AT BEECHWOOD.
It was not possible for Mrs. Seymour to keep perfectly quiet with regard
to the cause of Magdalen’s sudden journey to Cincinnati, especially as
Alice herself talked and wondered so much about it. Little by little it
came out, until Alice had heard the entire story, which made her for a
time almost as crazy as Laura herself. A few lines from Guy written
hurriedly in the cars, on his way to Schodick, told her at last that
what she hoped was true, and then in the solitude of her room she knelt,
and amid tears of joy and choking sobs paid her vows of praise and
thanksgiving, and asked that she might be made worthy of the priceless
gift so suddenly bestowed upon her. The next day a telegram from her
father apprised her that he would be home that night “with Magdalen,
your sister;” and Alice kissed the words “your sister,” and repeating
them softly to herself went dancing about the house, now explaining to
the astonished servants, and again trying to convey some definite idea
to the darkened mind of her mother. But Laura’s only answer was, “Baby
is in the cradle. I see her if you do not.”
She was, however, pleased that Magdalen was coming home, and asked to be
made “tidy and nice, so that Magda would be glad.”
Once, as Alice was buttoning the clean wrapper and arranging the crimson
shawl, which gave a soft tint to the sallow, faded face, the poor
creature’s lip quivered a little as she said, “Am I really nice, and
will Arthur kiss me, think you? I wish he would. It might make me
better. Your talk of Cincinnati has brought queer things back to me, and
sometimes I can almost get hold of how it was, then it goes again. I
wish Arthur _would_ kiss me.”
“I hope he will. I think he will,” Alice said, her own kisses falling in
showers upon the wasted face of the invalid, who seemed more rational
than she had for many weeks.
As the day wore on and the hour approached for the travellers to arrive,
Alice grew very restless and impatient, and would not for an instant
leave the window where she watched anxiously for the carriage.
“They are coming; they are here,” she cried at last, and running into
the hall she was the first to welcome Magdalen, whose face was drenched
with tears, and whose heart throbbed with an entirely new sensation of
happiness as she felt Alice’s kisses upon her lips and the tight clasp
of her arms about her neck.
Aunt Penelope came next, and though her greeting was more in accordance
with perfect propriety, there was much genuine affection and kindness in
it, and Magdalen knew that she believed in her and accepted her as a
niece. Mr. Grey was nowhere to be seen. He had stood an instant and
looked on when Alice and Magdalen first met, then he vanished from
sight, and Alice found him half an hour later in her mother’s room,
whither he had gone at once. Perhaps the recovery of his daughter had
brought back something of his olden love for Laura, or there were really
better impulses at work within, for his first thought was for his wife,
and when, as he came in, she asked if “She did not look nice,” he
stooped and kissed her as he had not done in years; and the poor
creature, who had known so much suffering, clung to him, and laying her
aching head upon his bosom, sobbed and wept like a child, saying to
herself, “he did, he did—kiss me,—he did—”
“Laura,” Mr. Grey said, softly, when she had grown a little calm, “try
to understand me, won’t you? The lost baby is found. It is Magdalen,
too, whom a kind man took care of. We have seen Mrs. Storms in
Cynthiana; you remember her?”
Laura remembered Mrs. Storms, and for a few moments the fixed expression
of her eyes and the drawn look about her forehead and mouth showed that
reason was making a tremendous effort to grasp and retain what she
heard. But it had been dethroned too long to penetrate the darkness now,
and when she spoke, it was to assert that “baby was in the cradle over
there; Magdalen was too big to be her baby.” Hopeless and disheartened,
Mr. Grey desisted in his attempts to make her understand, but stayed by
her till Alice came to say that dinner waited.
It was thought best that Magdalen should not see Laura until the next
morning, when it was hoped that she might convey some definite idea to
her mind. They were to meet alone, and after breakfast Magdalen repaired
to the sick-room, and entering unannounced, was received by her mother
with outstretched arms and a cry of joy.
“You’ve been gone long, Magda,—so long,” she said, “and my head has
ached so for you.”
“But I’ve come now to stay always. I have found the baby, too. Let me
tell you about it,” Magdalen replied, controlling her own emotions with
a mighty effort, and keeping as calm and composed as it was possible for
her to do. “I’ll make it like a story,” she said; and Laura listened
very quietly while Magdalen, beginning at the funeral of Mrs. Clayton,
went over the whole ground correctly, until she reached the _cars_ and
the _boy_ who took the baby.
Then she purposely deviated from the truth, and said it was a _woman_ to
whom the child was given.
