THE MORNING OF THE FUNERAL.
If Frank Irving had been poor, instead of the grandson of a wealthy man,
he would have made a splendid carpenter; for all his tastes, which were
not given to horses, ran in the channel of a mechanic, and numerous were
the frames and boxes and stools which he had fashioned at Millbank with
the set of tools his grandfather had bought him. The tools had been kept
at Millbank, for Mrs. Walter Scott would not have her house on Lexington
Avenue “lumbered up;” and with the first dawn of the morning after
Roger’s return, Frank was busy in devising what he intended as a cradle
for the baby. He had thought of it the night before, when he saw it on
the settee; and, now, with the aid of a long, narrow candle-box and a
pair of rockers which he took from an old chair, he succeeded in
fashioning as uncouth a looking thing as ever a baby was rocked in.
“It’s because the sides are so rough,” he said, surveying his work with
a rueful face. “I mean to paper it, and maybe the darned thing will look
better.”
He knew where there were some bits of wall paper, and selecting the very
gaudiest piece, with the largest pattern, he fitted it to the cradle,
and then letting Ruey into his secret, coaxed her to make some paste and
help him put it on. The cradle had this in its favor, that it would rock
as well as a better one; and tolerably satisfied with his work, Frank
took it to the kitchen, where it was received with smothered bursts of
laughter from the servants, who nevertheless commended the boy’s
ingenuity; and when the baby, nicely dressed in a cotton slip which
Roger used to wear, was brought from Hester’s room and lifted into her
new place, she seemed, with her bright, flashing eyes, and restless,
graceful motions, to cast a kind of halo around the candle-box and make
it beautiful just because she was in it. Roger was delighted, and in his
generous heart he thought how many things he would do for Frank in
return for his kindness to the little child, crowing, and spattering its
hands in its dish of milk, and laughing aloud as the white drops fell on
Frank’s face and hair. Baby evidently felt at home, and fresh and neat
in her clean dress, she looked even prettier than on the previous night,
and made a very pleasing picture in her papered cradle, with the two
boys on their knees paying her homage, and feeling no jealousy of each
other because of the attentions the coquettish little creature lavished
equally upon them.
Our story leads us now away from the candle-box to the dining-room,
where the breakfast was served, and where Mrs. Walter Scott presided in
handsome morning-gown, with a becoming little breakfast cap, which
concealed the curl papers not to be taken out till later in the day, for
fear of damage to the glossy curls from the still damp, rainy weather.
The lady was very gracious to Roger, and remembering the _penchant_ he
had manifested for raspberry jam, she asked for the jar and gave him a
larger dish of it than she did to Frank, and told him he was looking
quite rested, and then proceeded to speak of the arrangements for the
funeral, and asked if they met his approbation. Roger would acquiesce in
whatever she thought proper, he said; and he swallowed his coffee and
jam hastily to force down the lumps which rose in his throat every time
he remembered what was to be that afternoon. The undertakers came in to
see that all was right while he was at breakfast, and after they were
gone Roger went to the darkened chamber for a first look at his dead
father.
Hester was with him. She was very nervous this morning, and hardly
seemed capable of anything except keeping close to Roger. She knew she
would not be in the way, even in the presence of the dead; and so she
followed him, and uncovered the white face, and cried herself a little
when she saw how passionately Roger wept, and tried to soothe him, and
told him how much his father had talked of him the last few weeks, and
how he had died in the very act of writing to him.
“The pen was in his hand, right over the words, ‘My dear Roger,’ Aleck
said, for he found him, you know; and on the table lay another letter,—a
soiled, worn letter, which had been wet with—with—sea-water—”
Hester was speaking with a great effort now, and Roger was looking
curiously at her.
“Whose letter was it?” he asked; and Hester replied:
“It was his,—your father’s; and it came from—_her_—your mother.”
With a low, suppressed scream, Roger bounded to Hester’s side, and,
grasping her shoulder, said, vehemently:
“From _mother_, Hester,—from _mother_! Is she alive, as I have sometimes
dreamed? Is she? Tell me, Hester!”
The boy was greatly excited, and his eyes were like burning coals as he
eagerly questioned Hester, who answered, sadly:
“No, my poor boy! Your mother is dead, and the letter was written years
ago, just before the boat went down. Your father must have had it all
the while, though I never knew it—till—well, not till some little while
ago, when Mrs. Walter Scott was here the last time. I overheard him
telling her about it, and when I found that yellow, stained paper on the
table, I knew in a minute it was the letter, and I kept it for you, with
the one your father had begun to write. Shall I fetch ’em now, or will
you wait till the funeral is over? I guess you better wait.”
