MAGDALEN AND THE MYSTERY.
A mystery no longer, but a living, breathing, panting woman, with wild,
rolling eyes, masses of jet-black hair streaked with gray streaming down
her back, and long white arms and hands, which beat the air helplessly
as she tried to escape from the firm grasp of her attendant, Mrs. Jenks.
It was Magdalen’s first close contact with a maniac, and she drew back a
step or two, appalled by the wild outcry with which the woman greeted
her, and the desperate spring she made toward the spot where she was
standing. For an instant she was tempted to flee from the room, but Mrs.
Jenks had her patient under control by virtue of superior strength.
There was no escaping from the vice-like grasp of her strong arms, and
so Magdalen stood still and gazed spellbound upon the terrible
spectacle.
“Come nearer and see what effect your speaking to her will have. She has
asked for you all night; she will not hurt you,” Mrs. Jenks said, and
Magdalen went up to the poor, restless, tossing creature, and sitting
down upon the bed took in her own the hot hand which was extended toward
her.
“Can I do anything for you, Mrs. Grey?” she said, softly caressing the
wasted hand which held hers so tightly.
Quick as lightning a gleam of anger shot from the black eyes as the
woman replied:
“Don’t insult _me_ by calling me _Mrs. Grey_. That name has been a curse
to me from the moment I bore it. Call me _Laura_, or nothing!”
“Well, then, Laura, can I do anything to make you better?” Magdalen
said, and the woman replied, “Yes, stay with me always, and sing as you
did last night when I thought the angels called me; and put your hand on
my head;—feel how hot it is. There is a lost baby’s soul in there,
burning up for my sin.”
She carried Magdalen’s hand to her forehead, which was hot with fever
and excitement, and Magdalen could feel the blood throbbing through the
swollen veins.
“Poor Laura,” she said, “poor, sick woman! I am so sorry for you. I
would have come before if I had known you wanted me.”
“Yes but don’t waste time in words. I’ve had a plenty of those all my
life. Sing! sing! sing!—that is what I want,” interrupted the crazy
woman, and sitting on the bed, with the hot hand grasping hers, Magdalen
tried to think what she could sing that would soothe her excited
patient.
There was a trembling in her joints and a choking sensation in her
throat which seemed to preclude the possibility of her singing, but she
made a great effort to control herself, and at last began the beautiful
hymn, “Peace, troubled soul,” her voice growing in steadiness and
sweetness and volume as she saw the effect it had upon poor Laura, whose
eyes grew soft and gentle, and finally filled with tears, which rolled
in great drops down her sunken cheeks.
Mrs. Jenks had relaxed her vigilance now, and Laura lay perfectly still,
listening with rapt attention to the song, and keeping her eyes fixed
upon Magdalen’s face, as if there were some spell to hold them there.
“Who are you?” she asked, when the song had ceased. “Where did you come
from and what is your name?”
“I came to live with Alice. You know Alice,” Magdalen said,—“she is your
daughter.”
“Yes, one of them; but not _that_ one, over there in the cradle. Please
give it a little jog. I can’t have my baby waking up and crying, for
that disturbs Arthur, and he might send it away to goat’s milk and a wet
nurse. Give it a jog, please.”
She pointed to the head of her bed, and for the first time Magdalen
observed a pretty little rosewood crib, with dainty pillow-cases,
ruffled and fluted, and snowy Marseilles quilt, spotlessly white and
clean. But there was no infant’s head upon the pillow, no little hands
outside the spread, or sound of infant’s breathing.
The crib was empty, and Magdalen glanced inquiringly at Mrs. Jenks, who
said:
“You may as well rock it first as last. She will give you no peace till
you do. It’s a fancy of hers that there’s a baby there, and she
sometimes rocks it day and night. She is always quiet when she is on
that tack, but sometimes the baby gets out of the cradle into her head,
and then there is no pacifying her. Her tantrum is over now, and, if you
are willing, I’ll leave her with you a few moments. I shan’t be out of
hearing. My room is across the hall.”
She was evidently anxious to get away; and Magdalen, who would not
confess to any fear, was left alone with the crazy woman. She had drawn
the crib nearer to her, and with her foot upon the rocker kept it in
motion, while Laura commenced a low, cooing sort of lullaby of “Hush, my
darling! mother’s near you!”
The novelty of her situation, and the wakefulness of the previous night,
began to have a strange effect on Magdalen, and, as she rocked the
cradle to the sound of that low, mournful music, it seemed to her as if
it were her own self she was rocking, herself far back in that past of
which she knew so little. There was a dizzy feeling in her head, a
humming in her ears, and for a few moments she felt almost as crazy as
the woman at her side. But as she became more accustomed to the room and
the situation, she grew calmer and less nervous, and could think what it
was better to reply to the strange questions her companion sometimes put
to her.
“If a person killed something and didn’t know it, and didn’t mean to,
and didn’t know as they had killed it, would God call them a murderer,
as He did Cain?”
This was one question, and Magdalen replied at random, that in such a
case it was no murder, and God would not so consider it.
