MILLICENT.
Next morning, Joseph Naylor was disturbed in the act of shaving by the
intelligence that a lady desired to see him, and that she was waiting
his coming down-stairs in one of the parlours.
"A lady? Who is it? What does she want?" he inquired of the black boy
who brought the message.
"Principal of the Female College at Montpelier, sah."
"Never heard of the institution. Some one drumming up for pupils, I
suppose. My nieces are rather old to put to school. They would not go
if I tried to put them. Why does she not apply to their mother? Susan
never did allow me to interfere about the schools--or anything else,
for that matter, when she could manage without me."
He finished his dressing quickly, however, and hastened down-stairs.
In the parlour stood a tall, grey woman, clad in black, awaiting him.
He advanced with a low bow and a look of inquiry. The lady looked
earnestly in his face, coming forward to meet him with extended hand.
"You do not know me, Joseph?"
Joseph stared in surprise at so intimate a form of address; yet there
was a tone in the voice which seemed not unfamiliar, though he could
not connect it in his memory with any particular time, place, or
person.
"I am changed, of course,"--it was still the lady who spoke,--"but so
are you. Try if you cannot recall. It is five-and-twenty years since
we last met."
"You have the advantage, ma'am."
"My name is Millicent Rolph. You know me now?"
"You? Do you mean that you are Lina's sister?"
"I am, Joseph--your sister-in-law. You cannot have forgotten our last
meeting at the old home in New Orleans?"
"I can never forget the last time I met Millicent Rolph; but I trace
no resemblance between you and her. She was a woman of thirty,
dark-haired, large, handsome; you--do not resemble her."
"She was thirty twenty-five years ago, and you were twenty-two. The
years have left their mark upon us both. I cannot but be changed. I
have come through the troubles of a lifetime. There was the war, and
mother's death, and the ruin of our affairs in New Orleans; and there
have been trials and much hard work since then, to change me into the
spare, elderly, white-haired woman you see now. You are changed too,
though life has dealt less harshly, I should judge. Yet I recognised
you at once, though I had prayed that I might not--that you might
prove to be another man, bearing by accident the name of my
brother-in-law.... We were such friends once, Joseph, in the long ago.
Sitting under the shade of the magnolias in the dear old garden, with
Lina between us----"
"Have done, Millicent! I confess now that it is you. I recognise your
voice. But do not stir up old memories. They haunted me like ghosts
for more than twenty years. It is only recently that I have been able
to lay them.... Let them lie. You weighed me down with misery enough
when last we met. Do not refer to it. I had rather we had not met now.
It is like reopening a grave, even to hear you speak. It brings back
all I would forget--all I have been cheating myself into believing
that I had buried and got rid of at last."
"I can understand the feeling."
"What can I do to serve you? Tell me; but let us part at once. I will
do anything, but I cannot stand here listening. Your voice is heavy
with memories like forebodings; my heart sinks at the very sound.
Speak, and let me leave you. What do you want?"
"I want nothing, Joseph--nothing for myself. It is for your own sake I
am come, and it tears my heart to say the things I have to tell you."
"You said something like that when you acted so cruelly before, you
and your mother; but you did not spare me."
"I am come to warn you, Joseph, against this marriage you propose to
make."
"You are? Have you not injured me enough in my affections already? Are
five-and-twenty years of widowhood not enough to have inflicted on one
who never knowingly offended you? What wrong have I done you, that you
should persecute me like this?"
"Joseph, I always loved you like a sister. It crushes me to be made
the herald of your disappointments; but I have no choice."
"I will not listen to you. You shall not put me from Rose as you did
from Lina. Let me pass."
"You cannot marry Rose. You must stop and hear me;" and she planted
herself between him and the door.
"Then I must escape by the window; and there she is, standing at the
farther end of the gallery. How spirited and sweet she looks--how like
our Lina!... Millicent, you will pity, and not come in between? Look,
she sees us! She starts. She is coming to us with that pretty shyness
which seems half defiance. One would think she knew you well,
Millicent?"
"She does, Joseph. Listen to her when we meet; it will save a world of
painful explanation."
Rose came forward, not very quickly, though pride forbade her
faltering. She held her head erect, and her colour was heightened; but
her eyes were far from steady, and for all her endeavours to outface
the situation, betrayed an inclination to seek the ground.
"You here, Aunt Millicent? I did not know that you and Mr Naylor were
acquainted."
"_Aunt_ Millicent? Are you two related, then?" gasped Joseph, his
nether jaw falling.
"She is your own daughter, Joseph Naylor! It was to tell you so that I
sought you out--to preserve you from the hideous mistake you were
about to make. But oh! it breaks my heart that I should be your
messenger of evil tidings again."
Joseph leant against the window-jamb, looking very pale, and uttering
a sigh so deep that it sounded like a moan.
"Do you mean that she is Lina's child?" he said, after a pause.
"Yes; and yours."
"I never was told that I had a child. You might have told me that,
when you told the rest."
"Would it have been easier, think you, to bear the loss of Lina, if
you had been told that we were keeping you from your child? If we had
told you of her birth, perhaps you might have claimed her. Lina must
have learnt everything. She would have died of shame and remorse."
"When was the child born?"
"The day the news reached us of her father's loss at sea; her birth
was hastened by the news. The mother nearly died. She fell out of one
fainting-fit into another, till exhausted nature could endure no more.
