University of Virginia Library

40. CHAPTER XL.
A GLIMMER OF LIGHT.

ALL that day Magdalen stayed with Mrs. Grey, who
clung to her as a child clings to its mother, and who
was more quiet and manageable than she had been in
many weeks. Magdalen could soothe and control her as no
one else had done since she left the private asylum where her
husband had kept her so long, and this she did by the touch of
her hand, the sound of her voice, and the glance of her eye,
which fascinated and subdued her patient at once.

That night Mrs. Seymour and Alice came home, accompanied
by Guy. They had not been expected quite so soon, and
Magdalen knew nothing of their arrival until Alice, who had
heard from Honora what had transpired during her absence,
entered the room. Mrs. Grey was sitting up in her large arm-chair,
her dressing gown and shawl carefully arranged, her hair
nicely combed, and a look of content upon her face which
Alice had rarely seen. She was rocking still, with one foot on
the crib and her eyes fixed on Magdalen, who was repeating to
her the Culprit Fay, which she knew by heart, and to which the
childish woman listened with all the absorbing interest of a little
girl of ten. At sight of Alice there came a sudden gleam
of joy over her face, succeeded by a look of fear as she wound
both arms tightly around Magdalen's neck, exclaiming:

“Oh, Allie, I'm glad you've come, but you must not take
her away. She does me good. I'm better with her. Say
that she may stay.”

There was a momentary look of pain in Alice's eyes at seeing
a stranger thus preferred to herself; but that quickly passed,
and stooping over her mother, she kissed her tenderly, and
said:

“Magdalen shall stay with you as long as she will. I am
glad you like her so well. We all love Magdalen.”

“Yes, and it's coming back to me. That was baby's name, —
the one I gave her to please your father, and by and by I'll
think just where it is.”

Alice shot a quick, inquiring glance at Magdalen, as if to ask
how much of their family history her mother had revealed, but
Magdalen merely said:

“She seems to think there is a baby in the cradle, — a baby
whom she says she lost or mislaid. It died, I suppose.”

“Poor mother, she has suffered so much for that dead
child,” was Alice's only reply, as she stood caressing her
mother's hair.

Then she tried to tell her something of her visit to New York
and the rare music she had heard; but Mrs. Grey did not care
for that, and said a little impatiently, “Don't bother me now;
I'm listening to the story. Go on, Magdalen. He was just going
to relight his lamp, and I want it over with, for I know how
he felt. My lamp has gone out, and all the falling stars in
heaven can't light it.”

“I see you are preferred to me,” Alice said to Magdalen;
“but if you do her good, and I can see that you have already,
I bless you for it. Poor, dear mother, who has never known a
rational moment since I can remember.”

She kissed her mother again, and then left the room, while
Magdalen went on with her fairy tale, parts of which she repeated
twice, and even thrice, before her auditor was satisfied.

After that Magdalen spent most of her time with the poor lunatic,
who, if she attempted to leave her, would say so pleadingly,

“Stay with me, Magda; don't go. It's beginning to
come back.”

She called her Magda altogether, and though that name was
sacred to Roger's memory, Magdalen felt as if there was a blessing
in the way the poor invalid spoke it, and her heart throbbed
with a strange kind of feeling every time she heard the
“Ma-ag-da,” as Mrs. Grey pronounced it, dwelling upon the
first syllable, and shortening up the last.

Mr. Grey was still absent, glad, it would seem, of an excuse
to stay away from the tiresome burden at home. He had gone
to Cincinnati, to look after some property which belonged to
his wife, and as there was some difficulty in proving his claim to
a portion ofit, which had more than quadrupled in value and
was now in great demand, it was desirable that all doubts
should be forever settled; so he wrote to Alice, that he should
stay until matters were satisfactorily adjusted. He had heard
of Magdalen's kind offices in the sick room, and he sent a note
to her, adjuring her to stay with Mrs. Grey so long as her influence
over her was what Alice had reported it to be.