“Then why has He branded me here in my head, where it keeps thump,
thump! just like the beating of a drum, and where it is so hot and
snarled?” Laura asked. Then, before Magdalen could reply, she continued:
“I did not mean to kill it, and I don’t think I did. I put it somewhere,
or gave it to somebody; but the more I try to think, the more it thumps,
and thumps, and I can’t make it out; only I didn’t; didn’t truly mean to
kill it. Oh, baby! No, no! I didn’t! I didn’t!”
She was sobbing in a pitiful kind of way, and Magdalen moved her
position so that she could take the poor, tired, “twisted” head upon her
bosom, while she soothed and comforted the moaning woman, softly
smoothing her tangled hair and asking her, at last, if she would not
like it brushed and put up out of her way.
“It will look nicer so,” she said; and, as Laura made no objection, she
brought the brush and comb from a little basket on the bureau, and then
set herself to the task of combing out the matted hair, which had been
sorely neglected since Alice went away.
“Allie will be glad to know I am so nice. She likes me neat and tidy,
but a woman with a child to tend cannot always keep herself as she
would,” Laura said, when the hair-dressing was ended and Magdalen had
buttoned her night-dress, and thrown around her a crimson shawl which
hung across the bed.
The woman herself was rocking the cradle now, and signaling Magdalen to
be quiet, for baby was waking up. To her there was a living, breathing
child in that empty cradle, and as her warning “sh-sh” rang through the
room, Magdalen shuddered involuntarily, and felt a kind of terror of
that crib, as if it held a goblin child. Suddenly Mrs. Grey turned to
her and said:
“You did not tell me your name, or else I have forgotten.”
“My name is Magdalen Lennox,” was the reply, and instantly the black
eyes flashed a keen look of curiosity upon the young girl, who winced a
little, but never turned her own eyes away from those confronting her so
fixedly.
“Magdalen,” the woman said, “Magdalen. That brings it back to me in
part. I remember now. That was the name I gave her when she was
christened, because I thought it would please Arthur, who was over the
sea. He wanted to call Alice that, but I was hot, and angry, and worried
in those days, and my temper ran very high, and I would not suffer it,
for out of Magdalen went seven devils, you know, and out of his Magdalen
went fourteen, I’m sure. She was a beautiful woman, I heard, and he
loved her better than he did me,—loved her first when he was young. I
found it out when it was too late. His mother told me so one day when
she couldn’t think of anything else to torment me with. The Duchess of
Beechwood! She’s out under the snow now, and her monument is as tall as
the Tower of Babel. She was a dreadful woman,—she and Clarissa both;
that was her daughter, and they just worried and tormented and hunted me
down, until I went away.”
Magdalen was gaining some insight into the family history of the Greys,
though how much of what she heard was true she could not tell. One
thing, however, struck her forcibly. She knew that poor Jessie Morton’s
second name was Magdalen, and from some source she had heard that Mr.
Grey used frequently to call her by that name, which he preferred to
Jessie, and when Mrs. Grey alluded to the beautiful woman whom her
husband had loved better than his wife, she felt at once that it was
Jessie to whom reference was made,—Jessie who had unwittingly made
trouble in this family,—Jessie for whom the father would have called
Alice, his first born, and for whom it would seem a later child was
subsequently named. She wanted so much to ask questions herself, but a
natural delicacy prevented her. She had no right to take advantage of a
lunatic’s ravings and pry into family matters, so she sat very quiet for
a few moments watching her patient, who said at last:
“Yes, that brings it back in part. St. Luke’s Church, and mother, and
Mr. and Mrs. Storms were sponsors, and we called one Madeline, and the
other Magdalen after the woman that Arthur liked the best. Did you ever
see her?”
“I’ve seen her picture. I lived in her house,” Magdalen replied:
“Tell me of her. Was she prettier than I am?—though how should you know
that, when you’ve only seen the gray-haired, wrinkled, yellow hag they
keep shut up so close at Beechwood? But I was handsome once, years ago,
when mother made those shirts for Arthur and I did them up, and he came
before they were done and sat by the table and watched me and said my
hands were too small and pretty to handle that heavy iron,—they would
look better with rings and diamonds, and he guessed he must get me some,
I wore a pink gingham dress that day, and hated ironing and sewing after
that, and wished I was a lady like those at the hotel where Arthur
boarded, and I took a dollar and bought a ring and put it on my finger,
and the next time he came he laughed and held my hand while he looked at
it, and told me he would get a better one if I would go with him to the
jeweller’s. Mother would not let me, and she had high words with him and
ordered him away and called him a hard name,—a villain, who only wanted
to ruin me. I was sick ever so long after that with something in my
head, though not like what’s got into it since. Arthur sent me flowers
and fruit and little notes, and came to the door to inquire, but still
mother would not believe him true. When I was most well he wrote a
letter asking me to meet him, and I ran away from mother and was
married, and had the rings at last,—a diamond and emerald and the plain
gold one,—and a white satin gown, and we travelled far and wide, and I
looked like a queen when he brought me here to the Duchess and Lady
Clarissa, and then to Penelope, who lived in New York, and wasn’t quite
so bad, though she snubbed me some. I was not as happy as I thought I
should be, for Arthur stayed so much in New York, and his mother was so
cold and grand and stiff, that I lay awake nights to hate her, and when
Alice was born the Duchess sent her out to nurse, because I was low-bred
and vulgar, and Arthur got sick of me and stayed in New York more than
ever, and left me to fight my way alone with the dragons, and I got so
at last that _I did fight good_.”
