THE HOME IN SCHODICK.
It was a quiet, old-fashioned farm-house, with gables and projections
and large rooms and pleasant fireplaces and low ceilings and small
windows, looking some of them toward the village, with its houses of
white nestled among the trees, and some of them upon the hills, whose
shadows enfolded the farm-house in an early twilight at night, and in
the morning reflected back the warm sunshine which lay so brightly upon
their wooded sides. There was a kitchen with a door to the north, and a
door to the south, and a door to the east, leading out into the
woodshed, and there were stairs leading to an upper room, and a
fire-place “big enough to roast an ox,” Hester said, when, with her
basket and bandbox and umbrella and camlet cloak and bird cage and
kittens and Aleck, she was dropped at her new home and began to
reconnoitre, deciding, first, that the late tenants of the place were
“shiffless critters, or they would never have lived there so long with
only a wooden latch and a wooden button on the outside door,” and
second, that they were “dirty as the rot, or they would never have left
them stains on the buttry shelf, that looked so much like cheese-mould.”
Hester was not altogether pleased with the house. It came a little hard
to change from luxurious Millbank to this old brown farm-house, with its
oaken floors and stone hearth and tiny panes of glass, and for a time
the old lady was as homesick as she could be. But this only lasted until
she got well to work in the cleaning process, which occupied her mind so
wholly that she forgot herself, and only thought how to make the house a
fitting place for her boy to come to after his travels West. Roger had
given her money with which to furnish the house, and she had added more
of her own, while Frank, when parting with her, had slipped into her
hands one hundred dollars, saying to her, “Roger is too proud to take
anything from me, and I want you to use this for the house.”
And so it was owing partly to Frank’s thoughtfulness and Hester’s
generosity that the farm-house, when renovated with paper and paint, and
furnished with the pretty, tasteful furniture which Hester bought,
looked as well and inviting as it did. The most pains had been taken
with Roger’s room, the one his mother occupied when a girl. Hester had
ascertained which it was from an inhabitant of Schodick, who had been
Jessie’s friend, and slept with her many a time in the room under the
roof, which looked off upon the pond and up the side of the steep hills.
The prettiest carpet was put down there, and curtains were hung before
the windows, and the bed made up high and clean with ruffled sheets and
pillow-cases, mementos of Millbank, and Jessie’s picture was hung on the
wall, the blue eyes seeming to look sadly round upon a spot they had
known in happier days than those when the portrait was taken. There were
flowers, too, in great profusion,—not costly, hot-house flowers, like
those which decked the rooms at Millbank, but sweet, home-flowers, like
those which grow around the doors and in the gardens of so many happy
New England homes,—the fragrant pink and old-fashioned rose and
honeysuckle and heliotrope, with verbenas and the sweet mignonette.
And here Roger came one pleasant July afternoon, when a heavy
thunder-storm had laid the dust, and cooled the air, and set every
little bird to singing its blithest notes, and, alas! soured the rich,
thick cream, which Hester had put away for the few luscious wild
strawberries which, late as it was for them, Mattie had found in the
meadow, by the fence, and picked for Mr. Roger. With the exception of
this little drawback, Hester was perfectly happy, and her face was
radiant when she met her boy at the door, and welcomed him to his new
home, taking him first to his own room, because it looked the prettiest,
and would give him the best impression.
Roger had been in Schodick once or twice when a boy, but everything now
was new and strange, while, struggle as he might against it, the
contrast between the old home and the new affected him painfully at
first, and it was weeks before he could settle down quietly, and give
his time and attention to the firm of which he at once became a member.
For days and days he found his chief solace in wandering over the hills
where his mother once had been, and exploring the shadowy woods, and
hunting out the rock under the overhanging pine, where she had crept
away from sight, and prayed that she might die, when the great sorrow
was in her heart, just as it was now in his. He found the spot at last,
just under the shadow of one great rock and on the ledge of another,
where the ground was carpeted thickly with the red pine of last year’s
growth, and the green, tasselated boughs above his head seemed to
whisper softly, and try to comfort him.
