ALICE AND MAGDALEN.
Magdalen gave one anxious glance at herself in the mirror as she sprang
up, and then hastened to unbolt the door and admit Alice Grey. She knew
it was Alice, though she had never imagined her one half so beautiful as
she seemed now in her white dress, with her chestnut hair falling in
soft curls about her face and neck, and her great dreamy blue eyes,
which had something so pitiful and pleading in their expression. She was
very slight and not as tall as Magdalen, who felt herself a great deal
larger and older than the little, pale-faced girl, whose white cheeks
had in them just the faintest coloring of pink as she held out her hand
and said, “You are Miss Lennox, I know. Auntie wanted me to wait till
she could introduce me, or till you came down to dinner, but I was
anxious to see somebody young and new, and fresh. I go out so little
that I get tired of the faces seen every day.”
“Perhaps you will get tired of mine,” Magdalen suggested, laughingly.
“Perhaps I may, but it will be a long time first,” Alice replied,
leading Magdalen to the window where she could see her more distinctly.
There was an expression of surprise or wonder, or both, in her face now,
as she said, “Where have I met you before, Miss Lennox?”
“I do not think we have ever met before; at least not to my knowledge,”
Magdalen replied, while Alice continued:
“I must have seen you or somebody like you. I can’t be mistaken in those
eyes. Why, they are like—”
Alice stopped suddenly, and the color all faded from her cheeks and
lips, while Magdalen looked curiously at her.
“You’ve never been abroad?” Alice asked, after a moment, during which
she had studied Magdalen closely.
“Never,” was the reply, and Alice continued:
“And I have been away seven years, and so it cannot be; but you do not
seem a stranger, and I am so glad. I opposed your coming at first,—that
is, I was opposed to having any one come just to entertain me, and when
auntie wrote from New York that she had engaged a Miss Lennox, I saw you
directly, some tall, lank, ugly woman, who wore glasses and would bore
me terribly.”
“Do I come up to your ideal,” Magdalen asked, her heart warming more and
more toward the young girl, who replied:
“You are seeking for a compliment, for of course you know just how
beautiful and brilliant and sparkling you are; only that sudden turn of
your head and flash of your eyes does bother me so. And you are young,
too. As young as I am, I guess. I am twenty-one.”
“And I am nineteen,” Magdalen rejoined, while Alice exclaimed:
“Only nineteen! That _is_ young to be doing for one’s self; young to
come here, to care for me, in _this_ house.”
She seemed to be talking in an absent kind of way, and her eyes, which
were looking far off across the river, had in them a sad, sorry
expression, as if to care for _her_, in _that_ house, was a lot not to
be envied. Turning suddenly to Magdalen, she asked: “_Are you nervous,
Miss Lennox?_”
That was the fourth time this question had been put to Magdalen, who
laughed a little hysterically as she replied:
“I never supposed I was, but fear I shall be if questioned again upon
the subject. Your aunt asked me twice if I was nervous, and Mr. Guy
Seymour once.”
As she said the last name, Alice colored a little, but she merely
answered:
“You saw cousin Guy in New York; auntie’s husband was his uncle, but I
call him cousin just the same. Did he say when he was coming to
Beechwood?”
“At Christmas, I believe,” Magdalen replied, wondering that Alice paid
no heed to what she had said of her nervousness.
She was standing with her hands clasped, and the same expression in her
eyes which Magdalen had observed before. She was evidently thinking of
something foreign to Guy Seymour, or nervousness, and she stood thus
until Magdalen heard in the hall outside the opening of a door, and
caught the faintest possible sound like a human cry. She might not have
noticed it at all but for the effect it had on Alice, who started
suddenly from her dreamy attitude, and said:
“I must go now, Miss Lennox. I shall see you at dinner, which will be
served in an hour. I am so glad you have come to me. I feel stronger
with you already,—feel as if you would do me good,—do us all good,
perhaps. _Au revoir_, till dinner time.”
She flitted from the room, and Magdalen heard again the quick closing of
a door down the hall. Then all was still, and the house was as silent as
if she were its only occupant. It had not occurred to her that there was
any mystery at Beechwood, any grief or shame which the family tried to
cover up, but the moment Alice was gone she felt a weight settling down
upon her, a feeling of loneliness and desolation, which she called
homesickness, and burying her face among the pillows of the
tempting-looking bed, she wept bitterly for a few moments. Then,
remembering dinner, she dried her eyes and commenced unpacking her
trunks, which had been sent up while Alice was with her.
“I shall not be expected to dress much. This will do very nicely,” she
thought, as she shook out the folds of a heavy black silk, made the
winter before by Mrs. Irving’s dressmaker.
It was trimmed with the softest, daintiest lace, for everything
pertaining to her wardrobe had been perfect, and she looked fit to grace
any assemblage when at last Alice came to take her down to the parlor,
where Arthur Grey was waiting for them.