MRS. WALTER SCOTT AND THE WILL.
Roger came from New York the next evening. He could not stay from
Millbank any longer. He had made up his mind to face the inevitable. He
would make the best of it if Magdalen accepted Frank, and if she did
not, he would speak for himself at once. Roger was naturally hopeful,
and something told him that his chance was not lost forever, that Frank
was not so sure of Magdalen. He could not believe that he had been so
deceived or had misconstrued her kind graciousness of manner toward
himself. A thousand little acts of hers came back to his mind and
confirmed him in the belief that unless she was a most consummate
coquette, he was not indifferent to her. On reaching Belvidere, he went
straight to Millbank without stopping at the office. He was impatient to
see Magdalen, but she was not on the steps to meet him as was her custom
when he returned from New York or Boston, and only Mrs. Walter Scott’s
bland voice greeted him as he came in.
“Magdalen was sick with one of her neuralgic headaches,” she said, “and
had not left her room that day.”
Roger would not ask _her_ if it was settled. He would rather put that
question to Frank, who soon came in and inquired anxiously for Magdalen.
A person less observing than Roger could not have failed to see that the
Frank of to-day was not the same as the Frank of yesterday. He did not
mean to appear differently, but he could not divest himself wholly of
the feeling that by every lawful right he was master where he had been
so long a dependent, and there was in his manner an air of assurance and
independence, and even of patronage, toward Roger, who attributed it
wholly to the wrong source, and when his sister left the room for a
moment, he said, “I suppose I am to congratulate you, of course?”
Frank wanted to say yes, but the lie was hard to utter, and he answered,
“I think so. She wishes time to consider. Girls always do, I believe.”
Roger knew little of girls, he said, and he tried to smile and appear
natural, and asked who had called at the office during his absence, and
if his insurance agent had been to see about the mill and the shoe-shop.
Frank answered all his questions, and made some suggestions of his own
to the effect that if he were Roger he would insure in another company,
and do various other things differently.
“I am something of an old fogy, I reckon, and prefer following in my
father’s safe track,” Roger said, with a laugh, and then the
conversation ceased and the two men separated.
Magdalen’s headache did not seem to abate, and for several days she kept
her room, refusing to see any one but Hester and Mrs. Walter Scott, who
vied with each other in their attentions to her. Mrs. Walter Scott did a
good deal of tender nursing during those few days, and called Magdalen
by every pet name there was in her vocabulary, and kissed her at least a
dozen times an hour, and carried messages which she never sent to Frank,
who was in a state of great excitement, not only with regard to
Magdalen, but also the Will, thoughts of which drove him nearly frantic.
Every day of his life he mounted the garret stairs, and groping his way
to the loose plank, went down on his knees to see that it was safe. The
Will had a wonderful fascination for him; he could not keep away from
it, and one morning he took it from the box, and carrying it to the
window, sat down to read it again, and see if it really _did_ give
everything to him. For the first time then he noticed the expression,
“To the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving.”
It was a very singular way to speak of one’s child, he thought, and he
wondered what it could mean, and why his grandfather had, at the very
last, made so unjust a will; and he became so absorbed in thought as not
to hear the steps on the stairs, or see the woman who came softly to his
side and stood looking over his shoulder.
Magdalen had, at last, asked to see Frank. She had made up her mind, and
insisted upon being dressed, and meeting him in her little sitting-room,
which opened from her chamber.
“Do you feel quite equal to the task?” Mrs. Walter Scott had said,
kissing and caressing the poor girl, whose face was deathly pale, save
where the fever spots burned upon her cheeks. “You don’t know how
beautiful you look,” she continued, as she wrapped the shawl around
Magdalen, and then, with another kiss, went in quest of Frank.
No one had seen him except Celine, who remembered having met him in the
little passage leading to the garret stairs.
“He was there yesterday and the day before,” she said, and then passed
on, never dreaming of all which was to follow those few apparently
unimportant words.
“That is a strange place for Frank to visit every day,” Mrs. Walter
Scott thought, and, curious to know why he was there, she, too, started
for the garret. She always stepped lightly, and her soft French slippers
scarcely made a sound as she went up the stairs. Frank’s back was toward
her, and she advanced so cautiously that she stood close behind him
before he was aware of her presence. She saw the soiled paper he held in
his hand, read a few words, and then uttered a cry of exultation, which
started Frank to his feet, where he stood confronting her, his face as
white as marble, and his eyes blazing with excitement. His mother was
scarcely less pale than himself, and her eyes were fixed on his with an
unflinching gaze.
“Ah!” she said, and in that single interjection was embodied all the
cruel exultation and delight and utter disregard for Roger, and defiance
of the world, which the cold, hard woman felt.
Anon there broke about her mouth a peculiar kind of smile, which showed
her glittering teeth, and made Frank draw back from her a step or two,
while he held the paper closer in his hand, and farther away from her.
She saw the motion, and there was something menacing in her attitude as
she went close to him, and whispered,—
“I was right, after all. There _was_ another Will, which somebody hid.
Where did you find it?”