“Money can never pay you,” he said, “if you succeed in doing
her good, or even in keeping her quiet for any length of
time; but to show you that I appreciate your services, I will
from this time forward make your salary one thousand dollars
per annum as Mrs. Grey's attendant. It is strange the influence
which some people have over her, and strange that you, a girl,
can control her, as Alice says you do. Perhaps she recognizes
in you something that exists in herself, and so, on the principle
that like subdues like, she is subdued by you. The very first
time I saw you, there was something in your eyes and the toss
of your head which reminded me of her as she was when I first
knew her, but of course the resemblance goes no further. I
would weep tears of blood sooner than have your young life and
bright beauty darkened as Laura's has been.”

When Magdalen received this note she was in a state of wild excitement,
and hardly realized what Mr. Grey had written, until she
reached the part where he spoke of her resemblance to his wife.

“Something in your eyes and the toss of your head.”

She read that sentence twice, and her eyes grew larger and
darker than their wont as she too saw herself in the motions,
and gestures, and even looks of the maniac, whose talk that very
day, whether true or false, had sent through her veins a thrill of
conjecture so sudden and wonderful, that for an instant she had
felt as if she were fainting. Alice had talked but little of her
mother's insanity. It was a great grief to them all, she had
said, and she had wished to keep it from Magdalen as long as
possible, fearing lest the fact of there being a lunatic in the
house might trouble her, as it had done others who came to
Beechwood. Of the fancy about the baby she had never offered
any explanation, and Magdalen had ceased to think much
of it, except as the vagary of a lunatic, until the day when she
received the note from Mr. Grey. That afternoon Laura had
talked a great deal, fancying herself to be in the cars, and
sometimes baby was with her and sometimes it was not.

“That is the very last I remember,” she said, apparently
talking to herself. “I took the train at Cincinnati, and baby
was with me; I left the train, and baby was not with me. I've
never seen her since, but I think I gave her to a boy. It was
ever so long before I got home, and everything was gone, baggage,
baby and all. I can't think any more.”

Her voice ceased at this point, and Magdalen knew she was
asleep; but for herself she felt that she too was going mad with
the suspicion which kept growing in intensity, as she recalled
other things she had heard from Mrs. Grey, and to which she
had paid no attention at the time. Once she arose and going
to the glass studied her own face intently. Then she stole to
the bedside of the sleeping woman and examined her features
one by one, while all the time the faintness was increasing at her
heart, and the blood seemed congealing in her veins. There was
no trace of color in her face that night when she met the family
at dinner, and Alice half shrunk from the eyes which fastened
so greedily upon her and scarcely left her face a moment.

“What is it, Magdalen?” she asked after dinner, when they

were standing alone before the parlor fire, and she felt the
burning eyes still on her. “What is it, Magdalen? Is anything
the matter?”

Then Magdalen's arms twined themselves around the young
girl's neck in an embrace which had something almost fierce in
its fervor.

“Oh, Alice, my darling; if it could be, if it could be!”

That was the answer Magdalen made, and her voice was
choked with tears, which fell in torrents upon Alice's upturned
face.

“Excuse me, do!” she added, releasing the young girl, and
recovering her composure. “I am nervous to-night. I can't
go back to your mother. I shall be as mad as she is in a little
while. Will you take my place in her room just for this evening?”

Alice assented readily, and after a few moments she left the
parlor, and Magdalen was alone. But she could not keep
quiet with that great doubt hanging over her and that wild hope
tugging at her heart. Rapidly she walked up and down the
long parlors, while the perspiration started about her forehead
and lips, which were so ashy pale that they attracted the attention
of Mrs. Seymour, when she at last came in, bringing her
crocheting with her.

“Are you sick, Miss Lennox?” she asked in some alarm;
and then Magdalen's resolution was taken, and turning to the
lady, whose shoulder she grasped, she said, “Please come with
me to my room, where we can be alone and free from interruption.
There is something I wish you to tell me.” And without
waiting for an answer she led the astonished woman into
the hall and up the stairs in the direction of her own room.