there; but she stayed just the same, and, seating herself
upon his knee, laid her soft, white arms across his neck,
and, looking straight into his eyes, pleaded earnestly for the
poor creature who had been an occupant of the adjoining
room.

“Let her go with us, father. I am sure the voyage would do
her good. Don't leave her there alone.”

But Mr. Grey said “No,” gently at first, then very firmly as
Alice grew more earnest, and, finally, so sternly and decidedly,
that Alice gave it up, with a great gush of tears, and only asked
permission to see her once before she sailed. But to this Mr.
Grey answered no, also.

“It would only excite her,” he said; “and the more quiet
she is kept, the better it is for her. I have seen that everything
is provided for her comfort. She is better there than here, or
with us across the sea. We shall be absent several years, perhaps,
as I intend putting you at some good school where you
will finish your education.”

He intimated a wish for her to leave him then, and so she
bade him good-night, and left him alone with his thoughts,
which were not of the most agreeable nature. How still it

was in the next room! — so still, that he trembled as he opened
the door and went in, where Alice had wept so bitterly. He
did not weep; he never wept; but he was conscious of a feeling
of oppression and pain as he glanced around the quiet, orderly
room, at the chair by the window, the bed in the corner, and
the crib standing near.

“What could have put that idea into her head?” he asked
himself, as, with his hand upon the cradle, he made the motion
which poor Laura kept up so constantly.

Then with a sigh he went back to his own room, and stood
a long time before that picture of the graveyard, which hung
upon the wall. There was a softness now in his eyes and manner,
— a softness which increased when he turned to his chair
by the writing-desk, and took from a drawer the faded flowers
and the curl of hair which Alice had found.

“Poor Jessie! I wish I had never crossed her path,” he said,
as he put the curl and flowers away, and thought again of Alice
and the little dark-eyed girl who had designated her “Frank's
Alice Grey.”

“Frank's, indeed!” he said; “I trust I have effectually
stopped any foolishness of that kind.”

Frank Irving was evidently not a favorite with Mr. Grey,
though not a word was ever said of him to Alice, who, as the
days went by, began to be reconciled to her removal from
school, and to interest herself in her preparations for the trip to
Europe. They were to sail the last of August, and one morning,
in October, Magdalen received a letter from Frank, saying
that he had just heard, from one of Miss Dana's pupils, that
Alice Grey had gone to Italy.