This Roger could not do. He knew but little of his mother’s unfortunate
life. He could not remember her, and all his ideas of her had been
formed from the beautiful picture in the garret, and what Hester had
told him of her. Once, when a boy of eleven, he had asked his father
what it was about his mother, and why her picture was hidden away in the
garret, and his father had answered, sternly:
“I do not wish to talk about her, my son. She may not have been as
wicked as I at first supposed, but she disgraced you, and did me a great
wrong.”
And that was all Roger could gather from his father; while Hester and
Aleck were nearly as reticent with regard to the dark shadow which had
fallen on Millbank and its proud owner.
When, therefore, there was an opportunity of hearing directly from the
mysterious mother herself, it was not natural for Roger to wait, even if
a dozen funerals had been in progress, and he demanded that Hester
should bring him the letters at once.
“Bring them into this room. I would rather read mother’s letter here,”
he said, and Hester departed to do his bidding.
She was not absent long, and when she returned she gave into Roger’s
hands a fresh sheet of note-paper, which had never been folded, together
with a soiled, stained letter, which looked as if some parts of it might
have come in contact with the sea.
“Nobody knows I found this one but Aleck, and, perhaps, you better say
nothing about it,” Hester suggested, as she passed him poor Jessie’s
letter, and then turned to leave the room.
Roger bolted the door after her, for he would not be disturbed while he
read these messages from the dead,—one from the erring woman who for
years had slept far down in the ocean depths, and the other from the man
who lay there in his coffin. He took his father’s first, but that was a
mere nothing. It only read:
“MILLBANK, April —.
“MY DEAR BOY—For many days I have had a presentiment that I had not
much longer to live, and, as death begins to stare me in the face, my
thoughts turn toward you, my dear Roger——”
Here came a great blot, as if the ink had dropped from the pen or the
pen had dropped from the hand; the writing ceased, and that was all
there was for the boy from his father. But it showed that he had been
last in the thoughts of the dead man, and his tears fell fast upon his
father’s farewell words. Then, reverently, carefully, gently, as if it
were some sea-wrecked spectre he was handling, he took the other letter,
experiencing a kind of chilly sensation as he opened it, and inhaled the
musty odor pervading it. The letter was mailed in New York, and the
superscription was not like the delicate writing inside. It was a man’s
chirography,—a bold, dashing hand,—and for a moment Roger sat studying
the explicit direction:
“WILLIAM H. IRVING, ESQ.,
“(Millbank)
“BELVIDERE,
“CONN.”
Whose writing was it, and how came the letter to be mailed in New York,
if, as Hester had said, it had been written on board the ill-fated “Sea
Gull”? Roger asked himself this question, as he lingered over the unread
letter, till, remembering that the inside was the place to look for an
explanation, he turned to the first page and began to read. It was dated
on board the “Sea Gull,” off Cape Hatteras, and began as follows:
“MY HUSBAND:—It would be mockery for me to put the word _dear_ before
your honored name. You would not believe I meant it,—I, who have sinned
against you so deeply, and wounded your pride so sorely. But, oh, if you
knew all which led me to what I am, I know you would pity me, even if
you condemned, for you were always kind,—too kind by far to a wicked
girl like me. But, husband, I am not as bad as you imagine. I have left
you, I know, and left my darling boy, and _he_ is here with me, but by
no consent of mine. I tried to escape from him. I am not going to
Europe. I am on my way to Charleston, where Lucy lives, and when I get
there I shall mail this letter to you. Every word I write will be the
truth, and you must believe it, and teach Roger to believe it, too; for
I have not sinned as you suppose, and Roger need not blush for his
mother, except that she deserted him—”
“Thank Heaven!” dropped from Roger’s quivering lips, as the suspected
evil which, as he grew older, he began to fear and shrink from, was thus
swept away.
He had no doubts, no misgivings now, and his tears fell like rain upon
poor Jessie’s letter, which he kissed again and again, just as he would
have kissed the dear face of the writer had it been there beside him.
“Mother, mother!” he sobbed, “I believe you; oh, mother, if you could
have lived!”
Then he went back to the letter, the whole of which it is not our design
to give at present. It embraced the history of Jessie’s life from the
days of her early girlhood up to that night when she left her husband’s
home, and closed with the words:
“I do not ask you to take me back. I know that can never be; but I want
you to think as kindly of me as you can, and when you feel that you have
fully forgiven me, show this letter to Roger, if he is old enough to
understand it. Tell him to forgive me, and give him this lock of his
mother’s hair. Heaven bless and keep my little boy, and grant that he
may be a comfort to you and grow up a good and noble man.”
