ROGER AND THE WILL.
The office was closed, the shutters down, and Roger gone. Frank had come
too late, and he swiftly retraced his steps homeward, hoping still to be
in time to tell the news before his mother. But his hopes were vain.
Roger had entered the house while Frank was in the garret, and Mrs.
Walter Scott heard him in his room as she passed through the hall after
her interview with her son. But she was too much agitated and too
flurried to speak to him just then. She must compose herself a little,
and utterly forgetful of Magdalen, who was waiting for Frank, and
growing impatient at his delay, she went to her own room and read the
Will again to make sure that all was right and Frank the lawful heir.
She could not realize it, it had come so suddenly upon her; but she knew
that it was so, and she bore herself like a queen when she at last
arose, and started for Roger’s room. It was the Mrs. Walter Scott of
former days resurrected and intensified who swept so proudly through the
hall, just inclining her head to the servant whom she met, and thinking,
as she had once thought before, how she would dismiss the entire
household and set up a new government of her own. There had been some
uncertainty attending the future when she made this decision before, but
now there was none. She held the document which made her safe in her
possessions; she was the lady of Millbank, and there was a good deal of
assurance in the knock, to which Roger responded “Come in.”
He was in his dressing-gown, and looking pale and worn just as he had
looked ever since his return from New York. Beside him in a vase upon
the table was a bouquet, which he had arranged for Magdalen, intending
to send it to her with her dinner. And Mrs. Walter Scott saw it and
guessed what it was for, and there flashed into her mind a thought that
she would make matters right between Roger and Magdalen; she would help
them to each other, and save Frank from the possibility of a
_mésalliance_. But Mrs. Walter Scott was a very cautious woman; she
always kept something in reserve in case one plan should fail, and now
there came a thought that possibly Roger might contest the Will and win,
and if he did, it might be well to reconsider Magdalen and her hundred
thousand dollars, so she concluded that for the present it would be
better not to throw Magdalen overboard. That could be done hereafter, if
necessary.
She was very gracious to Roger, and took the seat he offered her, and
played with her watch-chain, wondering how she should begin. It was
harder than she had anticipated,—telling a man like Roger that all he
had thought his, belonged to another; and she hesitated, and grew cold
and hot and withal a little afraid of Roger, who was beginning to wonder
why she was there, and what she wanted to say.
“Can I do anything for you, Helen?” he asked, just as he had once
before, when she came on an errand which had caused him so much pain.
Then she had come to tear Magdalen from him; now she was there to take
his fortune, his birthright away; and it is not strange that, cruel as
she was, she hesitated how to begin.
“Roger,” she said, in reply to his question, “I am here on a most
unpleasant errand, but one which, as a mother whose first duty is to her
son, I must perform. You remember the Will which at your father’s death
could not be found.”
She was taking it from her pocket, and Roger, who was quick of
comprehension, knew before she laid the worn paper upon the table, that
_the lost Will was found_! With trembling haste he snatched it up, and
she made no effort to restrain him. She had faith in the man she was
ruining. She knew the Will was safe in his hands; he would neither
destroy nor deface it. He would give it its due consideration, and she
sat watching him while he read it through, and pitying him, it must be
confessed, with all the little womanly feeling she had left. She would
have been a stone not to have pitied one whose lips uttered no sound as
he read, but quivered and trembled, and grew so bloodless and thin,
while his face dripped with the perspiration which started from every
pore and rolled down his chin in drops. She thought at first they were
tears, but when he lifted his eyes to hers as he finished reading, she
saw that they were dry, but oh, so full of pain and anguish and
surprise, and wounded love and grief, that his father should have
disinherited him for such a cause. He knew what the clause “the boy
known as Roger Lennox Irving” implied, and that hurt him more than all
the rest.
Why had his father believed such a thing of his mother, and who had told
him the shameful story? Leaning across the table to his sister he
pointed to the clause, and moving his finger slowly under each word,
said to her in a voice she would never have recognized as his, “Helen,
who poisoned my father’s mind with that tale?”