“Magdalen found it,” Frank involuntarily rejoined, mentally cursing
himself for his stupidity when it was too late.
“Magdalen found it? And is that what ails her? Let me see it, please.”
For a moment Frank was tempted to refuse her request, but something in
her face compelled him to unfold the paper and hold it while she read it
through.
“Why, Frank, it gives you _everything_,” she exclaimed, with joy
thrilling in every tone, as she clutched his arm, and looked into his
face. “I never supposed it quite as good as this.”
“Mother,” Frank said, drawing back from her again, “are you a fiend to
exult so over Roger’s ruin? Don’t you see it gives him a mere nothing,
and he the only son?”
All the manhood of Frank’s nature was roused by his mother’s manner, and
he was tempted for a moment to tear the will in shreds, and thus prevent
the storm which he felt was rising over Millbank.
“There may be a doubt about the ‘only son,’” Mrs. Walter Scott replied.
“A father does not often deal thus with his only surviving son. What do
you imagine _that_ means?” and she pointed to the words, “the boy known
as Roger Lennox Irving.”
Frank knew then what it meant; knew that in some way a doubt as to
Roger’s birth had been lodged in his grandfather’s mind, but it found no
answering chord in his breast.
“Never will I believe that of Roger’s mother. He is more an Irving than
I am, everybody says. Shame on you for crediting the story, even for a
moment, and my curse on the one who put that thought in the old man’s
heart, for it _was_ put there by somebody.”
He was cursing _her_ to her face, and he was going on to say still more
when she laid her hand over his mouth, and said,—
“Stop, my son. You don’t know whom you are cursing, nor any of the
circumstances. You are no judge of Jessie Morton’s conduct. Far be it
from me to condemn her now that she is dead. She was a silly girl,
easily influenced, and never loved your grandfather, who was three times
her age. We read that the parents’ sin shall be visited upon the
children, and if she sinned, her child has surely reaped the
consequences, or will when this Will is proved. Poor Roger! I, too, am
sorry for him, and disposed to be lenient; but he cannot expect us to
let things go on as they have done now that everything is reversed. How
did Magdalen happen to find it?”
She was talking very gently now, by way of quieting Frank, who told her
briefly what he knew of the finding of the Will, and then, little by
little as she adroitly questioned him, he let out the particulars of his
interview with Magdalen, and Mrs. Walter Scott knew the secret of
Magdalen’s distress. Her face was turned away from Frank, who did not
see the cold, remorseless expression which settled upon it, as she
thought of Magdalen’s pitting herself against the Millbank fortune.
Magdalen’s value was decreasing fast. The master of Millbank could
surely find a wife more worthy of him than the beggar girl who had been
deserted in the cars, and that Magdalen Lennox should not marry her son
was the decision she reached at a bound, and Frank must have suspected
the nature of her thoughts, as she sat nervously tapping her foot upon
the floor, and looking off through the window, with great wrinkles in
her forehead and between her eyes.
“Mother,” he said, and there was something pleading as well as
reproachful in his voice, “I did not mean that you should know of this,
and now that you do, I must beg of you to keep your knowledge to
yourself. I shall lose Magdalen if you do not, and I care more for her
than a hundred fortunes.”
His mother turned fully toward him now and said, sneeringly, “A
disinterested lover, truly. Perhaps when you promised to destroy the
Will you forgot the hundred thousand which, if Roger remained master
here, would come to you with Magdalen, and you made yourself believe
that you were doing a very unselfish and romantic thing in preferring
Magdalen and poverty to Millbank.”
“Mother,” Frank cried, “I swear to you that a thought of that hundred
thousand never crossed my mind until this moment. My love for Magdalen
is strong enough to brave poverty in any form for her sake.”
“And you really mean to marry her?”
She put the question so coolly that Frank gazed at her in astonishment,
wondering what she meant.
Of course he meant to marry her if she would take him; he would prefer
her to a thousand Millbanks. “And mother,” he added, “you shall not tell
her that _you_ know of the Will until after to-morrow. She is to give me
her answer then. Promise, or I will destroy this cursed paper before
your very eyes.”
He made a motion as if he would tear it in pieces, when, with a sudden
gesture, his mother caught it from him and held it fast in her own
hands.
“The Will is not safe with you,” she said. “I will keep it for you. I
shall not trouble Magdalen, but I shall go at once to Roger. I cannot
see you throw away wealth, and ease, and position for a bit of sentiment
with regard to a girl whose parentage is doubtful, to say the least of
it, and who can bring you nothing but a pretty face.”
She had put the Will in her pocket. There was no way of getting it from
her, except by force, and Frank saw her depart without a word, and knew
she was going to Roger. Suddenly it occurred to him that Roger might not
have left the office yet, and he started up, exclaiming, “I am the one
to tell him first, if he must know. I can break it to him easier than
mother. I shall not be hard on Roger.”
Thus thinking, Frank started swiftly across the fields in the direction
of Roger’s office, hoping either to meet him, or to find him there, and
trying to decide how he should break the news so as to wound his uncle
as little as possible, and make him understand that he was not in fault.