CHRISTMAS-TIDE.
It was the second Christmas after Magdalen’s bridal, and fires were
kindled in all the rooms at Millbank, and pantries and closets groaned
with their loads and loads of eatables; and Hester Floyd bustled about,
important as ever, ordering everybody except the nurse who had come with
Mrs. Guy Seymour and her baby, the little four-months-old girl, whose
name was Laura Magdalen, and who, with her warm milk and cold milk, and
numerous paraphernalia of babyhood, kept the kitchen a good deal stirred
up, and made Hester chafe a little inwardly. But, then, she said “she
s’posed she must get used to these things,” and her face cleared up, and
her manner was very soft and gentle every time she thought of the crib
in Magdalen’s room, where, under the identical quilt the poor heathen
would never receive, slumbered another baby girl, Magdalen’s and
Roger’s, which had come to Millbank about six weeks before, and over
whose birth great rejoicings were made. _Jessie Morton_ was its name,
and Guy and Alice had stood for it the Sunday before, and with Aunt Pen
were to remain at Millbank through the holidays, and help Magdalen to
entertain the few friends invited to pass the week under Roger’s
hospitable roof.
The world had gone well with Roger since he came back to Millbank.
Everything had prospered with which he had anything to do. The shoe-shop
had been rebuilt, and the mill was never more prosperous, and Roger bade
fair soon to be as rich a man as he had supposed himself to be before
the will was found. On his domestic horizon no cloud, however small, had
ever rested. Magdalen was his all-in-all, his choicest treasure, for
which he daily thanked Heaven more fervently than for all his other
blessings combined. And, amid his prosperity, Roger did not forget to
render back to Heaven a generous portion of his gifts, and many and many
a sad heart was made glad, and many a poor church and clergyman were
helped, quietly, unostentatiously, and oftentimes so secretly that they
knew not whence came the aid, but for which they might have given up in
utter despair and hopelessness.
Magdalen approved and assisted in all her husband’s charities, and her
heart went out after the sad, sorrowful ones, with a yearning desire to
make them as happy as herself. Especially was this the case that
Christmas time, when to all her other blessings a baby had been added,
and she made it a season for extra gifts to the poor and needy who,
through all the long winter, would be more comfortable because of her
generous remembrance.
When the list of guests to be invited for the holidays was being made
out, she sat for a moment by Roger’s side, with her eyes fixed musingly
on the bright fire in the grate. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Irving’s names
were on the list, with that of Grace and the young clergyman to whom she
was engaged, and Roger waited for Magdalen to say if there was any one
else whom she would have.
“Yes, Roger, there is. Perhaps you won’t approve, but I should like to
ask Mrs. Walter Scott, if you don’t object too much. She has a dreary
time at best, and this will be a change. She may not come, it’s true;
but she will be pleased to know we remember her.”
Roger had entertained the same thought, but refrained from giving
expression to it from a fear lest Magdalen would not like it, and so
that day a cordial invitation to pass the holidays at Millbank was
forwarded to the boarding-house in New York which Mrs. Walter Scott was
actually keeping as a means of support. Her _oil_ had _failed_, as well
as the bank which held her money. “There might be something for her some
time, perhaps, but there was nothing now,” was the report of the lawyer
employed to investigate the matter, and then she began to realize how
utterly destitute she was. Frank could not help her, and as she was too
proud to ask help of Roger, she finally did what so many poor,
discouraged women do, opened a boarding-house in a part of the city
where she would not be likely to meet any of her former friends, and
there, in dull, dingy rooms, with forlorn, half-worn furniture and faded
drapery, all relics like herself of former splendors, she tried to earn
her living. The goods which she managed to smuggle away from Millbank
served her a good turn now, and pawnbrokers and buyers of old silver and
pictures soon made the acquaintance of the tall lady with light hair and
traces of great beauty, who came so often to their shops, and seemed so
sad and desolate. Roger and Magdalen had been to see her once, and Frank
had been many times; but Bell never deigned to notice her, though she
was frequently in New York, and once drove past the boarding-house in a
stylish carriage with her velvets and ermine around her. Mrs. Walter
Scott did not see her, and so that pang was spared her. She had finished
her _book_, but the publishers one and all showed a strange obtuseness
with regard to its worth, and it was put away in her trunk, where others
thing pertaining to the past were buried.
The invitation from Millbank took her by surprise and made her cry a
little, but she hastened to accept it, and was there before her
daughter-in-law, and an occupant of her former room. She was old and
broken, and faded, and poor, and seemed very quiet, and very fond of
Magdalen’s baby, which she kept a great deal in her room, calling
herself its grandma, and thinking, perhaps, of another little one whose
loss no one had regretted save Frank, the father. He came at last with
Bell, who was very polite and gracious to her mother-in-law, whom she
had not expected to meet.
“Of course I am sorry for her,” she said to Magdalen, who was one day
talking of her, and wishing something might be done to better her
condition. “But what can I do. She refuses to receive _money_ from me,
and as for having her in my house no power on earth could induce me to
do that.”
Alas! for Bell. Man proposes, but God disposes, and the thing which no
power on earth could induce her to do was to be forced upon her whether
she would have it or not.
The Christmas dinner was a sumptuous one, and after it was over the
guests repaired to the parlors, where music and a little dance formed a
part of the evening’s entertainment. Mrs. Walter Scott was playing for
the dance. Her fingers had not yet forgotten their skill, and she had
good-naturedly offered to take the place of Grace Burleigh, who gave up
the more willingly because of the young clergyman looking over a book of
engravings and casting wistful glances toward her. Whether it was the
dinner, or the excitement, or a combination of both, none could tell,
but there was suddenly a cessation of the music, a crash among the keys,
and Mrs. Walter Scott turned toward the astonished dancers a face which
frightened them, it was so white, so strange, and so distorted.
