University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
LIFE AT BEECHWOOD.

THE next morning was bright and beautiful, as mornings
in early October often are, when the summer
seems to linger amid flower and shrub, as if loth to
quit the glories its own sunshine and showers had created.

The mist still lay in soft clouds upon the river and on the
mountain sides, when Magdalen arose, and, leaning from her
window, drank in the brancing morning air, and acknowledged
to herself that Beechwood was almost as beautiful as Millbank.
She had slept quietly, and felt her old life and vigor coming
back to her again as she hastened to dress herself.

She had heard no sound as yet, except the tread of a servant
in the yard, and the baying of the Newfoundland dog up the
mountain path.

Alice was not in her own room. She must have dressed
and gone out before Magdalen awoke, and the latter was hesitating
whether to go down to the parlor, or to remain where
she was, when Alice appeared, her blue eyes shining brightly,
and a faint flush upon her cheek.

“I slept so well because you were here near me,” she said
as she linked her arm in Magdalen's, and started for the dining-room.

As they passed through the hall, Magdalen noticed at the
farther extremity a green baize door, which seemed to divide
that part of the hall from the other, and which she knew by the
location was the door which she had heard shut so many
times. Where did it lead to? What was there behind it?
What embodiment of sorrow and pain was hidden away in that
portion of the building? That there was somebody there, Magdalen
was sure; for, just as she reached the head of the
stairs she saw a servant girl coming up a side staircase, bearing,

in her arms a silver tray, on which was arranged a tempting
breakfast for an invalid.

“I shall know all in good time,” she thought, and she
pretended not to see the girl, and kept on talking to Alice
until the dining-room was reached, where Mr. Grey and
his sister were waiting for them. Both seemed in unusually
good spirits, and Mr. Grey kissed his daughter fondly as she
nestled close to him and smiled up into his face with all the
love of a trusting, affectionate daughter. The sight for a moment
smote Magdalen with a keen sense of desolation and
loneliness. Never had she known, — never could know the
happiness of a father's watchful love and care, and never had
she felt its loss as keenly as she felt it now, when she saw the
caressing tenderness which Mr. Grey bestowed upon his
daughter and the eagerness with which it was returned. They
were both very kind to her, and treated her more like a guest
than one who had come to them as a hired companion.

It was a delightful day for driving; and after breakfast was
over, Alice asked for the carriage and took Magdalen to all her
favorite resorts, down by the river and up among the hills,
where she said she often went and sat for hours alone. They
were firmer friends than ever before that drive was over, and
Alice had dropped “Miss Lennox” for the more familiar
“Magdalen,” and had asked that she should be simply “Alice,”
and not that formal “Miss Grey.”

That afternoon Magdalen wrote a short letter to Hester
Floyd, telling her where she was, explaining how she chanced
to be there, and going into ecstasies over the loveliness and
beauty of Alice Grey, but never hinting at Mr. Grey's identity
with the man who had tempted Jessie to sin. It was as well to
keep that to herself, she thought, inasmuch as the telling it
would only awaken bitter memories in Roger's heart. Once
she determined not to speak of Roger at all, but that would be
too marked a neglect, and so she asked to be remembered to
him, and said she should never forget his kindness to her, or
cease to regret the meddlesome curiosity which had resulted so

disastrously for him. She made no mention of either Mrs.
Walter Scott or Frank. She merely said she left Millbank at such
a time, and expressed herself as glad to get away, it seemed
so changed from the happy home it used to be in other days.

“Mrs. Hester Floyd. Care of Roger Irving, Esq., Schodick,
N. H.,” was the direction of the letter which Magdalen
gave to Mr. Grey, who was going to the post-office and offered
to take it for her. Very narrowly she watched him as he
glanced at the superscription, and she half pitied him when she
saw his lips quiver and turn pale for a moment as he read the
name of a place which he remembered so well. Once in his
life he had sent letters to that very town, and the Schodick
post-mark was not an unfamiliar one to him. Now she to
whom he had written was dead, and he held a letter directed
to the care of her son. How he longed to ask something concerning
him, and finally he did so, saying in a half indifferent
tone, “Schodick? — I once spent a summer there, and I have
heard of Mr. Irving. Does he live in the village?”

