University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
THE HOME IN SCHODICK.

IT was a quiet, old-fashioned farm-house, with gables
and projections and large rooms and pleasant fire-places
and low ceilings and small windows, looking
some of them toward the village, with its houses of white
nestled among the trees, and some of them upon the hills,
whose shadows enfolded the farm-house in an early twilight at
night, and in the morning reflected back the warm sunshine
which lay so brightly upon their wooded sides. There was a
kitchen with a door to the north, and a door to the south, and
a door to the east, leading out into the woodshed, and there
were stairs leading to an upper room, and a fire-place “big
enough to roast an ox,” Hester said, when, with her basket and
bandbox and umbrella and camlet cloak and bird cage and
kittens and Aleck, she was dropped at her new home and
began to reconnoitre, deciding, first, that the late tenants of
the place were “shiffless critters, or they would never have
lived there so long with only a wooden latch and a wooden
button on the outside door,” and second, that they were “dirty
as the rot, or they would never have left them stains on the
buttry shelf, that looked so much like cheese-mould.”

Hester was not altogether pleased with the house. It came
a little hard to change from luxurious Millbank to this old
brown farm-house, with its oaken floors and stone hearth and
tiny panes of glass, and for a time the old lady was as home-sick
as she could be. But this only lasted until she got well
to work in the cleaning process, which occupied her mind

so wholly that she forgot herself, and only thought how to
make the house a fitting place for her boy to come to after his
travels West. Roger had given her money with which to
furnish the house, and she had added more of her own, while
Frank, when parting with her, had slipped into her hands one
hundred dollars, saying to her, “Roger is too proud to take
anything from me, and I want you to use this for the house.”

And so it was owing partly to Frank's thoughtfulness and
Hester's generosity that the farm-house, when renovated with
paper and paint, and furnished with the pretty, tasteful furniture
which Hester bought, looked as well and inviting as it did.
The most pains had been taken with Roger's room, the one
his mother occupied when a girl. Hester had ascertained
which it was from an inhabitant of Schodick, who had been
Jessie's friend, and slept with her many a time in the room
under the roof, which looked off upon the pond and up the
side of the steep hills. The prettiest carpet was put down
there, and curtains were hung before the windows, and the bed
made up high and clean with ruffled sheets and pillow-cases,
mementos of Millbank, and Jessie's picture was hung on the
wall, the blue eyes seeming to look sadly round upon a spot
they had known in happier days than those when the portrait
was taken. There were flowers, too, in great profusion, — not
costly, hot-house flowers, like those which decked the rooms at
Millbank, but sweet, home-flowers, like those which grow
around the doors and in the gardens of so many happy New
England homes, — the fragrant pink and old-fashioned rose
and honeysuckle and heliotrope, with verbenas and the sweet
mignonette.

And here Roger came one pleasant July afternoon, when a
heavy-thunder-storm had laid the dust, and cooled the air, and
set every little bird to singing its blithest notes, and, alas!
soured the rich, thick cream, which Hester had put away for
the few luscious wild strawberries which, late as it was for
them, Mattie had found in the meadow, by the fence, and
picked for Mr. Roger. With the exception of this little drawback,

Hester was perfectly happy, and her face was radiant
when she met her boy at the door, and welcomed him to his
new home, taking him first to his own room, because it looked
the prettiest, and would give him the best impression.

Roger had been in Schodick once or twice when a boy, but
everything now was new and strange, while, struggle as he
might against it, the contrast between the old home and the
new affected him painfully at first, and it was weeks before he
could settle down quietly, and give his time and attention to
the firm of which he at once became a member. For days and
days he found his chief solace in wandering over the hills where
his mother once had been, and exploring the shadowy woods,
and hunting out the rock under the overhanging pine, where
she had crept away from sight, and prayed that she might die,
when the great sorrow was in her heart, just as it was now in
his. He found the spot at last, just under the shadow of one
great rock and on the ledge of another, where the ground was
carpeted thickly with the red pine of last year's growth, and the
green, tasselated boughs above his head seemed to whisper
softly, and try to comfort him.

Here poor Jessie had knelt, and felt that her heart was
breaking. And here Roger sat, and felt that his heart was
broken.

He had tried not to think much of Magdalen, and during
the novelty and excitement of travelling he had not felt the
bitter pain tugging at his heart as it was tugging now, causing
him to cry out, in his anguish:

“Oh, Magda, my darling! how can I live without you?”

He had his father's letter with him, and he read it again
there in the dim light, and was struck, as he had never before
been, with that clause which said:

“And if, in the course of your life, there is one thing more
than another which you desire, I pray Heaven to grant it to
you!”

He had read these lines many times, but they never impressed
him so forcibly as now. It was his father's last invocation

to Heaven in his behalf. The one thing more than
another which he desired was Magdalen, and why had God
withheld her from him? Why had He not heard and answered
the father's prayer? Why had He dealt so harshly by the son,
taking from him everything which had hitherto made life
desirable?

These were hard questions for a creature to ask its Creator.
And Roger felt hard and rebellious as he asked them, with his
face among the cones and withered pines, and from the pitiless
skies above him there came no answer back, for it is not thus
that God will have His children question Him.

Roger could not be submissive then, and for hours he sat
there alone, battling with his sorrow, and never trying to pray
until at the very last, when with a cry such as a wayward child
gives when the will is finally broken, he covered his face with
his hands and prayed earnestly to be forgiven for all the
wicked, rebellious feelings he had cherished, and for strength
to bear whatever the future had in store for him. After that
he never gave way again as he had done before, though he
went often to that rock under the pine, and made it a kind of
Bethel where, unseen by mortal eye, he could tell his troubles
to God, and go away with the burden somewhat lightened.

They heard at the farmhouse that Magdalen was improving
slowly, and then there came a rumor in a roundabout way,
that the day for the bridal was fixed, and that Mrs. Walter
Scott was in New York selecting the bridal trousseau. Roger's
face was very white for a few days after that, and nothing had
power to clear the shadow from his brow, until one morning
there came a letter to Hester Floyd from Magdalen herself,
with the delicate perfumery she always used lingering about it,
and her pretty monogram upon the seal. How Roger pressed
the inanimate thing in one hand and caressed it with the other,
and how fast he carried it to Hester, who was in the midst of
working over her morning's churning, but who put the tray
aside at once and washed her hands, and adjusted her spectacles,
while Roger stood by inwardly chafing at the delay and

longing to know what Magdalen had written. It was very
short indeed, and formal and stiff, and did not sound at all like
Magdalen. She was quite well now, and she wanted to thank
Mrs. Floyd for all the care she had taken of her before leaving
Millbank.

That was the letter. Not one word in it to Roger, except
as the sentence beginning with “I am deeply grateful to all
who have done so much for me,” was supposed to refer to him.
She wished him to remember her kindly as she did him, and
she was going away from Millbank, but where, or how, or with
whom, Roger could not tell. Hester knew she was going to
be married, though why “she should want to lug that dud of a
slip round with her finery was more than she could divine,” she
said, as she brought down the little spotted crimson dress, and
wrapping it in thick brown paper gave it to Roger to direct.

“Maybe you'll write her a line or two for me; my hand is
too shaky and cramped,” she said to Roger, who shook his head
and replied, “You must answer your own letters, Hester;”
but he directed the little parcel to “Miss Magdalen Lennox,
Belvidere,” and sent it on its way to Millbank.