Mrs. Walter Scott did not know of the letter in Magdalen’s possession,
or how much Hester Floyd had overheard years before, when, with lying
tongue, she had hinted things she knew could not be true, and made the
old man mad with jealousy. She did not think how soon she would be
confronted with her lie, and she answered, “I do not know. It is the
first intimation I have heard of Squire Irving’s reason for changing his
Will.”
She had forgotten her language to Lawyer Schofield the night after the
funeral when the other Will was the subject of debate; but Roger
remembered it, and his eyes rested steadily on her face as he said, “You
do not know? You never heard it hinted that my mother was false, then?”
“Never,” she felt constrained to say, for there was something in those
burning eyes which threatened her with harm if by word or look she
breathed aught against the purity of poor Jessie Morton.
“Who found this Will, and where?” Roger asked her next, and with a mean
desire to pay him for that look, Mrs. Walter Scott replied, “Magdalen
found it. She has hunted for it at intervals, ever since she was a child
and heard that there was one.”
But she repented what she had said when she saw how deep her blow had
struck.
“Magda found it; oh, Magda, I would a thousand times rather it had been
some one else.”
That was what Roger said, as with a bitter groan he laid his head upon
the table, while sob after sob shook his frame and frightened his
sister, who had never dreamed of pain like this. Tearless sobs they
were, for Roger was not crying; he was writhing in anguish, and the sobs
were like gasping moans, so terrible was his grief. He remembered what
Magdalen had told him once of looking for the Will when she was a child,
and remembered how sorry she had seemed. Had she deliberately deceived
him, and, after he had told her that it was supposed to give Frank
nearly everything, had she resumed her search, hoping to find and
restore to her lover his fortune? Then he thought of that night with
Hester, and the cobweb in Magdalen’s hair. She had been to the garret,
according to her own confession, and she had looked for the missing Will
then and “at intervals” since, until she had found it and sent it to him
by Mrs. Walter Scott, instead of bringing it herself?
And he had loved her so much, and thought her so innocent and artless
and true,—his little girl through whom he had been so terribly wounded.
If she had come herself with it and given it into his hands and told him
all about it, he would not have felt one half so badly as to receive it
from another, and that other the cruel, pitiless woman whose real
character he recognized as he had never done before. He had nothing to
hope from her, nothing to hope from Frank, nothing from Magdalen. They
were all leagued against him. They would enjoy Millbank, and he would go
from their midst a ruined, heart-broken man, shorn of his love, shorn of
his fortune, and shorn of his name, if that dreadful clause, “the boy
known as Roger Lennox Irving,” really meant anything. He knew it was
false; he never for a moment thought otherwise; but it was recorded
against him by his own father, and after Magdalen, it was the keenest,
bitterest pang of all.
Could that have been stricken out and could he have kept Magdalen, he
would have given all the rest without a murmur.
As the will read, it was right that Frank should come into his
inheritance, and Roger had no thought or wish to keep him from it. He
did not meditate a warfare against his nephew, as his sister feared he
might. He had only given way for a few moments to the grief, and pain,
and humiliation which had come so suddenly upon him, and he lay, with
his face upon the table, until the first burst of the storm was over,
and his sobs changed to long-drawn breaths, and finally ceased entirely,
as he lifted up his head and looked again at the fatal document before
him.
Shocked at the sight of his distress, his sister had at first tried to
comfort him. With a woman’s quick perception she had seen that Magdalen
was the sorest part of all, and had said to him soothingly:
“It was by accident that Magdalen found it. She was greatly disturbed
about it.”
This did not tally with her first statement, that “Magdalen had sought
for it at intervals,” and Roger made a gesture for her to stop. So she
sat watching him, and trembling a little, as she began dimly to see what
the taking of Millbank from Roger would involve.