Paralysis of one entire side was the verdict of the physician who was
summoned immediately and did all he could for the stricken woman, from
one half of whose body the sense of feeling was gone, and who lay in her
room as helpless as a child. Gradually her face began to look more
natural, her speech came back again, thick and stammering, but tolerably
intelligible, and her limp right hand moved feebly, showing that she was
in part recovering. For three weeks they nursed her with the utmost
care, and Bell stayed by and shrank from the future which she saw before
her, and from which she wished so much to escape. In her womanly pity
and sympathy Magdalen would have kept the paralytic woman at Millbank,
but Roger was not willing that her young life should be burdened in this
way, and he said to Frank and Bell:
“Your mother’s place is with her children. If you are not able to take
care of her, I am willing to help; but I cannot suffer Magdalen to take
that load of care.”
So it was settled, and Bell went home to Boston and prepared an upper
room, which overlooked the Common, and then came back to Millbank, where
they made the invalid ready for the journey. Her face was very white and
there was a look of dreary despair and dread in her eyes, but she
uttered no word of protest against the plan, and thanked Roger for his
kindness, and kissed the little Jessie and cried softly over her, and
whispered to Magdalen: “Come and see me often. It is the only pleasant
thing I can look forward too.”
And then Frank and Roger carried her out to the carriage which took her
to the cars, and that night she heard the winter wind howl around the
windows of the room to which she felt that she was doomed for life, and
which, taking that view of it seemed to her like a prison.
“The Lord is sure to remember first or last,” old Hester said, as she
watched the carriage moving slowly down the avenue, “and though I can’t
say I would have given her the shakin’ palsy if I’d of been the Lord, I
know it’s right and just, and a warnin’ to all liars and deceitful,
snoopin’ critters.”
Still Hester was sorry for the woman, and went to see her almost as
often as Magdalen herself, and once stayed three whole weeks, and took
care of her when Mrs. Franklin was away. Bell did not trouble herself
very much about her mother-in-law, or spend much time with her. She gave
orders that she should be well cared for and have everything she wished
for, and she saw that her orders were obeyed. She also went once a day
to see her and ask if she was comfortable; but after that she felt that
nothing further was incumbent upon her. And so for all Mrs. Walter Scott
knew of the outer world and the life she had once enjoyed so much, she
was indebted to Grace, who before her marriage passed many hours with
the invalid, telling her of things which she thought would interest her,
and sometimes reading to her until she fell asleep. But after Grace was
gone Mrs. Walter Scott’s days passed in dreary loneliness and wretched
discontent. She had no pleasure in recalling the past, and nothing to
look forward to in the future. The remainder of her wretched life she
knew must be passed where she was not wanted, and where her son came but
once a day to see her and that in the evening just after dinner, when he
usually fell asleep while she was trying to talk to him.
Bell would _not_ suffer Frank to go into the city evenings unless she
accompanied him, for she had no fancy for having him brought to her in a
state of intoxication, as was once the case. And Frank, who was a good
deal afraid of her, remained obediently at home, and, preferring his
mother’s society to that of his wife, stayed in the sick-room a portion
of every evening; then, when wholly wearied there, went to his own
apartment and smoked in dreary solitude until midnight.
Such was Frank’s life and such the life of his mother, until there came
to her a change in the form of a second shock, which rendered one hand
and foot entirely helpless, and distorted her features so badly that she
insisted that the blinds should be kept closed and the curtains down, so
that those who came into her room could not see how disfigured she was.
And so in darkness and solitude her days pass drearily, with impatient
longings for the night, and when the night comes she moans and weeps,
and wishes it was morning. Poor woman! She is a burden to herself and a
terrible skeleton to her fashionable daughter-in-law, who in the gayest
scenes in which she mingles never long forgets the paralytic at home,
sinking so fast into utter imbecility, and as she becomes more and more
childish and helpless, requiring more and more care and attention.
The curse of wrong-doing is resting on Bell as well as on her husband
and his mother, and though she is proud and haughty and reserved as
ever, she is far from being happy, and her friends say to each other
that she is growing old and losing her brilliant beauty. Frank often
tells her of it when he has been drinking wine. He is not afraid of her
then, and after he found that it annoyed her he delighted to tease her
about her fading beauty, and to ask why she could not keep as young and
fresh and handsome as Magdalen. There was not a wrinkle in her face, he
said, and she looked younger and handsomer than when he first came home
from Europe and saw her at the Exhibition.
And well might Magdalen retain her girlish beauty, for if ever the
fountain of youth existed anywhere it was in her home at Millbank.
Exceedingly popular with the villagers, idolized by her husband,
perfectly happy in her baby, surrounded by every luxury which wealth can
furnish and every care lifted from her by old Hester’s thoughtfulness,
there has as yet been no shadow, however small, upon her married life,
and her face is as fair and beautiful, and her voice as full of glee as
when she sat with Roger by the river side and felt the first awakenings
of the love which has since grown to be her life.
And now we say farewell to Millbank, knowing that when sorrow comes to
its inmates, as it must some day come, it will not be such a sorrow as
enshrouds that gloomy house in Boston, for there is perfect love and
faith between the husband and the wife, with no sad, dreary retrospects
of wrong to make the present unendurable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.