“No, sir, he lives at his mother's old home. They call it
the Morton farm. Did you know his mother, Jessie Morton?”

Magdalen put the question purposely, but regretted it when
she saw the look of intense pain which flitted across Mr. Grey's
face.

“I knew her, yes. She was the most beautiful woman I
ever saw,” he replied, and then he turned away and walked
slowly from the room with his head bent down, as if his thoughts
were busy with the past.

The days succeeding that first one at Beechwood went rapidly
by, and each one found Magdalen happier and more contented
with her situation as companion of Alice, who strove in
so many ways to make her feel that she was in all respects her
equal, instead of a person hired to minister to her. Indeed,
the hired part seemed only nominal, for nothing was ever required
of Magdalen which would not have been required of her
had she been a daughter of the house and Alice her invalid

sister. They rode together, and walked together, and read together,
and slept together at last, for Alice would have it so,
and every morning of her life Magdalen was awakened by the
soft touch of Alice's hand upon her cheek, and the kiss upon
her brow.

To Magdalen this was a new and blissful experience. At
Millbank she had always been alone, so far as girls of her own
age were concerned, and Alice Grey seemed to her the embodiment
of all that was pure and beautiful, and she loved her
with a devotion that sometimes startled herself with its intenseness.
The mystery, if there was one, was very quiet now, and
though Alice went often down the hall and through the green
baize door, she never looked as sad and tired when she came
back as she had done on that first day at Beechwood. Mr.
Grey, too, frequently passed the entire evening with the young
girls in the parlor, where Magdalen, who was a very fine reader,
read to them aloud from Alice's favorite authors. But after the
first night she was never asked to sing. Alice often requested
her to play, and they had learned a few duets which they practised
together, but songs were never mentioned, and Magdalen
would have fancied that there was something disagreeable in
her voice were it not that when alone with Alice among the
hills and down by the river, whither they often went, her companion
always insisted upon her singing, and would sit listening
to her as if spell-bound by the clear, liquid tones.

At last there came a letter from hester Floyd, who, in her
characteristic way, expressed herself as pleased that Magdalen
“had grit enough to cut loose from the whole coboodle at
Millbank, and go to do for herself. I was some taken aback,”
she wrote, “for I s'posed by the tell that you was to marry that
pimpin, white-faced Frank, and I must say you showed your
good sense by quittin' him, and doin' for yourself. Me and
Roger would have been glad for you to come here; that is, I
b'leeve Roger would, though he never sed nothin' particklar.
He's some altered, and don't talk so much, nor 'pear so chipper
as he used to do, and I mistrust he misses you more'n

he does his money. He's a good deal looked up to, both in
the town and in the church, where they've made him a vestryman
in place of a man who died, and 'twould seem as if he'd
met with a change, though he allus was a good man, with no
bad habits; but he's different like now, and don't read newspapers
Sunday, nor let me get up an extra dinner, and he has
family prayers, which is all well enuff, only bakin' mornins it
does hender some.”

Then followed a description of the house and Schodick generally,
and then a break of two days or more, after which the
old lady resumed her pen, and added: “Roger's got a letter
from Frank, askin' if he knew where you was. He said you
left while he was away unbeknownst to him, and had never
writ a word, by which I take it you and he ain't on the fust
ratest terms. Roger talked the most that day that he has in a
month, and actually whistled, but then he'd just gained a suit,
and so mabby it was that, though I b'leeve it wouldn't do no
harm if you were to drop him a line in a friendly way. It's
leap-year, you know.”