“No, no, not a woman,” Laura exclaimed, vehemently. “It was a boy, and I
sat with him, and my head was all in a snarl. I fell when I got out of
the stage in Cincinnati, and struck it a heavy blow on the pavement, and
it set to buzzing so loud.”
Here was something of which Magdalen had never heard; the blow on the
head would account for the culmination of the queer fancies which must
have been gathering in Laura’s brain for months and years, and which
broke out suddenly into decided insanity. If that were true she could
understand better than she did before why she had been abandoned; but
she did not stop then to reason about it. She was too anxious to keep
her mother to the point, and when she paused a moment she said to her,
“You fell and hurt your head on the pavement, and then got into the
train.”
“Yes, the next day, or the next, I don’t know which, my head ached so,
and I didn’t know anybody to tell, and I had baby to care for, and I
thought the Grand Duchess would get her as she did Alice, and shut me
up, and the boy looked good and true, and I gave her to him, and got out
and thought I’d run away, and there was another train standing there,
and I took it and went I don’t know where, nor what else, only I was
back in Cincinnati again, and after a great while got here to the Grand
Duchess, with the baby safe as safe could be. My head was sore a long
time, but I did not tell them about the blow for fear they’d say I was
crazy, but they said it just the same.”
She was getting excited, and anxious to make the most of the present
opportunity, Magdalen took up the story herself, and told what the boy
did with the child, and how he called her Magdalen, after the same lady
for whom Mrs. Grey had named her, and how the child grew to a woman, and
came out at last to Beechwood, sent there by Heaven to find her sister,
and minister to her poor mother, who did not know her at first, but who
would surely know her now.
“Don’t you, _mother_; don’t you know I am your daughter Magdalen?”
For an instant Laura seemed to comprehend her. There was a perplexed
look on her face, then her lip began to quiver and her tears to come,
and throwing her arms around Magdalen’s neck, she said, “Mother, mother,
you call me that as Alice does. You say you are the baby, and Arthur
said so too. I wish I could remember, but I can’t. Oh, I don’t know what
you mean, but you make me so happy!”
And that was Magdalen’s success, with which she tried to be satisfied,
hoping there might come a time when the cloud would lift enough for her
to hear her mother call her daughter, and feel that she knew what she
was saying.
The next day Guy came from Schodick. Magdalen was the first to meet him,
and her eyes asked the question her lips would never have uttered.
“No, _Miss Grey_” Guy said, laughingly, adopting the name which sounded
so oddly to her. “He did not send any written reply to your note. There
is some _confounded bother_ on his mind, I could not divine what;
something which sealed his lips, though his face and eyes and manner had
‘Magdalen, Magdalen,’ written all over and through them. Don’t look so
sorry, cousin,” he continued, winding his arm around her waist, “and
don’t try to look so innocent, either. I guessed the whole thing when
you handed me the note, and I know it for certain now. You love Roger
Irving, he loves you. There is nothing truer than that, but there is
something between you,—what, I don’t know,—but I’ll find it out. I’ll
clear it up. He is a splendid fellow, and almost idolized, I judge, by
the people of Schodick. Not much like his nephew Frank,——”
Here Guy stopped suddenly, for Mr. Grey was coming in with Alice, who
asked the result of his visit to Mr. Irving.
“I have learned but little that we did not know before,” Guy said. “Mr.
Irving’s description of the woman who left the child tallies exactly
with what I should suppose Mrs. Grey might have been at that time. A
woman of twenty or thereabouts, medium size, dressed in mourning,
carrying a satchel, with black hair and eyes,—the woman I mean, not the
satchel,—restless, peculiar eyes they were, and he said he had
frequently noticed the same peculiarity about Magdalen’s, which means, I
take it, that they flash and glow and raise the mischief with a fellow.”
He gave a comical look at Magdalen, and did not observe the frown on Mr.
Grey’s face, but Magdalen did, and felt a throb of pain as she saw a new
obstacle laid across the path to Roger. There were many things she
wanted to ask Guy about that home in Schodick which she could not ask
with her father and Alice present, and she felt as if she must cry
outright with pain and disappointment. Guy, however, was not one to lose
much of what was passing around him, and after telling Mr. Grey the
particulars of his interview with Roger, he sauntered towards the
library, knowing that Magdalen would follow him. And she did, and
blushed scarlet at the whistle he gave as he said, “I knew you would
come. Now what shall I tell you? What do you want to know most?”
