LIFE AT MILLBANK.
Magdalen was very fresh and bright next morning when she went down to
breakfast, in her white cambric wrapper, just short enough in front to
show her small, trim foot and well-shaped ankle, which Frank saw at
once. There were no wrinkles in her stockings, and the little
high-heeled slippers were as unlike as possible to the big shoes which
he remembered so well, wondering at the change, and never guessing that
Magdalen’s persisting in wearing shoes too large for her while growing,
had helped to form the little feet which he admired so much as they
tripped up and down the stairs or through the halls, with him always
hovering near. Her bright, sprightly manner, which had in it a certain
spice of recklessness and daring, just suited him, and as the days went
by, and he became more and more fascinated with her, he followed her
like her shadow, feeling glad that so much of Roger’s attention was
necessarily given to his agents and overseers, who came so often to
Millbank, that he at last opened an office in the village, where he
spent most of his time, thus leaving Frank free to walk and talk with
Magdalen as much as he pleased. And he improved his opportunity, and was
seldom absent from her side more than a few moments at a time. At first
this devotion was very gratifying to Magdalen, who still regarded Frank
as the hero of her childhood, but after a few weeks of constant
intercourse with him, the spell which had bound her was broken, and she
began to tire a little of his attentions, and wish sometimes to be
alone.
One afternoon they were sitting together by the river, on the mossy
bank, beneath the large buttonwood tree, where they had spent so many
pleasant hours in the years gone by, and Frank was talking of his
future, and deploring his poverty as a hindrance to his ever becoming
popular or even successful in anything.
“Now, if I were Roger,” said he, “with his twenty-five thousand a year,
it would make a great difference. But here I am, most twenty-seven years
old, with no profession, no means of earning an honest livelihood, and
only the yearly interest of six thousand dollars, which, if I were to
indulge my tastes, would barely keep me in cigars and gloves and
neckties. I tell you what, Magdalen, it’s mighty inconvenient to be so
poor.”
As he delivered himself of this speech, Frank stretched himself upon the
grass and gave a lazy puff at his cigar, while his face wore a kind of
martyred look as if the world had dealt very harshly with him. Magdalen
was thoroughly angry, and her eye flashed indignantly, as she turned
towards him. He had been at Millbank nearly four weeks, and showed no
intention of leaving it. “Just sponging his board out of Roger,” Hester
said; and the old lady’s remarks had their effect on Magdalen, who
herself began to wonder if it was Frank’s intention to leave the care of
his support entirely to his uncle. It was her nature to say out what she
thought, and turning to Frank, she said abruptly, “If you are so poor,
why don’t you go to work and do something for yourself? If I were a man,
with as many avenues open to me as there are to men, I would not sit
idly down and bemoan the fate which had given me only six thousand
dollars. I’d make the most of that, and do something for myself. I do
not advise you to go away from Millbank, if there is anything you can do
here; but, honestly, Frank, I think it would look better if you were
trying to help yourself instead of depending upon Mr. Irving, who has
been so kind to you. And what I say to you I mean also for myself. There
is no reason why _I_ should be any longer a dependent here, and as soon
as I can find a situation as teacher or governess I shall accept it, and
you will see I can practise what I preach. I did not mean to wound you,
Frank, but it seems to me that both of us have received enough at Mr.
Irving’s hands, and should now try to help ourselves. You are not angry
with me, I hope?”
She was looking at him with her great bright eyes so kindly and
trustingly that he could not be angry with her, though he winced a
little and wished that she had not been quite so plain and outspoken
with him. It was the first time any one had put it before him in plain
words that he was living on Roger, and it hurt him cruelly that Magdalen
should be the one to rebuke him. Still he would not let her see his
annoyance, and he tried to appear natural as he answered, “I could not
be angry with you, especially when you tell me only the truth. I ought
not to live on Roger, and I don’t mean to, any longer. I’ll go into his
office to-morrow. I heard him say he wanted a clerk to do some of his
writing. I’ll be that clerk, and work like a dog. Will that suit you,
Maggie?”
Ere Magdalen could reply, a footstep was heard, and Roger came round a
bend in the river, fanning himself with his straw hat, and looking very
much heated with his rapid walk.
“I thought I should find you here,” he said. “It’s a splendid place for
a hot day. I wish I’d nothing to do but enjoy this delicious shade as
you two seem to be doing; but I must disturb _you_, Frank. Your mother
has just arrived, and is quite anxious to see you.”
