University of Virginia Library

44. CHAPTER XLIV.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

THERE was no longer a shadow of doubt that Mr.
Grey and Magdalen bore to each other the relation of
father and child. He had been satisfied with far less
testimony than Magdalen required, and even she was satisfied
at last, though she suggested the propriety of ascertaining from
Roger if his remembrances of the woman who had left her with
him tallied with Mrs. Storms' description of Mrs. Grey as she
was when she left Cynthiana. To this Mr. Grey assented, and
proposed that as personal interviews were always more satisfactory
than letters, Guy should go to Schodick, leaving himself
and Magdalen to rest a day or so in Cincinnati, and then
return to Beechwood, where Guy would join them with his
report. Magdalen had half hoped he might go himself, though
she knew how he must shrink from a meeting with Roger Irving,
and mingled with her happiness in having found both
parents and sister was a keen sense of pain as she thought how
the gulf between herself and Roger was widened by the discovery
of her lineage.

“Roger will hate me now, perhaps,” she said to herself, when
alone in her room at the hotel she sat down to rest and tried to
realize her position.

Guy was going early the next morning before she was up,
and if she would send any message to Roger it must be written
that night. Once she thought to write him a long letter, begging
him for her sake and Alice's, whom he was sure to love,
to forgive her father all the wrong he had done, and to come to
them at Beechwood, where he would receive a cordial welcome.
But after a moment's reflection she felt that she was hardly
warranted in writing thus. His cordial welcome from all parties
was not so certain. Mr. Grey had not intimated a wish to
see him or hinted at anything like gratitude for all Roger had

done for her. It would be pleasanter both for Roger and her
father never to meet. She could not invite him to Beechwood,
and so with a gush of tears she took her pen and wrote to him
hastily:

This was Magdalen's letter, which she handed to Guy in her
father's presence when she went to say good-night to the two
gentlemen in the parlor.

“Will you write to Mr. Irving, too?” she asked Mr. Grey,
who shook his head, while a look of embarrassment and pain
flitted across his face.

“Not now, — some time perhaps I may. I am truly grateful
to him, and Guy must tell him so. Guy will know just what to
say. I leave it in his hands.”

Mr. Grey was not quite like himself that night, and when
next morning Magdalen met him at breakfast, he still seemed
abstracted and absent-minded, and but little inclined to talk.
When breakfast was over, however, he went with her to her

room, and sitting down beside her grasped her hands in his,
and said:

“Magdalen, my child, I never expected to see this day, —
never thought there was so much happiness in store for me, —
a happiness I have not deserved, and which still is not unmixed
with pain and humiliation. Magdalen, my daughter,” he continued,
“there is something between us which should not be
between a father and his child. I feel it in your manners, and
see it in your face, and hear it in your voice. What is it,
Magdalen?”

He was talking very kindly, and sadly too, and the tears
glittered in Magdalen's eyes, but she did not reply. She could
not tell him all the hard things she had written against him in
her heart, before she knew him to be her father, but he guessed
them in part, and continued:

“Penelope told you something of your mother's story. I
wonder if she told you all?”

“Yes, all that I ever care to hear,” Magdalen replied. “I
know of her clandestine marriage, her wretched life at Beechwood,
of their taking Alice from her, and of — of your cruel
neglect of her.”

She said the last hesitatingly, for there was something in the
blue eyes fastened upon her which prevented her saying as
hard things as she felt.

“Yes, it's all true, and more,” Mr. Grey replied. “Penelope
could not tell you as bad as it was, for she never knew all. I
did neglect your mother when she needed me the most. I liked
my ease. I could not endure scenes. I was afraid of mother.
I acted a coward's part, and Laura suffered for it. She was
beautiful once, — oh, so beautiful when I first met her in her
sweet young girlhood! She was much like you, and I loved her
as well as I was capable of loving then. I had been thwarted
and crossed, and had done things for which I have always been
sorry, but never as sorry as since I have known you were my
child, for there is something in your face which seems continually
to reproach me for the past, and until I have made you my

confession, I feel that there cannot be perfect confidence between
us. I think I had seen you before you came to Beechwood.”