This was Hester's letter, over which Magdalen pondered
long, wondering if the old lady could have suspected her love
for Roger, and how far she was right in thinking he missed her
more than his money. Magdalen read that sentence many
times, and her heart thrilled with delight at the thought of being
missed by Roger; but from Hester's suggestion that she
should write him a friendly line, she turned resolutely away.
The time was gone by when she could write to Roger without
his having first written to her. After that interview in the
library, when his kisses had burned into her heart, and his passionate
words, “Magda, my darling,” had burned into her
memory, she would be less than a woman to make the first advances.
Concessions, if there were any, must come from him
now. He knew how sorry she was about the will; he had
exonerated her from all blame in that matter, and now, if he
had any stronger feelings for her than that of a friend, he must
make it manifest. This was Magdalen's reasoning over the

Roger portion of Hester's letter, and then she thought of
Frank, and felt a nervous dread lest he might follow her, though
that seemed hardly possible, even if he knew where she was.
Still he would undoubtedly write as soon as he could get her
address from Roger, and she was not at all disappointed when,
a week or two after the receipt of Hester's letter, Mr. Grey
brought her one from Belvidere, directed in Frank's well
known hand-writing. After obtaining her address he had
written at once, chiding her for having left so suddenly without
a word for him, and begging of her to return, or at least allow
him to come for her, and take her back to her rightful place at
Millbank.

“I can't imagine what freak of fortune led you to the Greys,”
he wrote. “It is the last place where I could wish you to be.
Not that I do not respect and esteem Miss Grey as the sweetest,
loveliest of women, but I distrust both her father and her
aunt. For some reason they have never seemed to like me,
and may say things derogatory of me; but if they do, I trust it
will make no difference with you, for remember you have
known me all your lifetime.”

Magdalen wrote next day to Frank, who, as he read her letter,
began for the first time to feel absolutely that she was lost
to him forever. He was sure of that, and for a moment he
wept like a child, thinking how gladly he would give up all his
money if that would bring him Magdalen's love. But it was
not in his nature to be unhappy long, and he soon dried his
eyes and consoled himself with a drive after his fast bays, and
in the evening when his mother mentioned to him the names
of two or three young ladies from New York who were coming
to Millbank for the holidays, and asked if there was any one in
particular whom he wished to invite, he mentioned Miss Burleigh,
whom he had met in Springfield. And so Bell was invited,
and hastened to reply that she should be delighted to
come, but feared she could not, as “pa never liked to be separated
from his family at that time, and sister Grace would be
home from school, and could not, of course, be left behind.'

She was so sorry, for she had heard such glowing accounts of
Millbank, and its graceful mistress, that she ardently desired to
see and know both, but as it was she must decline.

As might be supposed, the invitation to Miss Bell Burleigh
was repeated, including this time the Judge and Grace, both of
whom accepted, Grace for the entire holidays, and the Judge
for a day or two, as he did not wish to crowd. And so Christmas
bade fair to be kept at Millbank with more hilarity than
ever it had been before. Every room was to be occupied, Bell
and Grace Burleigh taking Magdalen's, for which Frank ordered
a new and expensive carpet and chamber set, just as he had ordered
new furniture for many of the other rooms. He was living
on a grand scale, and had his income been what his principal
was he could scarcely have been more munificent or lavish
of his money. He was at the head of every charitable object in
Belvidere and Springfield, and gave so largely that his name
was frequently in the papers which he sent to Magdalen, with
his pencil mark about the flattering notices; and Magdalen
smiled quietly as she read them and then showed them to Alice,
who once laughingly remarked, “Suppose you refer him to
Matthew vi. 2. It might be of some benefit to him.” And
that was all the good Frank's ostentatious charity did him in
that direction.

Meantime the tide of life moved on, and Christmas came, and
the invited guests arrived at Millbank, where there were such
revellings and dissipations as the people of Belvidere had never
seen, and where Bell Burleigh's bold, black eyes flashed and
sparkled and took in everything, and saw so many places where
a change would be desirable should Millbank ever have another
mistress than Mrs. Walter Scott.

Guy Seymour, too, had his holidays at Beechwood, which
seemed a different place with his great, kind heart, his quick
appreciation of another's wants, his unfailing wit and humor,
his merry whistle and exhilarating laugh, his good-natured teasing
of Auntie Pen, and his entire devotion to Alice, who was
rather reserved toward him, but who talked a great deal of him

to Magdalen when they were alone, and cried when at last he
went away.