Frank would far rather have stayed down by the river, and mentally
wishing his mother in Guinea, he rather languidly arose and walked away,
leaving Magdalen alone with Roger. Taking the seat Frank had vacated, he
laid his hat upon the grass, and leaning his head upon his elbow began
to talk very freely and familiarly, asking Magdalen if she missed her
schoolmates any, and if she did not think Millbank a much pleasanter
place than Charlestown.
Here was the very opening Magdalen desired;—here a chance to prove that
she was sincere in wishing to do something for herself, and in a few
words she made her intentions known to Roger, who quickly lifted himself
from his reclining position, and turned toward her a troubled, surprised
face as he asked why she wished to leave Millbank. “Are you not happy
here, Magda?”
He had written that name once to her, but had not called her thus before
in her hearing; and now as he did so his voice was so low and kind and
winning, that the tears sprang to Magdalen’s eyes, and she felt for a
moment a pang of homesickness at the thought of leaving Millbank.
“Yes, very happy,” she said; “but that is no reason why I should remain
a dependent upon you, and before I left the Seminary I determined to
earn my own living as soon as an opportunity presented itself. I cannot
forget that I have no right to be here, no claim upon you.”
“No claim up me, Magdalen! No right to be here!” Roger exclaimed. “As
well might a daughter say she had no right in her father’s house.”
“I am not your daughter, Mr. Irving. I am nobody’s daughter, so far as I
know: or if I am, I ought perhaps to blush for the parents who deserted
me. I have no name, no home, except what you so kindly gave me, and you
_have_ been kind, Mr. Irving, very, very kind, but that is no reason why
I should burden you now that I am able to take care of myself. O,
mother, mother! if I could only find her, or know why she treated me so
cruelly.”
Magdalen was sobbing now, with her face buried in her hands, and Roger
could see the great tears dropping from between her fingers. He knew she
was crying for the mother she had never known, and that shame, quite as
much as filial affection, was the cause of her distress, and he pitied
her so much, knowing just how she felt; for there had been a time when
he, too, was tormented with doubts concerning his own mother, the
golden-haired Jessie, who was now cherished in his memory as the purest
of women. He was very sorry for Magdalen, and very uncertain as to what,
under the circumstances, it was proper for him to do. The world said she
was a young lady, and if Roger had seen as much of her during the last
four weeks as Frank had seen, he might have thought so too. But so
absorbed had he been in his business, and so much of his time had been
taken up with looking over accounts and receipts, and listening to what
his agents had done, that he had given no very special attention to
Magdalen, further than that perfect courtesy and politeness which he
would award to any lady. He knew that she was very bright and pretty and
sprightly, and that the tripping of her footsteps and the rustle of her
white dress, and the sound of her clear, rich voice, breaking out in
merry peals of laughter, or singing in the twilight, made Millbank very
pleasant; but he thought of her still as a child, _his_ little child,
whom he had held in his lap in the dusty car and hushed to sleep in his
arms. She was only eighteen, he was thirty-two; and with that difference
between them, he might surely soothe and comfort her as if she really
were his daughter. Moving so near to her that her muslin dress swept
across his feet, he laid his hand very gently upon her hair, and
Magdalen, when she felt the pitying, caressing touch of that great
broad, warm hand, which seemed in some way to encircle and shield her
from all care or sorrow, bowed her head upon her lap, and cried more
bitterly than before,—cried now with a feeling of utter desolation, as
she began dimly to realize what it would be to go away from Millbank and
its master.
“Poor Magda,” he said, and his voice had in it all a father’s
tenderness, “I am sorry to see you so much distressed. I can guess in
part at the cause of your tears. You are crying for your mother, just as
I have cried for mine many and many a time.”
“No, not as you have cried for yours,” Magdalen said, lifting up her
head and flashing her brilliant eyes upon him. “Hester has told me about
_your_ mother. You believe her pure and good, while mine—oh, Mr. Irving,
I don’t know what I believe of mine.”
“Try to believe the best, then, until you know the worst;” and Roger
laid his arm across Magdalen’s shoulders and drew her nearer to him, as
he continued; “I have thought a great deal about that woman who left you
in my care. I believe she was crazy, made so by some great sorrow,—your
father’s death, perhaps,—for she was dressed in black; and, if so, she
was not responsible for what she did, and you need not question her
motives. She had a young, innocent face, and bright, handsome eyes like
yours, Magda.”
Every time he spoke that name, Magdalen felt a strange thrill creep
through her veins, and she grew very quiet while Roger talked to her of
her mother, and the time when he found himself with a helpless child
upon his hands.
