ROGER’S LETTERS AND THE RESULT.
While Mrs. Walter Scott was resting, Roger’s letters were brought in.
There was one for Frank, which he carried to his own room, and one for
Magdalen, who broke the seal at once and screamed with delight as
Roger’s photograph met her view. He had had it taken for her in Dresden,
and hoped it would afford her as much pleasure to receive it as hers had
given him. He did not say that he thought her position stiff, and her
dress too old for her, though he had thought it, and smiled at the prim,
old-womanish figure, sitting so erect in the high-backed chair. But he
would not willingly wound any one, much less the little girl who had
picked berries in the hot sun to pay for the picture. So he thanked her
for it, and enclosed his own, and gave his consent to the Charlestown
arrangement, and asked again that some competent person should take
charge of her wardrobe, which he wanted in every respect “to be like
that of other young girls.” He underscored this line, and Hester, who
read the letter after Magdalen, felt her blood tingle a little, and knew
that her day for dressing Magdalen was over. As for Magdalen, she was
too much engrossed in Roger’s picture to think much of the contents of
the letter.
“Oh, isn’t he splendid-looking; but I should be awfully afraid of him
now,” she said, as she went in quest of Frank.
She found him in his room, with a disturbed, disappointed look upon his
face. Roger had _not_ made him a rich man on his twenty-first birthday.
He had only ordered that six thousand dollars should be paid to him
instead of five, as mentioned in the will, and had said that inasmuch as
Frank had another year in college the four hundred should be continued
for the year and increased by an additional hundred, as seniors usually
wanted a little spending money. Frank’s good sense told him that this
was more than he had a right to expect, that Roger was and always had
been very generous with him; but he knew, too, that he was owing here
and there nearly a thousand dollars, while, worse than all, there was
for sale in Millbank the most beautiful fast horse, which he greatly
coveted and had meant to buy, provided Roger came down handsomely.
Knowing that horses had been his father’s ruin and his grandfather’s
aversion, Frank had abstained tolerably well from indulging his taste,
which was decidedly toward the race-course. But he had always intended
to own a horse as soon as he was able. According to the will, he could
not use for that purpose any of the five thousand dollars left to him.
That was to set him up in business, though what the business would be
was more than he could tell. He hated study too much to be a lawyer or
doctor, and had in his mind a situation in some banking house where
capital was not required, and with his salary and the interest of what
Roger was going to give him he should do very well. That interest had
dwindled down to a very small sum, and in his disappointment Frank was
accusing Roger of stinginess, when Magdalen came in. She saw something
was the matter, and asked what it was, at the same time showing him
Roger’s picture, at which he looked attentively.
“Foreign travel is improving him,” he said. “He looks as if he hadn’t a
care in the world; and why should he have, with an income of twenty or
twenty-five thousand a year? What does he know of poverty, or debts, or
self-denials?”
Frank spoke bitterly, and Magdalen felt that he was blaming Roger, whose
blue eyes looked so kindly at him from the photograph.
“What is it, Frank?” she asked again; and then Frank told her of his
perplexities, and how much he owed, and how he had expected more than a
thousand dollars from Roger, and, as he talked, he made himself believe
that he was badly used, and Magdalen thought so, too, though she could
not quite see how Roger was obliged to give him money, if he did not
choose to do so.
Still she was very sorry for him, and wished that she owned Millbank, so
she could share it with the disconsolate Frank.
“I mean to write to Mr. Roger about it, and ask him to give you more,”
she said, a suggestion against which Frank uttered only a feeble
protest.
As he felt then, he was willing to receive aid by almost any means, and
he did not absolutely forbid Magdalen to write as she proposed; neither,
when she spoke of the will, and her intention to continue her search for
it, did he offer any remonstrance. He rather encouraged that idea, and
his face began to clear, and, before dinner was announced, Magdalen
heard him practising on his guitar, which had been sent from New York by
express, and which Hester likened to a “corn-stock fiddle.”
