 | CHAPTER XLV.
AT BEECHWOOD. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward |  |
45. CHAPTER XLV.
AT BEECHWOOD.
IT was not possible for Mrs. Seymour to keep perfectly
quiet with regard to the cause of Magdalen's sudden
journey to Cincinnati, especially as Alice herself
talked and wondered so much about it. Little by little it came
out, until Alice had heard the entire story, which made her for
a time almost as crazy as Laura herself. A few lines from
Guy written hurriedly in the cars, on his way to Schodick, told
her at last that what she hoped was true, and then in the solitude
of her room she knelt, and amid tears of joy and choking
sobs paid her vows of praise and thanksgiving, and asked that
she might be made worthy of the priceless gift so suddenly bestowed
upon her. The next day a telegram from her father
apprised her that he would be home that night “with Magdalen,
them softly to herself went dancing about the house,
now explaining to the astonished servants, and again trying to
convey some definite idea to the darkened mind of her mother.
But Laura's only answer was, “Baby is in the cradle. I see
her if you do not.”
She was, however, pleased that Magdalen was coming home,
and asked to be made “tidy and nice, so that Magda would be
glad.”
Once, as Alice was buttoning the clean wrapper and arranging
the crimson shawl, which gave a soft tint to the sallow,
faded face, the poor creature's lip quivered a little as she said,
“Am I really nice, and will Arthur kiss me, think you? I
wish he would. It might make me better. Your talk of Cincinnati
has brought queer things back to me, and sometimes I
can almost get hold of how it was, then it goes again. I wish
Arthur would kiss me.”
“I hope he will. I think he will,” Alice said, her own kisses
falling in showers upon the wasted face of the invalid, who
seemed more rational than she had for many weeks.
As the day wore on and the hour approached for the travellers
to arrive, Alice grew very restless and impatient, and would
not for an instant leave the window where she watched anxiously
for the carriage.
“They are coming; they are here,” she cried at last, and
running into the hall she was the first to welcome Magdalen,
whose face was drenched with tears, and whose heart throbbed
with an entirely new sensation of happiness as she felt Alice's
kisses upon her lips and the tight clasp of her arms about her
neck.
Aunt Penelope came next, and though her greeting was more
in accordance with perfect propriety, there was much genuine
affection and kindness in it, and Magdalen knew that she believed
in her and accepted her as a niece. Mr. Grey was nowhere
to be seen. He had stood an instant and looked on
when Alice and Magdalen first met, then he vanished from sight,
whither he had gone at once. Perhaps the recovery of his
daughter had brought back something of his olden love for
Laura, or there were really better impulses at work within, for
his first thought was for his wife, and when, as he came in, she
asked if “She did not look nice,” he stooped and kissed her as
he had not done in years; and the poor creature, who had
known so much suffering, clung to him, and laying her aching
head upon his bosom, sobbed and wept like a child, saying to
herself, “he did, he did — kiss me, — he did —”
“Laura,” Mr. Grey said, softly, when she had grown a little
calm, “try to understand me, won't you? The lost baby is
found. It is Magdalen, too, whom a kind man took care of.
We have seen Mrs. Storms in Cynthiana; you remember her?”
Laura remembered Mrs. Storms, and for a few moments the
fixed expression of her eyes and the drawn look about her forehead
and mouth showed that reason was making a tremendous
effort to grasp and retain what she heard. But it had been
dethroned too long to penetrate the darkness now, and when
she spoke, it was to assert that “baby was in the cradle over
there; Magdalen was too big to be her baby.” Hopeless and
disheartened, Mr. Grey desisted in his attempts to make her
understand, but stayed by her till Alice came to say that dinner
waited.
It was thought best that Magdalen should not see Laura
until the next morning, when it was hoped that she might convey
some definite idea to her mind. They were to meet alone, and
after breakfast Magdalen repaired to the sick-room, and entering
unannounced, was received by her mother with outstretched
arms and a cry of joy.
“You've been gone long, Magda, — so long,” she said,
“and my head has ached so for you.”
“But I've come now to stay always. I have found the
baby, too. Let me tell you about it,” Magdalen replied, controlling
her own emotions with a mighty effort, and keeping as
calm and composed as it was possible for her to do. “I'll
while Magdalen, beginning at the funeral of Mrs. Clayton,
went over the whole ground correctly, until she reached the
cars and the boy who took the baby.
Then she purposely deviated from the truth, and said it was
a woman to whom the child was given.