Here poor Jessie had knelt, and felt that her heart was breaking. And
here Roger sat, and felt that _his_ heart was broken.
He had tried not to think much of Magdalen, and during the novelty and
excitement of travelling he had not felt the bitter pain tugging at his
heart as it was tugging now, causing him to cry out, in his anguish:
“Oh, Magda, my darling! how can I live without you?”
He had his father’s letter with him, and he read it again there in the
dim light, and was struck, as he had never before been, with that clause
which said:
“And if, in the course of your life, there is one thing more than
another which you desire, I pray Heaven to grant it to you!”
He had read these lines many times, but they never impressed him so
forcibly as now. It was his father’s last invocation to Heaven in his
behalf. The one thing more than another which he desired was Magdalen,
and why had God withheld her from him? Why had He not heard and answered
the father’s prayer? Why had He dealt so harshly by the son, taking from
him everything which had hitherto made life desirable?
These were hard questions for a creature to ask its Creator. And Roger
felt hard and rebellious as he asked them, with his face among the cones
and withered pines, and from the pitiless skies above him there came no
answer back, for it is not thus that God will have His children question
Him.
Roger could not be submissive then, and for hours he sat there alone,
battling with his sorrow, and never trying to pray until at the very
last, when with a cry such as a wayward child gives when the will is
finally broken, he covered his face with his hands and prayed earnestly
to be forgiven for all the wicked, rebellious feelings he had cherished,
and for strength to bear whatever the future had in store for him. After
that he never gave way again as he had done before, though he went often
to that rock under the pine, and made it a kind of Bethel where, unseen
by mortal eye, he could tell his troubles to God, and go away with the
burden somewhat lightened.
They heard at the farm-house that Magdalen was improving slowly, and
then there came a rumor in a roundabout way, that the day for the bridal
was fixed, and that Mrs. Walter Scott was in New York selecting the
bridal trousseau. Roger’s face was very white for a few days after that,
and nothing had power to clear the shadow from his brow, until one
morning there came a letter to Hester Floyd from Magdalen herself, with
the delicate perfumery she always used lingering about it, and her
pretty monogram upon the seal. How Roger pressed the inanimate thing in
one hand and caressed it with the other, and how fast he carried it to
Hester, who was in the midst of working over her morning’s churning, but
who put the tray aside at once and washed her hands, and adjusted her
spectacles, while Roger stood by inwardly chafing at the delay and
longing to know what Magdalen had written. It was very short indeed, and
formal and stiff, and did not sound at all like Magdalen. She was quite
well now, and she wanted to thank Mrs. Floyd for all the care she had
taken of her before leaving Millbank.
“Mrs. Irving tells me you were very kind to me,” she wrote, “and
though I have no recollection that you or any one but Celine came near
me, I am grateful all the same, and shall always remember your
kindness to me both then and when I was a child, and such a care to
you; I am deeply grateful to all who have done so much for me, and I
wish them to know it, and remember me kindly as I do them. I am going
away soon, and I want to take with me all I brought to Millbank. I
have the locket, but the little dress I cannot find. Mrs. Irving
thinks you took it in the chest. Did you, and if so, will you please
send it to me at once by express, and oblige,
“Yours truly,
“MAGDALEN.”
That was the letter. Not one word in it to Roger, except as the sentence
beginning with “I am deeply grateful to _all_ who have done so much for
me,” was supposed to refer to him. She wished him to remember her kindly
as she did him, and she was going away from Millbank, but _where_, or
how, or with whom, Roger could not tell. Hester _knew_ she was going to
be married, though why “she should want to lug that dud of a slip round
with her finery was more than she could divine,” she said, as she
brought down the little spotted crimson dress, and wrapping it in thick
brown paper gave it to Roger to direct.
“Maybe you’ll write her a line or two for me; my hand is too shaky and
cramped,” she said to Roger, who shook his head and replied, “You must
answer your own letters, Hester;” but he directed the little parcel to
“Miss Magdalen Lennox, Belvidere,” and sent it on its way to Millbank.