Mrs. Walter Scott came down to dinner, very neatly dressed in a pretty
muslin of a white-ground pattern, with a little lavender leaf upon it,
her lace collar fastened with a coral pin, and coral ornaments in her
ears. Her hair was curling better than usual, and was arranged very
becomingly, while her long train swept back behind her and gave her the
air of a queen, Magdalen thought, as she stood watching her. She was
very gracious to Magdalen all through the dinner, and doubly, trebly so
after a private conference with Frank, who told her of his
disappointment, and what Magdalen had said about writing to Roger, as
well as hunting for the will. Far more shrewd and cunning than her son,
who, with all his faults, was too honorable to stoop to stratagem and
duplicity, Mrs. Walter Scott saw at once how she could make a tool of
Magdalen, and by being very kind and gracious to her, play into her own
hands in more ways than one. Accompanying Roger’s letter was a check for
five hundred dollars, which Hester was to use for Magdalen’s wardrobe,
and for the payment of her bills at school as long as it lasted. When
more was needed, more would be sent, Roger said; and he asked that
everything needful should be furnished to make Magdalen on an equality
with other young girls of her age. Here was a chance for Mrs. Walter
Scott. She had good taste. She knew what school girls needed. She could
be economical, too, if she tried, she said with her sweet, winning way;
and if Mrs. Floyd pleased, she would, while at Millbank, relieve her
entirely of all care of Magdalen’s dress, and see to it herself.
“Better keep family matters in the family, and not go to Mrs. Johnson,
who knows but little more of such things than you do,” she said to
Hester, who, for once in her life, was hoodwinked, and consented to let
Mrs. Walter Scott take Magdalen and the check into her own hands.
There were two or three trips to New York, and two or three milliners
and dressmakers’ bills paid and receipted and said nothing about. There
were also bundles and bundles of dry goods forwarded to Millbank, from
Stewart’s, and Arnold’s, and Hearne’s, and one would have supposed that
Magdalen was a young lady just making her _débût_ into fashionable
society, instead of a little girl of twelve going away to school. The
receipted bills of said bundles were all scrupulously sent across the
water to Roger, to whom Mrs. Walter Scott wrote a very friendly letter,
begging pardon for the liberty she had taken of going to his house
uninvited, but expressing herself as so lonely and tired of the hot
city, and so anxious to visit the haunt sacred to her for the sake of
her dear husband, Roger’s only brother. Then she spoke of Magdalen in
the highest terms of praise, and said she had taken it upon herself to
see that she was properly fitted out, and as Roger, being a bachelor,
was not expected to know how much was actually required nowadays for a
young miss’s wardrobe, she sent him the bills that he might know what
she was getting, and stop her if she was too extravagant.
This was her first letter, to which Roger returned a very gracious
answer, thanking her for her interest in Magdalen, expressing himself as
glad that she was at Millbank, asking her to prolong her visit as long
as she found it agreeable, and saying he was not very likely to quarrel
about the bills, as he had very little idea of the cost of feminine
apparel.
Roger was not naturally suspicious, and it never occurred to him in
glancing over the bills to wonder what a child of twelve could do with
fifteen yards of blue silk or three yards of velvet. For aught he knew,
blue silk and black silk and velvet were as appropriate for Magdalen as
the merinos and Scotch plaids, and delaines and French calicoes, and
ginghams, and little striped crimson and black silk which the lady
purchased for Magdalen at reduced rates, and had made up for her
according to her own good taste.
In Mrs. Walter Scott’s second letter she spoke of two or three other
bills which she had forgotten to enclose in her last, and which were now
mislaid so that she could not readily find them. The amount was a little
over one hundred dollars, and she mentioned it so that he might know
just what disposition was made of his check while the money was in her
hands. Then it _did_ occur to Roger that Magdalen must be having a
wonderful outfit, and for a moment a distrust of Mrs. Walter Scott
flashed across his mind. But he quickly put it by as unworthy of him,
and by way of making amends for the distrust, sent to the lady herself
his check for one hundred dollars, which she was to accept for her
kindness to Magdalen. Mrs. Walter Scott was in the seventh heaven of
happiness, and petted Magdalen more than ever, and confirmed old Hester
in her belief that “she had joined the church or met with a great
change.”
The will was never mentioned in Hester’s presence, but to Magdalen Mrs.
Walter Scott talked about it, not as anything in which she was
especially interested, but as something which it was well enough to find
if it really existed, and gave, as she believed it did, more money to
Frank than the other one allowed him. Magdalen was completely dazzled
and charmed by the great lady whom she thought so beautiful and grand,
and whose long curls she stroked and admired, wondering a little why
Mrs. Irving was so much afraid of her doing anything to straighten them,
when her own hair, if once wet and curled and dried, could not well be
combed out of place. Magdalen believed in Mrs. Walter Scott, and looked
with a kind of disdain upon Mrs. Johnson and Nellie, who had once stood
for her ideas of queens and princesses. Now they were mere ciphers when
compared with Mrs. Walter Scott, who took her to drive, and kept her in
her own room, and kissed her affectionately when she promised of her own
accord “to look for that will until it was found.”