The lock of hair, which was enclosed in a separate bit of paper, had
dropped upon the carpet, where Roger found it, his heart swelling in his
throat as he opened the paper and held upon his finger the coil of
golden hair. It was very long, and curled still with a persistency which
Mrs. Walter Scott, with all her papers, could never hope to attain; but
the softness and brightness were gone, and it clung to Roger’s finger, a
streaked, faded tress, but inexpressibly dear to him for the sake of her
who sued so piteously for his own and his father’s forgiveness.
“When you feel that you have fully forgiven me, show this letter to
Roger, if he is old enough to understand it.”
Roger read this sentence over again, and drew therefrom this inference.
The letter had never been shown to him, therefore the writer had not
been forgiven by the dead man, whose face, even in the coffin, wore the
stern, inflexible look which Roger always remembered to have seen upon
it. ‘Squire Irving had been very reserved, and very unforgiving too. He
could not easily forget an injury to himself, and that he had not
forgiven Jessie’s sin was proved by the fact that he had never given the
letter to his son, who, for a moment, felt himself growing hard and
indignant toward one who could hold out against the sweet, piteous
pleadings in that letter from poor, unfortunate Jessie.
“But I forgive you, mother; I believe you innocent. I bless and revere
your memory, my poor, poor, lost mother!” Roger sobbed, as he kissed the
faded curl and kissed the sea-stained letter.
He knew now how it came to be mailed in New York, and shuddered as he
read again the postscript, written by a stranger, who said that a few
hours after Jessie’s letter was finished, a fire had broken out and
spread so rapidly that all communication with the life-boats was cut
off, and escape seemed impossible; that in the moment of peril Jessie
had come to him with the letter, which she asked him to take, and if he
escaped alive, to send to Millbank with the news of her death. She also
wished him to add that, so far as _he_ was concerned, what she had
written was true; which he accordingly did, as he could “not do
otherwise than obey the commands of one so lovely as Mrs. Irving.”
“Curse him; curse that man!” Roger said, between his teeth, as he read
the unfeeling lines; and then, in fancy, he saw the dreadful scene: the
burning ship, the fearful agony of the doomed passengers, while amid it
all his mother’s golden hair, and white, beautiful face appeared, as she
stood before her betrayer, and charged him to send her dying message to
Millbank if he escaped and she did not.
It was an hour from the time Roger entered the room before he went out,
and in that hour he seemed to himself to have grown older by years than
he was before he knew so much of his mother and had read her
benediction.
“She was pure and good, let others believe as they may, and I will honor
her memory and try to be what I know she would like to have me,” he said
to Hester when he met her alone, and she asked him what he had learned
of his mother.
Hester had read the letter when she found it. It was not in her nature
to refrain, and she, too had fully exonerated Jessie and cursed the man
who had followed her, even to her husband’s side, with his alluring
words. But she would rather that Roger should not know of the liberty
she had taken, and so she said nothing of having read the letter first,
especially as he did not offer to show it to her. There was a clause in
what the bad man had written which might be construed into a doubt of
some portions of Jessie’s story, and Roger understood it; and, while it
only deepened his hatred of the man, instead of shaking his confidence
in his mother, he resolved that no eye but his own should ever see the
whole of that letter. But he showed Hester the curl of hair, and asked
if it was like his mother’s; and then, drawing her into the library,
questioned her minutely with regard to the past. And Hester told him all
she thought best of his mother’s life at Millbank;—of the scene in the
bridal chamber, when she wept so piteously and said, “I did not want to
come here;”—of the deep sadness in her beautiful face, which nothing
could efface;—of her utter indifference to the homage paid her by the
people of Belvidere, or the costly presents heaped upon her by her
husband.
“She was always kind and attentive to him,” Hester said; “but she kept
out of his way as much as possible, and I’ve seen her shiver and turn
white about the mouth if he just laid his hand on her in a kind of
lovin’ way, you know, as old men will have toward their young wives.
When she was expectin’ you, it was a study to see her sittin’ for hours
and hours in her own room, lookin’ straight into the fire, with her
hands clinched in her lap, and her eyes so sad and cryin’ like—”
“Didn’t mother want me born?” Roger asked with quivering lips; and
Hester answered,—
“At first I don’t think she did. She was a young girlish thing; but,
after you came, all that passed, and she just lived for you till that
unlucky trip to Saratoga, when she was never like herself again.”
“You were with her, Hester. Did you see _him_?”
“I was there only a few days, and you was took sick. The air or
something didn’t agree with you, and I fetched you home. Your father was
more anxious for me to do that than she was. No, I didn’t see him to
know him. Your mother drew a crowd around her and he might have been in
it, but I never seen him.
There was a call for Roger, and, hiding his mother’s letter in a private
drawer of the writing-desk, he went out to meet the gentlemen who were
to take charge of his father’s funeral.