“No, no, not a woman,” Laura exclaimed, vehemently.
“It was a boy, and I sat with him, and my head was all in a
snarl. I fell when I got out of the stage in Cincinnati, and
struck it a heavy blow on the pavement, and it set to buzzing
so loud.”
Here was something of which Magdalen had never heard;
the blow on the head would account for the culmination of the
queer fancies which must have been gathering in Laura's brain
for months and years, and which broke out suddenly into decided
insanity. If that were true she could understand better
than she did before why she had been abandoned; but she did
not stop then to reason about it. She was too anxious to keep
her mother to the point, and when she paused a moment she
said to her, “You fell and hurt your head on the pavement,
and then got into the train.”
“Yes, the next day, or the next, I don't know which, my
head ached so, and I didn't know anybody to tell, and I had
baby to care for, and I thought the Grand Duchess would get
her as she did Alice, and shut me up, and the boy looked good
and true, and I gave her to him, and got out and thought I'd
run away, and there was another train standing there, and I
took it and went I don't know where, nor what else, only I was
back in Cincinnati again, and after a great while got here to
the Grand Duchess, with the baby safe as safe could be. My
head was sore a long time, but I did not tell them about the
blow for fear they'd say I was crazy, but they said it just the
same.”
She was getting excited, and anxious to make the most of
the present opportunity, Magdalen took up the story herself,
and told what the boy did with the child, and how he called
named her, and how the child grew to a woman, and came out
at last to Beechwood, sent there by Heaven to find her sister,
and minister to her poor mother, who did not know her at first,
but who would surely know her now.
“Don't you, mother; don't you know I am your daughter
Magdalen?”
For an instant Laura seemed to comprehend her. There
was a perplexed look on her face, then her lip began to quiver
and her tears to come, and throwing her arms around Magdalen's
neck, she said, “Mother, mother, you call me that as
Alice does. You say you are the baby, and Arthur said so too.
I wish I could remember, but I can't. Oh, I don't know what
you mean, but you make me so happy!”
And that was Magdalen's success, with which she tried to be
satisfied, hoping there might come a time when the cloud would
lift enough for her to hear her mother call her daughter, and
feel that she knew what she was saying.
The next day Guy came from Schodick. Magdalen was the
first to meet him, and her eyes asked the question her lips
would never have uttered.
“No, Miss Grey,” Guy said, laughingly, adopting the name
which sounded so oddly to her. “He did not send any
written reply to your note. There is some confounded bother
on his mind, I could not divine what; something which sealed
his lips, though his face and eyes and manner had `Magdalen,
Magdalen,' written all over and through them. Don't look so
sorry, cousin,” he continued, winding his arm around her waist,
“and don't try to look so innocent, either. I guessed the whole
thing when you handed me the note, and I know it for certain
now. You love Roger Irving, he loves you. There is nothing
truer than that, but there is something between you, — what, I
don't know, — but I'll find it out. I'll clear it up. He is a
splendid fellow, and almost idolized, I judge, by the people of
Schodick. Not much like his nephew Frank, —”
Here Guy stopped suddenly, for Mr. Grey was coming in
with Alice, who asked the result of his visit to Mr. Irving.
“I have learned but little that we did not know before,” Guy
said. “Mr. Irving's description of the woman who left the
child tallies exactly with what I should suppose Mrs. Grey
might have been at that time. A woman of twenty or thereabouts,
medium size, dressed in mourning, carrying a satchel,
with black hair and eyes, — the woman I mean, not the satchel,
— restless, peculiar eyes they were, and he said he had frequently
noticed the same peculiarity about Magdalen's, which means,
I take it, that they flash and glow and raise the mischief with a
fellow.”
He gave a comical look at Magdalen, and did not observe
the frown on Mr. Grey's face, but Magdalen did, and felt a
throb of pain as she saw a new obstacle laid across the path to
Roger. There were many things she wanted to ask Guy
about that home in Schodick which she could not ask with her
father and Alice present, and she felt as if she must cry outright
with pain and disappointment. Guy, however, was not
one to lose much of what was passing around him, and after
telling Mr. Grey the particulars of his interview with Roger, he
sauntered towards the library, knowing that Magdalen would
follow him. And she did, and blushed scarlet at the whistle
he gave as he said, “I knew you would come. Now what
shall I tell you? What do you want to know most?”