For days her life hung trembling in the balance, and then the sight of
the baby turned the scale. There was something to live for--something
that seemed part of you. We took them North. The baby throve, and for
her sake poor Lina took heart and tried to live."
"And you deprived the child even of its father's name?"
"Hillyard adopted her. Lina had no other family. She lived five years
only after that marriage."
"Why did you not restore her to me when her mother died?"
"We could not, Joseph: the world is so big. Where were we to look for
you? You came no more to New Orleans. By-and-by the war drove us
North, and reduced us to poverty. Mother died. I went to live with
Hillyard and bring up the child. He was devoted to her. They were
everything to one another. It would have been cruelty to interfere."
"You seem to have had pity for every one but me, Millicent. Could this
Hillyard's rights in the child compare with mine?"
"You had gone out of our lives, Joseph. We knew--that is, I
knew--little about your family, except that they lived somewhere up in
Canada. That was too far away for us, living in New Orleans, to take
much interest in. Afterwards, when I lived with Hillyard in Canada,
near Sarnia, I did not remember, or know how to set about inquiring."
"You might have been more considerate, Millicent. You have had a care
for every one but me. I do not deny that you do your duty in
interfering to prevent me from marrying my own daughter; but you
should have begun sooner. To find an intended wife changed into a
daughter is--is--is a shock!"
"You will bear it, Joseph, like the man you are. In any case, you
could not have married this headstrong girl: she is another man's
wife."
Rose flushed, but said nothing. She and her Aunt Millicent had been
accustomed to each other's contradictious speeches all through life.
It was Joseph who came to the rescue of his new-found daughter.
"You should not speak so, Millicent, of your sister's child. You may
not hold with divorces in general, but you should keep quiet in this
case. If the law of her country declares her single, there is no
gainsaying it."
"That is just where the impediment stands, Joseph; for I have taken a
lawyer's advice. She is a single woman in the United States, and a
married one in British territory. She was married at Sarnia in Canada.
She is Bertie Roe's wife wherever British law prevails, seeing that
she was granted her divorce on grounds which a British court will not
allow. See the scrape your daughter is in! and use a father's
authority to send her back to her husband."
Rose tried to grow angry. She turned upon her aunt with a frown, to
repudiate the proposal and declare she would never go back. But the
words failed her; a strange, sweet weakness stole through every limb.
She felt conquered without knowing how, or desiring to know why. She
covered her face and burst into tears.
Millicent saw her opportunity. While father and daughter were still
struggling with themselves to regain composure, she sent for Roe,
presented him to his father-in-law, and explained the legal position
of his relation to his wife.
The wife kept her face concealed in her handkerchief, but she relented
so far as to let Bertie take her hand. To all expostulation she
declared that she could not do more. "Was she to make herself the
laughing-stock of the house? She was on American ground, where
Millicent herself acknowledged she was free; and she would remain so,
or go right away from everybody, if they teased her any more."
It was concluded at length that they should return to Canada that very
day. Roe, Mrs Naylor, Lucy, and Millicent, accompanied Rose and her
father; and Blount and Margaret were telegraphed to meet them at
Jones's Landing. There, away from the curious eyes of fellow-guests
who had been witnesses, if unconscious ones, of their little comedy,
the party at once fell into their readjusted relations with one
another. Joseph, with a grown-up and married daughter, naturally took
the position of benevolent patriarch and head of the family. He
associated Blount in his business, thereby securing that his niece
should not be carried away into the wilds, and contenting his
sister-in-law Susan, who thereafter maintained in private to Lucy that
she had carried her point after all, notwithstanding the seeming
defeat; as, but for the stand which she had made against Margaret's
living in the woods, it never would have occurred to Joseph to provide
for Blount, and settle the pair beside her at Jones's Landing.
From the moment Rose got into the railway at Narwhal Junction, she
slid contentedly back into Mrs Roe. No one ever again alluded to an
estrangement between the married pair, and Jones's Landing was left in
total ignorance that their married life had ever been other than the
even, trustful, and happy existence which it had now become. The two
seemed never apart, never weary of each other's society, yet never in
each other's way in fulfilling the duties of social life. The only
separation which took place between them was when Gilbert returned to
Chicago to wind up his affairs there, preparatory to settling in
Canada beside his father-in-law. Rose shrank from meeting again the
aiders and abettors who had encouraged her matrimonial escapades, of
which she was now thoroughly ashamed, as well as the friends who had
disapproved of her conduct. Having sealed a peace with her husband,
she was fain to forget that they had ever been divided. Scenes and
persons associated with the estrangement had become alike detestable
to her; she wished never to see or hear of them again. The only
occasion on which she has ever recurred to that miserable year of her
life was when, about twelve months after their establishment at
Jones's Landing, she came unexpectedly upon Bertie writing a letter,
with a case containing jewellery lying open on the desk beside him.
"What a lovely bracelet, Bertie!"
He looked up, colouring and confused, and drew the blotting-paper
across his letter.
"And you are writing! To whom, pray? Sending valuable presents to
ladies, and not a word to your wife. There was a time--when,--but
never mind. Who is it you are writing to?"
"It is--but you never heard the name--Mrs Langenwoert."
"No. Where did you know her?"
"Do you remember the little schoolma'am at Clam Beach?--the last
lady you did me the honour to be jealous of? She is to be married
to-morrow."
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
End of Project Gutenberg's True to a Type, Vol. II (of 2), by Robert Cleland