“My little pet, you make me so happy,” she had said; and Magdalen,
flushed with pride and flattery, thought how delightful it would be to
give the recovered document some day into the beautiful woman’s hands
and receive her honeyed words of thanks.
Those were very pleasant weeks for Magdalen which Frank and his mother
spent at Millbank; the pleasantest she had ever known, and she enjoyed
them thoroughly. The parlors were used every day, and Magdalen walked
with quite an air through the handsome rooms, arrayed in some one of her
new dresses which improved her so much, and made her, as Frank said,
most as handsome as Alice Grey. At her particular request she had a
white muslin made and tucked just like Alice’s in the picture, and then
went with Frank to Springfield, and sat as Alice sat, with her head
leaning on her hands, flowers in her lap, and her wavy hair arranged
like Alice’s. It was a striking picture, prettier, if possible, than
Alice’s, except that in Magdalen’s face there was an anxious expression,
a look of newness, as if she had come suddenly into the dress and the
position; whereas Alice was easy and natural, as if tucked muslins and
flowers were everyday matters with her. Magdalen was not ashamed of her
photograph this time, and she sent a copy to Roger, with the letter
which she wrote him, and in which she made Frank the theme of her
discourse. There was nothing roundabout in Magdalen’s character. She
came directly at what she wanted to say, and Roger was told in plain
terms that Magdalen wished he would give Frank a little more money, that
he had debts to pay, and had said that if he could get them off his mind
he would never incur another, but would work like a dog to earn his own
living when once he was through college. If Roger would do this, she,
Magdalen, would study so hard at school and be so economical, that
perhaps she could manage to save all he chose to send to Frank. Mrs.
Irving had bought her more clothes than she needed, and she could make
them last for two or three years,—she knew she could.
This was Magdalen’s letter; and a week after Frank’s return to college
he was surprised by a request from Roger to send him a list of all his
unpaid bills, as he wished to liquidate them. There were some bills
which Frank did not care to have come under Roger’s grave inspection;
but as these chanced to be the largest of them all, he could not afford
to lose the opportunity of having them taken off his hands; and so the
list went to Roger, with a self-accusing letter full of promises of
amendment. And kind, all-enduring Roger tried to believe his nephew
sincere, and paid his debts, and made him a free man again, and wrote
him a kind, fatherly letter, full of good advice, which Frank read with
his feet on the mantel, an expensive cigar in his mouth, and a mint
julep on the table beside him.
Meantime Magdalen had said good-by to Millbank, and was an inmate of
Charlestown Seminary, where her bright face and frank, impulsive manner
were winning her many friends among the young girls of her own age, and
the quickness which she evinced for learning, and the implicit obedience
she always rendered to the most trivial rule, were winning her golden
laurels from her teachers, who soon came to trust Magdalen Lennox as
they had seldom trusted any pupil before her.
Mrs. Walter Scott lingered at Millbank until the foliage, so fresh and
green when she came, changed into scarlet and gold, and finally fell to
the ground. Every day she stayed was clear gain to her, and so she
waited until her friends had all returned to the city, and then took her
departure and went back to New York, tolerably well satisfied with her
visit at Millbank. She had made a good thing of it on the whole. She had
managed to pay two or three little bills which were annoying her
terribly, for she did not like to be in debt. She had secured herself a
blue silk and a black silk, and a handsome velvet cloak, to say nothing
of the hundred dollars, which Roger had sent for services rendered to
Magdalen, and what was better for her peace of mind, she had made
herself believe that there was nothing very wrong in the transaction.
She would have shrunk from theft, had she called it by that name, almost
as much as from midnight murder, but what she had done was not theft,
nor yet was it dishonesty. It was simply taking a small part of what
belonged to her, for she firmly believed in the will, and always would
believe in it, whether it was found or not. So she sported her handsome
velvet cloak on Broadway, and wore her blue-silk dress, without a qualm
of conscience or a thought that they had come to her unlawfully.