Her eyes were flashing fiercely, and Magdalen, who had listened
breathlessly to the strange story, could readily imagine just how that
black-eyed, high-spirited creature _did fight_, as she termed it, when
once she was fairly roused to action. There were rage and passion
delineated in every feature now, and her face was a bright purple as she
hurled her invectives against Arthur’s mother and sister Clarissa, who,
it would seem, had persecuted her so sorely, and who were now “lying
under the snow.”
“They gave me no peace day or night. They took Allie away. They turned
Arthur against me; they said I was low and ignorant and poor, and
finally they hinted that I was crazy,—made so by _temper_,—and _that_ I
would not stand, so I went away; and Arthur went East and I West to
mother, and the baby was born, which Arthur knew nothing about, and
mother died, and the other baby died, and I was alone, and went awhile
to Mrs. Storms; and then I drifted back here. I don’t know how, nor
when, nor where, nor what happened after I left Mrs. Storms only I lost
baby, but I didn’t kill it, Heaven knows I didn’t. I lost it, but
Providence sent it back, so I can see it, though nobody else does, and
it’s there in the cradle, and I’ve rocked it ever since, and worn the
carpet through. Don’t you see the white spots? Those are baby’s
footprints.”
She leaned over the side of the bed and pointed to the breadth of carpet
which was worn white and threadbare with the constant motion of the
crib. It was not the first carpet she had worn out, nor the second, for
“she had to rock to keep the baby quiet, even if it did annoy Arthur
so,” she said; and Magdalen’s heart ached for the poor, demented
creature, while in spite of all his faults she pitied the man who was
designated as Arthur, and who must suffer fearfully with such a wife.
Laura’s story, so long as it pertained to her girlhood and early married
life, had been quite connected and reasonable, and Magdalen gained a
tolerably clear understanding of the matter. Arthur Grey had
accidentally found this woman, who when young must have been as
beautiful as she was poor and lowly born. The obstacles thrown in his
way had only increased his passion, which finally outweighed every other
consideration, and led to a clandestine marriage, wholly distasteful to
the proud mother and sisters, who had so violently opposed poor Jessie
Morton. That they had made Laura’s life very unhappy; that the fickle
husband, grown weary of his unsophisticated wife, had cruelly neglected
her, until at last in desperation she had gone away, Magdalen gathered
from the story told so rapidly; but after that she failed to comprehend
what she heard. The baby which Laura said had died, and the one which
she did not kill and which she had christened Magdalen, with Mrs. Storms
as sponsor, were enigmas which she could not solve. It struck her as a
strange coincidence that she herself and the lost baby of the Greys
should have borne the same name, and for the same woman; and she
wondered what it was about that child which had affected the mother so
strangely and put such wild fancies into her head. Her hand had dropped
from the cradle now, the rocking had ceased, and the tired, worn-out
woman, who had tossed and shrieked and struggled the livelong night, was
falling asleep. Once, as her heavy lids began to droop, she started up,
and reaching for Magdalen’s hand, said to her, “Don’t leave me! I am
better with you here. Stay and sing more songs to me about the troubled
soul. It makes me feel as if I was in Heaven.”
She held Magdalen’s hand in her own, and Magdalen sang to her again,
while the tears rained from Laura’s eyes, and rolled down her faded
cheeks.
“Let me cry; it does me good,” she said, when Magdalen tried to soothe
her. “It cools me, and my head seems to grow clearer about the baby. It
will come to me by and by, what I did with her. Oh, my child, my
darling, God has surely kept her safe somewhere.”
She was talking very low and slowly, and Magdalen watched her until the
lips ceased to move, and the long eyelashes still wet with tears rested
upon the flushed cheeks. She was asleep at last, and Magdalen, looking
at her, knew that she must have been beautiful in her early girlhood
when Arthur Grey had won her for his bride. Traces of beauty she had
yet, in the regularity of her features, her well-shaped head, her
abundant hair, with just a little ripple in it, her white forehead, and
even teeth which showed no signs of decay. She was not old either, and
Magdalen thought how young she must have been when she became a wife.
“Poor woman! her life has been a failure,” she said, as she drew the
covering around the shoulders and over the hands, on one of which the
wedding ring and a superb diamond were still shining.
Mrs. Jenks seemed in no hurry to resume her post, and weary from her
wakefulness of the previous night, Magdalen settled herself in the large
easy chair by the bed, and was soon so fast asleep, that until twice
repeated she did not hear Honora, who came to tell her that breakfast
was waiting for her.