“Yes, in Belvidere, at Mrs. Irving's grave, though I did not
know who you were. I had not heard of you then.”

She knew about Jessie, — Mr. Grey was sure of that, and with
something between a sigh and a groan, he said:

“You have heard of that sad affair too, I see; but perhaps
you don't know all, and how I was deceived.”

“Yes, I know all. I have seen Mrs. Irving's letter — the
one she wrote on board the `Sea Gull,' and to which you
added a postscript. Mr. Grey, why did you write so coldly?
Why did you express no sorrow for what you had done? Why
did you leave a doubt of Jessie to sting and torment poor
Roger, the truest, the best man that ever lived?”

Magdalen was confronting her father with poor Jessie's
wrongs, and he felt that, if possible, she resented them more
than those done to her mother.

“I was a fiend, a demon in those days,” he said. “I hated
the old man who had won the prize I coveted so much. I did
not care how deeply I wounded him. I wanted him to feel as
badly as I felt when I first knew I had lost her. I was angry
with fate, which had thwarted me a second time and taken her
from me just as I thought possession secure. I did not despair
of coaxing her to go with me at last, — that is, I hoped I
might, for I knew her pliant nature; but death came between
us, and even in that terrible hour, when the water around me
was full of drowning, shrieking wretches, I cursed aloud when
I saw her golden hair float on the waves far beyond my reach,
and then go down for ever.”

He shuddered as if with cold, was silent a moment, and then
went on:

“I loved Jessie Morton as I have never loved a woman
since, not even your mother. I went to Belvidere just because
she had once lived there. I met you in the graveyard, and
was struck with your eyes, which reminded me of Laura. I

never dreamed you were my child, but I was interested in you,
and made you a part of the little pencil sketch I drew of the
yard. That picture has often excited Alice's curiosity, for it
was hung in my room at home. When you came and I heard
you were from Millbank I hid the sketch away, lest you should
see it and recognize the place and wonder how I came by it.
You see I am telling you everything, and I may as well confess
that when Penelope told me you were from Millbank I
wished you had never come to us. We usually hate what we
have injured, and anything connected with the Irvings has been
very distasteful to me, and I could not endure to hear the
name.”

“But you would like Roger; he is the best, the noblest of
men!” Magdalen exclaimed, so vehemently that her father
must have been dull indeed if he had failed to see how strong
a hold Roger Irving had on Magdalen's affections.

He did see it, but could not sympathize with her then, or at
once lay aside all his olden prejudice against the Irvings, and it
would be long before Magdalen would feel that in her love for
Roger she had her father's cordial sympathy.

“I have no doubt you speak truly,” he said, “and some time,
perhaps, I may see him and tell him myself that his mother
was pure, and good, and innocent as an angel; but now I wish
to talk of something else, to tell you of my former life, so you
may know just the kind of father you have found.”

Magdalen would rather not have listened to the story which
followed, and which had in it so much of wrong, but there was
no alternative. Mr. Grey was resolved upon a full confession,
and he made it, and when the recital was finished, he said:

“I have kept nothing from you. I would rather you should
know me as I am. I have told you what I could never tell to
Alice. She could not bear it; but you are different. Alice
leans on me, while something assures me that I can lean on
you. I am growing old. I have a heavy burden to bear. I
want you to help me; want you to trust me; to love me, if you
can. I have sinned greatly against your mother; have helped

to make her what she is. But I have tried to be kind to her
these many years; and I ask you, her child and mine, to forgive
all that is past and try to love me, if only ever so little.
Will you, Magdalen?”

He held his hands toward her, and Magdalen took them in
hers, and by the kisses and tears dropped upon them, Arthur
Grey knew that there was a better understanding between himself
and Magdalen than had existed an hour ago; that she knew
the worst there was to know of him, and would, in time, see
and appreciate the better side of his character, and with this he
was content, and seemed much like himself, the courtly, polished
gentleman, whose attentions were almost lover-like, and
who showed in every look and action how thoroughly he believed
in and how fast his love and interest was increasing for
the beautiful girl who had been so conclusively proved to be
his daughter.