He had her secret. There was no use in trying to conceal
it, and Magdalen did not try, but said, “Don't laugh at me,
Guy. Think what Roger has been to me all these years, and
tell me how he looks, and about the house, and does he work
very hard? Oh, Guy, he was made poor by me, you know,
and I have all my wages saved up ready to send him, but now
I can't earn any more, and what I've got is so little.”
Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but she brushed
them away and looked half indignantly at Guy, who laughed
merrily as he said: “The absurdity of your sending money to
Roger. He does not need it; take my word for that. The
but very comfortable and neat as a lady's slipper. I
saw no marks of poverty. The neighbors did not send in anything
while I was there, and we had a grand dinner. I dined
with him, you see, on solid silver, too, with wine and Malaga
grapes; though come to think of it, the grapes were a present
from Frank, who sent a box from New York. That Frank is
living fast and doing the magnificent on a great scale, I reckon,
but I'd rather be Roger than he.”
“Didn't Roger say anything to my note?” Magdalen asked,
more interested in that than in Frank and Malaga grapes.
“No, he didn't, except, `Tell Magdalen I will answer this by
and by,”' Guy said; “but he seemed glad for you in one sense,
and then again he didn't. I should say, if I am any judge of
mankind, that he was afraid that the gulf between the rich
Miss Grey and the poor Mr. Irving was wider than he could
span, but I may be mistaken; at all events it is sure to come
right in time. As I said before, he is a splendid chap, and you
have my consent.”
Guy was very hopeful, very comforting, and Magdalen felt
better after this talk with him, and looked anxiously for the
letter which Roger was to send, and which came at last. A
kind, brotherly letter, in which he said how glad he was for her
that she had found her friends, and disclaimed all idea of her
having ever brought trouble to him.
“You have been the source of the greatest happiness I have
ever enjoyed,” he wrote; “and I would give a dozen fortunes
rather than not have known you, and enjoyed you for the few
years I called you mine, my sister, my child, my Magda. Once
I could have cursed the man who lured my mother to her ruin,
and cursed his children, too; but I did not then dream that
such a curse would cover the beautiful child of my adoption.
Heaven bless you, Magda, in all your new relations! Heaven
make you happy in them as you deserve to be! Once I hoped
I might see you at Schodick, and I have thought how I would
take you around the old farm, and to the places hallowed
would say, and just how you would look. But that dream is
over now. I cannot ask you to come. You would not care
to, nor your father care to have you. Remember me to him,
if you like. Since I know he is your father, I feel no bitterness
toward him. Good-by! And God bless you, and bring you,
at last, to the Heaven where I hope to find my little girl again!”
This was Roger's letter, over which Magdalen wept tears of
pain, mingled with tears of joy, — joy, that he loved her still, —
for only in that way could she construe some portions of his
letter; and pain that he should write as if all intercourse between
them was necessarily at an end; that he was probably
never to see her; she never to go to Schodick, when she had
within the last few days thought so much about it, and planned
how she could, perhaps, get her father and Alice to go with
her, and thus show Roger to them. That plan had failed, that
castle fallen, and Magdalen wept its fall, wondering what had
come over Roger, and what he meant by some portions of his
letter. She did not know how, for a moment, Roger had
writhed under the knowledge that she was the daughter of
Arthur Grey; or how the fact had seemed at once to build an
iron wall between him and the girl he loved better than his life.
Then, just as he was recovering from the first great shock, and
hope was beginning to make itself heard again, Guy had unwittingly
put his oar into the troubled waters, and made them
ten times worse. In his enthusiasm about Magdalen, whom
he extolled as all that was lovely and desirable, he gave Roger
the impression that between himself and Magdalen there
already existed an intimacy which would ripen into relations
of a closer nature than mere friends. And Roger listened to
him with a face which told no tales, and a heart which throbbed
with jealousy and pain; and then, feeling that he must know
something definite, said to him, just as he was leaving:
“Excuse me, Mr. Seymour, if I seem impertinent. From
what you have said, I gather that you hope, one day, to be
more to Mr. Grey than his sister's nephew.”
And Guy, thinking only of Alice at that moment, had
replied:
“You are something of a Yankee, I guess. But you are
right in your conjectures. I do hope to be more to Mr. Grey
than his sister's nephew; but there's no telling. Girls are
riddles, you know.”
And then good-natured, kind-hearted Guy had gone his way,
leaving in Roger's mind an impression which drifted his life
farther and farther away from Magdalen, whose heart went
out after him now with a stronger desire than it had ever
known before.
| CHAPTER XLV.
AT BEECHWOOD. Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward | |