MAGDALEN AND ROGER.
Magdalen had waited for Frank until she grew so nervous and restless
that she crept back to her couch, and, wrapping her shawl about her, lay
down among the pillows, still listening for Frank’s footsteps and
wondering that he did not come. She had made up her mind at last. After
days and nights of throbbing headache and fierce heart-pangs and bitter
tears, she had come to a decision. She would die so willingly for Roger,
if that would save Millbank for him. She would endure any pain or toil
or privation for him, but she could not _sin_ for him. She could not
swear to love and honor one, when her whole being was bound up in
another. She could not marry Frank, but she hoped she might persuade him
to let Roger keep Millbank, while he took the mill and the shoe-shop,
and the bonds and mortgages. He would surely listen to that proposition,
and she had sent for him to hear her decision, and then she meant next
day to take the will from its hiding place, and carry it to Roger, with
the letter she guarded so carefully. This was her decision, and she
waited for Frank until two hours were gone and the spring twilight began
to creep into the room, and still no one came near her. She heard the
dinner bell, and knew it was not answered, and then, as the minutes went
by, she became conscious of some unusual stir in the house among the
servants, and grasping the bell rope at last, she rang for Celine, and
asked where Mrs. Irving was.
“In the library with Mr. Irving and Mr. Frank and Hester. They are
talking very loud, and don’t pay any attention to the dinner bell,” was
Celine’s reply, and Magdalen felt as if she was going to faint with the
terrible apprehension of evil which swept over her.
“That will do. You may go,” she said to Celine; and then, the moment the
girl was gone, she rose from the couch, and knotting the heavy cord
around her dressing-gown, and adjusting her shawl, went stealthily out
into the hall, and stealing softly down the stairs, soon stood near the
door of the library.
It was closed, but Hester’s loud tones reached her as she talked of the
will, and with a shudder she turned away, whispering to herself:
“Too late! He’ll never believe me now.”
Then a thought of Aleck crossed her mind. She did not think he was in
the library; possibly he was in Hester’s room; at all events she would
go there, and wait for Hester’s return. An outside door stood open as
she passed through the rear hall which led to Hester’s room, and she
felt the chill night air blow on her, and shivered with the cold. But
she did not think of danger to herself from the exposure. She only
thought of Roger and what was transpiring in the library, and she
entered Hester’s room hurriedly, and uttered a cry of joy when she saw
Aleck there. He was not smoking now. He was sitting bowed over the
hearth, evidently wrapped in thought, and he gave a violent start when
Magdalen seized his arm, and asked him what had happened.
He heard her, though she spoke in a whisper, and turning his eyes slowly
toward her, replied:
“Somebody has found the will, and Roger is a beggar.”
“Oh, Aleck, I wish I was dead,” Magdalen exclaimed, and then sank down
upon the floor at the old man’s feet, sobbing in a piteous kind of way,
and trying to explain how she had found it first, and how she would give
her life if she never had done so.
In the midst of her story Hester came in, and Magdalen sprang up and
started toward her, but something in the expression of the old woman’s
face stopped her suddenly, and grasping the back of a chair, she stood
speechless, while Hester gave vent to a tirade of abuse, accusing her of
ruining Roger, taunting her with vile ingratitude, and bidding her take
herself and her lover back to where she came from, if that spot could be
found.
Perfectly wild with excitement Magdalen made no effort to explain, but
darted past Hester out into the hall, where the first person she
encountered was Frank, who chanced to be passing that way. She did not
try to avoid him; she was too faint and dizzy for that, and when asked
what was the matter, and where she was going, she answered:
“To my room. Oh, help me, please, or I shall never reach it.”
He wound his arm around her, and leaning heavily upon him she went
slowly down the hall, followed by Hester Floyd, who was watching her
movements. Not a word was spoken of the will until her chamber was
reached; then, as Frank parted from her, he said:
“I think you know that Roger has the will; but I did not give it to him.
I would have kept it from him, if possible, and it shall make no
difference, if I can help it.”
He held her hand a moment; then suddenly stooped and kissed her forehead
before she could prevent the act, and walked rapidly away, leaving her
flushed and indignant and half fainting, as she crept back to the couch.
No one came near her to light her lamp. No one remembered to bring her
food or drink. Everybody appeared to have forgotten and forsaken her,
but she preferred to be alone, and lay there in the darkness until
Celine came in to ask what she would have.
“Nothing, only light the lamp, please,” was her reply.
Then, after a moment, she asked:
“Are the family at dinner?”
“Yes; that is, Mrs. Irving and Mr. Frank. Mr. Irving is in the library
alone,” Celine said.
And then Magdalen sat up and asked the girl to gather up her hair
decently, and give it a brush or two, and bring her a clean collar, and
her other shawl.
Magdalen was going to the library to see Roger, who sat just where Frank
had left him, with his head bowed upon the fatal paper which had done
him so much harm. The blow had fallen so suddenly, and in so aggravating
a form, that it had stunned him in part, and he could not realize the
full extent of his calamity. One fact, however, stood out distinctly
before his mind, “Magdalen was lost forever!” Frank had said openly that
she was to be his wife! She had come to a decision. She would be the
mistress of Millbank, without a doubt. But he who had once hoped to make
her that himself, would be far away,—a poor, unknown man,—earning his
bread by the sweat of his brow. Roger did not care for that contingency.
He was willing to work; but he felt how much easier toil would be if it
was for Magdalen’s sake that he grew tired and worn. He was thinking of
all this when Magdalen came to his door, knocking so softly that he did
not hear at first; then, when the knock was repeated, he made no answer
to it, for he would rather be left alone. Ordinarily, Magdalen would
have turned back without venturing to enter; but she was desperate now.
She _must_ see Roger that night, and she resolutely turned the door-knob
and went into his presence.
Roger lifted up his head as she came in, and then sprang to his feet,
startled by her white face and the change in her appearance since he saw
her last. Then she had stood before him in the hall, winding the scarf
around his neck, her face glowing with health and happiness and girlish
beauty, and her eyes shining upon him like stars. They were very bright
now, unnaturally so he thought, and there was a glitter in them which
reminded him of the woman in the cars who had left her baby with him.
“Magdalen,” he said, as he went forward to meet her. “I did not think
you had been so sick as your looks indicate. Let me lead you to the
sofa.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off and sank into a
chair close beside the one he had vacated.
“Don’t touch me yet, Roger, oh Roger,” she began, and Roger’s heart gave
a great leap, for never before had she called him thus to his face.
“Excuse me for coming here to-night. I know it is not maidenly, perhaps,
but I must see you, and tell you it was all a horrible mistake. I did
not know what I was doing. Hester talked so much about that loose board
in the garret and something hidden under it, that once, a week ago or
more, it seems a year to me, I went up to shut a window; my curiosity
led me to look under the floor, and I found it, Roger, and read it
through, and Frank came and surprised me, and then the secret was no
longer mine, and I—oh, Mr. Irving, I wanted to keep it from you,
till—till—I cannot explain the whole, and I don’t know at all how it
came into your hands. Can you forgive me, Roger? I could have burned it
at once or had it burned, but I dared not. Would you have liked me
better if I had destroyed it?”
She stopped speaking now, and held her hands toward Roger, who took them
in his own and pressed them with a fervor which brought the blood back
to her cheeks and made her very beautiful as she sat there before him.
“No, Magda,” he said, “I am glad you did not destroy it. I would rather
meet with poverty in its direct form than know that you had done that
thing; for it would have come to light some time, and I should have felt
that in more ways than one I had lost my little girl.”
He was speaking to her now as he had done when she was a child, and one
of his hands was smoothing her soft hair; but he was thinking of Frank,
and there was nothing of the lover in his caress, though it made
Magdalen’s blood throb and tingle to her finger tips, for she knew he
did not hate her as she had feared he might.
“The will should never have been hidden,” he said. “Hester did very
wrong. Do you know the particulars?”
“I know nothing except that I found it and you have it,” Magdalen
replied, and briefly as possible Roger told her the substance of
Hester’s story, smoothing over as much as possible Mrs. Irving’s guilt,
because she was to be Magdalen’s mother-in-law.
Before he spoke of the letter left by his father, Magdalen had taken it
from her pocket and held it in her hand. He knew it was the missing
letter, but did not offer to take it until his recital was ended, when
Magdalen held it to him and said, “This is the letter; it was in the
box, and I kept it to give to you myself in case you should ever know of
the will. I have not read it. You do _not_ believe I would read it,” she
added in some alarm, as she saw a questioning look in his face.
Whatever he might have suspected, he knew better now, and he made her
lie down upon the sofa, and arranged the cushions for her head, and
then, standing with his back to her, opened the letter, and read that
message from the dead. And as he read, he grew hard and bitter toward
the man who could be so easily swayed by a lying, deceitful woman. He
knew Magdalen was watching him, and probably wondering what was in the
letter, and knew, too, that she could not fully believe in his mother’s
innocence without more proof than his mere assertion. Of all the people
living he would rather Magdalen should think well of his mother, and
after a moment’s hesitancy he turned to her, and said:
“I want you to see this, Magda. I want you to know why I was
disinherited, and then you must hear my poor mother’s letter, and judge
yourself if she was guilty.”
He turned the key in the door, so as not to be interrupted, and then
came back to Magdalen, who had risen to a sitting posture, and who took
the letter from his hand while he adjusted the shade so that the glare
of the lamp would not shine directly in her eyes as she read it.