“I adopted you then as my own,—my little baby,” he said. “You had
nothing to do with it; the bargain was of my making, and you cannot
break it. I have never given up my guardianship, never mean to give it
up until some one claims you who has a better right than I to my little
girl. And this I am saying in answer to your proposition of going away
from Millbank, because you have no right here,—no claim on me. I am
sorry that you should feel so,—you _have_ a claim on me,—I cannot let
you go,—Millbank would be very lonely without you, Magda.”
He paused a moment, and, looking off upon the hills across the river,
seemed to be thinking intently. But it was not of the interpretation
which many young girls of eighteen might put upon his words and manner.
Nothing could be further from his mind than making love to Magdalen. He
really felt as if he stood to her in the relation of a father, and that
she had the same claim upon him which a child has upon a parent. Her
proposition to leave Millbank disturbed him, and led him to think that
perhaps _he_ was in some way at fault. He had not been very attentive to
her;—he had been so much absorbed in his business as to forget that any
attentions were due from him as master of the house. He had left all
these things to Frank, who knew so much better how to entertain young
ladies than he did; but he meant to do better; and his eyes came back at
last from the hills across the river, and rested very kindly on her, as
he said:
“I am thinking, Magda, that possibly I may have been remiss in my
attentions to you since my return. I am not a lady’s man, in the common
acceptation of the term; but I have never meant to neglect you; and when
I have seemed the most forgetful, you have been, perhaps, the most in my
mind; and the coming home at night from the business which nearly drives
me crazy, has been very pleasant to me, because _you_ were there at
_our_ home I will call it, for it is as much yours as mine, and I want
you to consider it so. It is hardly probable that I shall ever marry. I
have lived to be thirty-two without finding a woman whom I would care to
make my wife, and, after thirty, one’s chances of matrimony lessen. But,
whether I marry or not, I shall provide for you, as well as Frank, who
should perhaps have had more of my father’s property. His mother once
believed there was another will,—a later one,—which gave him Millbank,
and disinherited me; but that is all passed now.”
This was the first time Magdalen had ever heard the will matter put in
so strong a light, and, springing to her feet, she exclaimed:
“Give Millbank to Frank, and disinherit you! I never heard that hinted
before. I understood that the later will merely gave more to Frank than
the five thousand dollars. I never dreamed, I did not know—when I—oh,
Mr. Irving, I have been such a monster!”
She was ringing her hands, in her distress at having believed in and
even hunted for a will which would take Millbank from Roger, who looked
at her in astonishment, and asked what she meant.
“Have you, too, heard of the _will_ trouble; who told you?” he asked.
And with her eyes full of tears, which with a quick nervous motion of
her fingers she dashed away, Magdalen replied:
“Frank told me first years ago, and his mother told me again, but not of
the disinheritance. She said the will was better for Frank, and I—oh,
Mr. Irving, forgive me,—I hunted for it ever so much, in all of the
rooms, and in the garret, where Hester found me, and seemed so angry,
that I remember thinking she knew something about it if there was one,
and like a silly, curious girl I said to myself, I’ll keep hunting till
I find it; but I didn’t. Oh, Mr. Irving, believe me, I didn’t! Don’t
look at me so, please,” Magdalen exclaimed in a tremor of distress at
the troubled, sorry look in Roger’s face,—a look as if he had been
wounded in his own home by his own friends. “I might have hunted more,
perhaps,” Magdalen went on, too truthful to keep back anything which
concerned herself; “but so much happened, and I went away to school and
forgot all about it. Will you forgive me for trying to turn you out of
doors.” She was kneeling by him now as he sat upon the bank, and her
hands were clasped upon his arm, while her tearful face was turned
imploringly to his.
Unclasping her hands from his arm, and keeping them between his own,
Roger said to her:
“You distress yourself unnecessarily about a thing which was done with
no intention to injure me. I know, of course, that you would not wish me
to give up the home I love so well; but, Magdalen, if there was a later
will it ought to be found, and restitution made.”
“You do _not_ believe there was such a will,—you surely do not,”
Magdalen asked, excitedly; and Roger replied:
“No, I do not. If I did I would move heaven and earth to find it, for in
that case I should have been living all these years on what belonged to
others. Don’t look so frightened, Magdalen,” Roger continued, playfully
touching her cheek, which had grown pale at the mere idea of his being
obliged to give up Millbank. “No harm should come to you. I should take
care of my little girl. I would work with my hands if necessary, and you
could help me. How would you like that?”
It was rather a dangerous situation for a girl like Magdalen. Her hands
were imprisoned by Roger, whose eyes rested so kindly upon her as he
spoke of their working for each other and asked how she would like it.