He had her secret. There was no use in trying to conceal it, and
Magdalen did not try, but said, “Don’t laugh at me, Guy. Think what
Roger has been to me all these years, and tell me how he looks, and
about the house, and does he work very hard? Oh, Guy, he was made poor
by _me_, you know, and I have _all_ my wages saved up ready to send him,
but now I can’t earn any more, and what I’ve got is so little.”
Her tears were rolling down her cheeks, but she brushed them away and
looked half indignantly at Guy, who laughed merrily as he said: “The
absurdity of your sending money to Roger. He does not need it; take my
word for that. The house is old, old as the hills, I reckon, judging
from its architecture, but very comfortable and neat as a lady’s
slipper. I saw no marks of poverty. The neighbors did not send in
anything while I was there, and we had a grand dinner. I dined with him,
you see, on solid silver, too, with wine and Malaga grapes; though come
to think of it, the grapes were a present from Frank, who sent a box
from New York. That Frank is living fast and doing the magnificent on a
great scale, I reckon, but I’d rather be Roger than he.”
“Didn’t Roger say anything to my note?” Magdalen asked, more interested
in that than in Frank and Malaga grapes.
“No, he didn’t, except, ‘Tell Magdalen I will answer this by and by,’”
Guy said; “but he seemed glad for you in one sense, and then again he
didn’t. I should say, if I am any judge of mankind, that he was afraid
that the gulf between the rich Miss Grey and the poor Mr. Irving was
wider than he could span, but I may be mistaken; at all events it is
sure to come right in time. As I said before, he is a splendid chap, and
you have my consent.”
Guy was very hopeful, very comforting, and Magdalen felt better after
this talk with him, and looked anxiously for the letter which Roger was
to send, and which came at last. A kind, brotherly letter, in which he
said how glad he was for her that she had found her friends, and
disclaimed all idea of her having ever brought trouble to him.
“You have been the source of the greatest happiness I have ever
enjoyed,” he wrote; “and I would give a dozen fortunes rather than not
have known you, and enjoyed you for the few years I called you mine, my
sister, my child, my _Magda_. Once I could have cursed the man who lured
my mother to her ruin, and cursed his children, too; but I did not then
dream that such a curse would cover the beautiful child of my adoption.
Heaven bless you, Magda, in _all_ your new relations! Heaven make you
happy in them as you deserve to be! Once I hoped I might see you at
Schodick, and I have thought how I would take you around the old farm,
and to the places hallowed by my mother’s footsteps, and pictured to
myself just what you would say, and just how you would look. But that
dream is over now. I cannot ask you to come. You would not care to, nor
your father care to have you. Remember me to him, if you like. Since I
know he is your father, I feel no bitterness toward him. Good-by! And
God bless you, and bring you, at last, to the Heaven where I hope to
find my little girl again!”
This was Roger’s letter, over which Magdalen wept tears of pain, mingled
with tears of joy,—joy, that he loved her still,—for only in that way
could she construe some portions of his letter; and pain that he should
write as if all intercourse between them was necessarily at an end; that
he was probably never to see her; she never to go to Schodick, when she
had within the last few days thought so much about it, and planned how
she could, perhaps, get her father and Alice to go with her, and thus
show Roger to them. That plan had failed, that castle fallen, and
Magdalen wept its fall, wondering what had come over Roger, and what he
meant by some portions of his letter. She did not know how, for a
moment, Roger had writhed under the knowledge that she was the daughter
of Arthur Grey; or how the fact had seemed at once to build an iron wall
between him and the girl he loved better than his life. Then, just as he
was recovering from the first great shock, and hope was beginning to
make itself heard again, Guy had unwittingly put his oar into the
troubled waters, and made them ten times worse. In his enthusiasm about
Magdalen, whom he extolled as all that was lovely and desirable, he gave
Roger the impression that between himself and Magdalen there already
existed an intimacy which would ripen into relations of a closer nature
than mere friends. And Roger listened to him with a face which told no
tales, and a heart which throbbed with jealousy and pain; and then,
feeling that he must know something definite, said to him, just as he
was leaving:
“Excuse me, Mr. Seymour, if I seem impertinent. From what you have said,
I gather that you hope, one day, to be more to Mr. Grey than his
sister’s nephew.”
And Guy, thinking only of Alice at that moment, had replied:
“You are something of a Yankee, I _guess_. But you are right in your
conjectures. I do hope to be more to Mr. Grey than his sister’s nephew;
but there’s no telling. Girls are riddles, you know.”
And then good-natured, kind-hearted Guy had gone his way, leaving in
Roger’s mind an impression which drifted his life farther and farther
away from Magdalen, whose heart went out after him now with a stronger
desire than it had ever known before.