MILLBANK AFTER THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
Mrs. Walter Scott could not easily give up her belief in a later will,
and after everything about the house was quiet, and the tired inmates
asleep, she went from one vacant room to another, her slippered feet
treading lightly and giving back no sound to betray her to any listening
ear, as she glided through the lower rooms, and then ascended to the
garret, where was a barrel of old receipts and letters, and papers of no
earthly use whatever. These she examined minutely, but in vain. The
missing document was not there, and she turned to Jessie’s picture, and
was just bending down for a look at that, when a sudden noise startled
her, and, turning round, she saw a head, surmounted by a broad-frilled
cap, appearing up the stairway. It was Hester’s head, and Hester herself
came into full view, with a short night-gown on, and her feet encased in
a pair of Aleck’s felt slippers, which, being a deal too big, clicked
with every step, and made the noise Mrs. Walter Scott first heard.
“Oh, you’re at it, be you!” Hester said, putting her tallow candle down
on the floor. “I thought I heard somethin’ snoopin’ round, and got up to
see what ’twas. I guess I’ll hunt too, if you like, for I’m afraid you
might set the house afire.”
“Thank you; I’m through with my search for to-night,” was Mrs. Walter
Scott’s lofty answer, as she swept down the garret stairs past Hester
Floyd and into her own room.
There was a bitter hatred existing between these two women now, and had
the will been found, Hester’s tenure at Millbank would have hung upon a
very slender thread. But the will was not found, neither that night nor
the next day, when Mrs. Walter Scott searched openly and thoroughly with
Roger as her aid, for which Hester called him a fool, and Frank, who was
beginning to get an inkling of matters, a “spooney.” Mrs. Walter Scott
was outgeneralled, and the second day after the funeral she took her
departure and went back to Lexington Avenue, where her first act was to
dismiss the extra servant she had hired when Millbank seemed in her
grasp, while her second was to countermand her orders for so much
mourning.
If Squire Irving had left her nothing, she, of course, had nothing to
expend in crape and bombazine, and when she next appeared on Broadway,
there were pretty green strings on her straw hat, and a handsome
thread-lace veil in place of the long crape which had covered her face
at the funeral. Mrs. Walter Scott had dropped back into her place in New
York, and for a little time our story has no more to do with her
ladyship, but keeps us at Millbank, where Roger, with Col. Johnson as
his guardian, reigned the triumphant heir.
As was natural, the baby was the first object considered after the
excitement of Mrs. Walter Scott’s departure had subsided. What should be
done with it? Col. Johnson asked Roger this question in Hester’s
presence, and Roger answered at once, “I shall keep her and educate her
as if she were my sister. If Hester feels that the care will be too much
for her, I will get a nurse till the child is older.”
“Yes; and then I’ll have both nuss and baby to ’tend to,” Hester
exclaimed. “If it must stay, I’ll see to it myself, with Ruey’s help. I
can’t have a nuss under foot, doin’ nothin’.”
This was not exactly what Roger wanted. He had not yet lost sight of
that picture of the French nurse in a cap, to whom Hester did not bear
the slightest resemblance; but he saw that Hester’s plan was better than
his, and quietly gave up the French nurse and the pleasant nursery, but
he ordered the crib, and the baby-wagon and the bright blanket with it,
and then he said to Hester, “Baby must have a name,” adding that once,
when the woman in the cars was hushing it, she had called it something
which sounded like Magdalen. “That you know was mother’s second name,”
he said. “So suppose we call her ‘Jessie Magdalen;’” but against that
Hester arrayed herself so fiercely that he gave up “Jessie,” but
insisted upon “Magdalen,” and added to it his own middle name, “Lennox.”
There was a doubt in his mind as to whether she had ever been baptized,
and thinking it better to be baptized twice than not at all, he
determined to have the ceremony performed, and Mrs. Col. Johnson
consented to stand as sponsor for the child, whom Hester carried to the
church, performing well her part as nurse, and receiving back into her
arms the little Magdalen Lennox, who had crowed, and laughed, and put
her fat hand to her head, to wipe off the drops of water which fell upon
her as she was “received into Christ’s flock and signed with His sign”
upon her brow.
During the entire summer Roger remained at Millbank, where he made a few
changes, both in the grounds and in the house, which began to wear a
more modern look than during the old squire’s life. Some of the
shrubbery was rooted up, and a few of the oldest trees cut down, so that
the sunshine could find freer access to the rooms, which had rarely been
used since Jessie went away, but which Roger opened to the warmth and
sunlight of summer. On the wall, in the library, Jessie’s picture was
hung. It had been retouched and brightened up in Springfield, and the
beautiful face always seemed to smile a welcome on Roger whenever he
came where it was. On the monument in the graveyard Jessie’s name was
cut beneath her husband’s, and every Saturday Roger carried a bouquet of
flowers from the Millbank garden, and laid it on the grassy mound, in
memory, not so much of his father, as of the young mother whose grave
was in the sea. Thither he sometimes brought little Magdalen, who could
walk quite easily now, and it was not an uncommon sight, on pleasant
summer days, to see the boy seated under the evergreens which
overshadowed his father’s grave, while toddling among the gray
head-stones of the dead, or playing in the gravel-walks, was Magdalen,
with her blanket pinned about her neck, and her white sun-bonnet tied
beneath her chin. Thus the summer passed, and in the autumn Roger went
away to Andover, where he was to finish preparing for college, instead
of returning to his old tutor in St. Louis. After his departure, the
front rooms above and below were closed, and Magdalen, who took more
kindly to the parlors than to the kitchen, was taught that such things
were only for her when Master Roger was at home; and if, by chance, she
stole through an open door into the forbidden rooms, she was brought
back at once to her corner in the kitchen. Not roughly though, for
Hester Floyd was always kind to the child,—first, for Roger’s sake, and
then for the affection she herself began to feel for the little one,
whose beauty, and bright, pretty ways everybody praised.
And now, while the doors and shutters of Millbank are closed, and only
the rear portion of the building is open, we pass, without comment, over
a period of eleven years, and open the story again, on a bright day in
summer, when the sky was as blue and the air as bland as was the air and
sky of Italy, where Roger Irving was travelling.