_How would she like it?_ She was a woman, with all a woman’s impulses.
And Roger Irving was a splendid-looking man, with something very winning
in his voice and manner, and it is not strange if at that moment a life
of toil with Roger looked more desirable to Magdalen than a life of ease
at Millbank without him.
“If it ever chances that you leave Millbank, I will gladly work like a
slave for you, to atone, if possible, for my meddlesome curiosity in
trying to find that will,” Magdalen replied; and Roger responded:
“I wish you to find it if there is one, and I give you full permission
to search as much and as often as you like. You spoke of Hester’s having
come upon you once when you were looking; where were you then?”
“Up in the garret,” Magdalen said. “There are piles of rubbish there,
and an old barrel of papers. I was tumbling them over, and I remember
now that Hester said something about its being worse for me if the will
was found; and she was very cross for several days, and very rude to
Mrs. Irving, who, she said, ‘put me up.’ She never liked Mrs. Irving
much, although latterly she has treated her very civilly.”
“And do you like my sister Helen?” Roger asked, a doubt beginning to
cross his mind as to the propriety of carrying out a plan which had
recently suggested itself to him. Mrs. Walter Scott, who never did
anything without a motive, had petted and caressed and flattered
Magdalen ever since she had fitted her out for school, and served
herself so well by the means. She had called upon her twice at the
seminary, had written her several affectionate letters, and it was
natural that Magdalen, who was wholly unsuspicious, should like her; and
she expressed her liking in such strong terms, that Roger’s olden
feeling of distrust,—if it could be called by so harsh a name,—gave way,
and he spoke of what his sister had said to him in New York with regard
to Magdalen having a companion or _chaperone_ at Millbank.
“You know, perhaps,” he said, “that the world has established certain
codes of propriety, one of which says that a young lady like you should
not live alone with an old bachelor like me. I don’t see the harm
myself, but sister Helen does, and she knows what is proper, of course.
She has made propriety the business of her life, and it has occurred to
me that it might be well for her to stay at Millbank altogether,—that
is, if it would please you to have her here.”
Magdalen felt that she was competent to take care of herself, but if she
_must_ have a companion she preferred Mrs. Irving, and assented readily
to a plan which had originated wholly in Mrs. Walter Scott’s fertile
brain, and to the accomplishment of which all her energies had been
directed for the last few years.
“It is fortunate that she is here,” Roger said, “as we can talk it over
together better than we could write about it. I shall be glad to assist
Helen in that way, and it may prove a pleasant arrangement for all
parties.”
They were walking back to the house now, across the pleasant fields
which were a part of Roger’s inheritance, and if in the young man’s
heart there was a feeling that it would be hard to give up all this, it
was but the natural result of his recent conversation concerning the
imaginary will. That such a document existed, he did not believe,
however; and his momentary disquiet had passed before he reached the
house, which looked so cool and inviting amid the dense shade of the
maples and elms.
“Come this way, Magdalen,” Roger said, as they entered the hall; and
Magdalen went with him into the music-room, starting with surprise, and
uttering an exclamation of delight as she saw a beautiful new piano in
place of the old rattling instrument which had occupied that corner in
the morning.
“Oh, I am so glad! I can now play with some satisfaction to myself and
pleasure to others,” she said, running her fingers rapidly over the
keys, then as her eye fell upon the silver plate, with her name,
“Magdalen Lennox,” engraved upon it, she stopped suddenly, and her eyes
filled with tears at once as she said:
“Oh, Mr. Irving, how good you are to me! what can I do to show that I
appreciate your kindness?”
Roger had managed to have the piano brought to the house while she was
away, intending it as a surprise, and he enjoyed it thoroughly, and
thought how beautiful she was, with those tear-drops glittering in her
great dark eyes. She was one of whom any parent might be proud, and he
was proud of her, and called himself her father, and tried to believe
that he felt toward her as a father would feel toward his daughter; but
somehow that little episode down by the river, when she had knelt before
him, with her hands upon his arm, and her flushed, eager face so near to
his, had stirred a new set of feelings in his heart and made him, for
the first time in his life, averse to being addressed by her as “Mr.
Irving.” And when she asked him what she could do to show how glad she
was, he said,
“I know you are glad,—I can see it in your eyes, and I want nothing in
return, unless, indeed, you drop the formal title of Mr. Irving, and
give me the more familiar one of Roger. Couldn’t you do that, Magda?”