“Excuse me, Helen,” he said, with all his old courtesy of manner, as he
wiped the sweat-drops from his beard. “Excuse me if, for a moment, I
gave way to my feelings in your presence. It was so sudden, and there
were so many sources of pain which met me at once, that I could not at
first control myself. It was not so much the loss of my fortune. I could
bear that—”
“Then you do not intend to contest the will?” Mrs. Walter Scott said.
It was a strange question for her to ask then, and she blushed as she
did it; but she must _know_ what the prospect was, while underlying her
own selfish motives was a thought that if Roger did _not_ mean to
dispute the right with Frank, she would brave the displeasure of her
son, and then and there pour balm into the wound, by telling Roger of
her belief that he was, and always had been, preferred to Frank by
Magdalen. But she was prevented from this by the abrupt entrance of
Frank himself. He had heard that his mother was with Roger, and had
hastened to the room, seeing at a glance that the blow had been given;
that Roger had seen the will; and for a moment he stood speechless
before the white face and the soft blue eyes which met him so wistfully
as he came in. There was no reproach in them, only a dumb kind of
pleading as if for pity, which touched Frank’s heart to the very core,
and brought him to Roger’s side.
Roger was the first to speak. Putting out his hand to Frank, he tried to
smile, and said:
“Forgive me, boy, for having kept you from your own so long. If I had
believed for a moment that there was such a will, I would never have
rested day or night till I had found it for you. I wish I had. I would
far rather I had found it than—than——”
He could not say “Magdalen,” but Frank knew whom he meant, and, in his
great pity for the wounded man, he was ready to give up everything to
him _but_ Magdalen. He must have _her_, but Roger should keep Millbank.
“I believe that I am more sorry than you can be that the will is found,”
he said, still grasping Roger’s hand. “And I want to say to you now that
I prefer you should keep the place just as you have done. There need be
no change. Only give me enough to support myself and—and——”
_He_ could not say Magdalen either, for he was not so sure of her, but
Roger said it for him.
“Support yourself and Magdalen. I know what you mean, my boy. You are
very generous and kind, but right is right. When I thought Millbank
mine, I kept it. Now that I know it is not mine, I shall accept _no part
of it_, however small.”
He spoke sternly, and his face began to harden. He was thinking of the
clause, “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving.” He could take no part of
the estate of the man who had dictated those cruel words. He was too
proud for that; he would rather earn his bread by the sweat of his brow
than be beholden to one who could believe such things of his mother.
Frank saw the change in his manner, and anxious to propitiate him, began
again to urge his wish that Roger would, at least, allow him to divide
the inheritance in case the will was proved, but Roger stopped him
impatiently.
“It is not you, my boy, whose gift I refuse. If you cannot understand
me, I shall not now explain. I’ve lived on you for years. I can never
repay that, for I feel as if all my energies were crippled, so I will
let that obligation remain, but must incur no other. As to proving the
will,” and Roger smiled bitterly when he saw how eagerly his sister
listened, and remembered the question she had asked him just as Frank
came in, and which he had not yet answered, “As to proving the will, you
will have no trouble there. I certainly shall make none. You will find
it very easy stepping into your estate.”
Mrs. Walter Scott drew a long breath of relief and sank into her chair,
in the easy, contented, languid attitude she always assumed when
satisfied with herself and her condition. She roused up, however, when
Roger went on to say:
“One thing I must investigate, and that is, _who_ hid this will, and
why. Have you any theory?” and he turned to his sister, who replied, “I
have always suspected Hester Floyd. She was a witness, with her
husband.”
“Why did you always suspect her, and what reason had you for believing
there was a later will than the one made in my favor?” Roger asked, and
his sister quailed beneath the searching glance of his eyes.
She could not tell him all she knew, and she colored scarlet and
stammered out something about Mrs. Floyd’s strange manner at the time of
the Squire’s funeral, nearly twenty years ago.
“Frank, please go for Hester,” Roger said. “We will hear what she has to
say.”
Frank bowed in acquiescence, and, leaving the room, was soon knocking at
Hester Floyd’s door.