Magdalen would as soon have thought of calling the clergyman of the
parish by his first name, as to have addressed her guardian as
Roger,—and she shook her head laughingly.
“No, Mr. Irving, you can never be Roger to me,—it would bring you too
much on a level with Frank, and that I should not like.”
Perhaps Roger was not altogether displeased with her answer, for he
smiled kindly upon her, and asked if he would have to fall very far to
reach his nephew’s level. “In some respects, yes,” was Magdalen’s reply,
as she commenced a brilliant polka which brought Frank himself into the
parlor, followed by his mother, who kissed Magdalen lovingly, and then
stood with both her hands folded on the young girl’s shoulder as she
went on playing one piece after another, and making such melody as had
not been heard since the days when Jessie was queen of Millbank and
played in the twilight for her gray-haired husband.
Mrs. Walter Scott was very sociable and kind and conciliatory, and
lavish of her praises of Millbank, which she admired so much, saying she
was half sorry she came, as it would be so hard to go back to her close,
hot rooms in New York. Then she said she expected to have her house on
her hands altogether, as her tenants were intending to go South in
November, and how she should live without the rent she did not know.
“Perhaps I can suggest something which will meet your approval,” Roger
said; and then he proceeded to speak of his plan that his sister should
stay at Millbank with Magdalen. Mrs. Walter Scott had never _thought_ of
such a thing,—she did not know that she _could_ live out of New
York,—and nothing but her love for Magdalen and her desire to serve
Roger, who had done so much for Frank, could induce her to consider the
proposition for a moment. This was what she _said_; but when five
hundred dollars a year was added to her fondness for Magdalen and her
desire to serve Roger, she consented to martyr herself, and accepted the
situation with as much amiability and resignation as if it had not been
the very object for which she had been striving ever since her first
visit to Charlestown, when she foresaw what Magdalen would be, and what
Roger would do for her. It was decided that Frank, too, should remain at
Millbank as a clerk in Roger’s office, where he pretended to study law,
and where, after his writing was done, he spent his whole time in
smoking cigars and following Magdalen, who sometimes teased him
unmercifully, and then drove him nearly wild with her lively sallies and
bewitching ways. They were very gay at Millbank that autumn; and in the
sad years which followed, Magdalen often looked back upon that time as
the happiest period of her life.
Roger was naturally domestic in his tastes, and would at any time have
preferred a quiet evening at home with his family to the gayest
assemblage; but his sister-in-law made him believe that, as the master
of Millbank, he owed a great deal to society, and so he threw open his
doors to his friends, who gladly availed themselves of anything which
would vary the monotony of their lives. Always bright and sparkling and
brilliant, Magdalen reigned triumphant as the belle on all occasions.
She was a general favorite, and as the autumn advanced, the young
maidens of Belvidere,—who had dreamed that to be mistress of Millbank
might be an honor in store for one of them,—began to notice the soft,
tender look in Roger’s eyes as they followed Magdalen’s movements,
whether in the merry dance, of which she never tired, or at the piano,
where she excelled all others in the freshness of her voice and the
brilliancy of her execution. Frank, too, with his gentlemanly manners
and foreign air, and Mrs. Walter Scott, with her city style and
elegance, added to the attractions at Millbank, where everything wore so
bright a hue, with no shadow to foretell the dark storm which was
coming. The _will_ seemed to be entirely forgotten, though Roger dreamed
once that it had been found,—and by Magdalen, too,—and that, with an
aching heart, he read that he was a beggar, made so by his father, and
that he had gone out from his beautiful home penniless, but not alone,
or utterly hopeless, for Magdalen was with him,—her dark eyes beamed
upon him, and her hands ministered to him just as she had said they
would, should he ever come to what he had.
Roger was glad this was only a dream,—glad to awake in his own pleasant
chamber and hear the robins sing in the maple-tree outside, and see from
his window the scarlet tints with which the autumnal frosts were
beginning to touch the maples. He was strongly attached to his beautiful
home, and to lose it now would be a bitter trial.
But he had no expectation of losing it. It belonged to him without a
question, and all through the autumn months he went on beautifying and
improving it, and studying constantly some new surprise which would add
to the happiness of those he had gathered around him, and whose comfort
he held far above his own. Wholly unselfish, and liberal almost to a
fault, he spent his money freely, not only for those of his own
household, but for the poor, who had known and loved him when a boy, and
who now idolized and honored him as a man, and blessed the day which had
brought him back to their midst,—the kind and considerate employer of
many of them,—the friend of the destitute and needy,—the cultivated
gentleman in society, and the courteous master of Millbank.