CHAPTER LIV.ROGER AND MAGDALEN.
He was sleeping quietly, and his forehead was fully exposed to view, with the brown curls clustering around it, and an occasional frown or shadow flitting across it as if the pain were felt even in his sleep. How Magdalen’s fingers tingled to thread those curls, and smooth that broad, white brow; but she dared not for fear of waking him, and she held her breathand stood looking at him as he slept, feeling a keen throb of sorrow as she saw how he had changed and knew what had changed him. He was much thinner than when she saw him last, and there were lines about his mouth and a few threads of silver in his brown beard, while his eyes, as he slept, seemed hollow and sunken.
There was a stool just at her feet, and she pushed it to his side, and seating herself upon it prepared to watch and wait until his heavy slumber ended. And while she waited she looked around and noted all the marks of a refined taste which Roger had gathered about him,—the books, the pictures, the flowers and shells, and lastly, a little crayon sketch of herself, drawn evidently from memory, and representing her as she sat by the river bank years ago, when first Roger Irving felt that his interest in his beautiful ward was more than a mere liking. It was hanging close to Jessie’s picture, and Magdalen sat gazing at it until she forgot where she was, and was back again beneath the old tree by the river bank, with Roger at her side. Suddenly she gave a long, deep sigh, and then Roger awoke, and met the glance of her bright eyes, and saw her face so near to him, and knew that his long night of sorrow was over, else she had never been there, kneeling by him as she was, with her hands holding his and her tears dropping so fast as she tried to speak to him.
“Magda, Magda, my darling,” was all he could say as he drew her into his arms and held her there a moment in a close embrace.
Then releasing her he lay down upon his pillow, pale as death and utterly prostrated with the neuralgic pain which the sudden excitement and surprise had brought back again.
“You take my breath away; when did you come, and why?” he asked; and then releasing her hands from his, Magdalen took the deed from her pocket and changing her position held it before his eyes, saying: “Icame to bring this, Roger; to make restitution; to give you back Millbank, which, but for me, you would not have lost. See, it is made out to you! Millbankis yours again. I bought it with my own money,—bought it for you,—I give it to you,—it is yours.”
She spoke rapidly and kept reiterating that Millbank washis, because of the look on his face which she did not quite understand. He was too much bewildered and confounded to know what to say, and for a moment was silent, while his eyes ran rapidly over the paper, which, beyond a doubt, made him master of Millbank again.
“Why did you do this, Magda?” he said at last, and his chin quivered a little as he said it.
Then Magdalen burst out impulsively, “Oh, Roger, don’t look as if you were not glad. I’ve thought so much about it, and wanted to do something by way of amends. I saved all my salary, every dollar, before I knew I was Magdalen Grey, and was going to send it to you, but Guy laughed me out of it, and said you did not need it: then, when father died and I knew I was rich, my first thought was of you, and when I heard Millbank was to be sold, I said, ‘I’ll buy it for Roger if it takes every cent I am worth;’ and Ihavebought it, and given it to you, and you must take it and go back there and live. I shall never be happy till you do.”
She stopped here, but she was kneeling still, and her tearful, flushed face was very near to Roger, who could interpret her words and manner in only one way, and that a way which made the world seem like heaven to him.
“Magda,” he said, winding his arm around her and drawing her hot cheek close to his own, “let me ask one question. I can’t live at Millbank alone. If I take it of you, who will live there with me?”
Hester had asked a similar question, but Magdalen did not reply to Roger just as she had to the old lady. There was a little dash of coquetry in her manner, which would not perhaps have appeared had she been less sure of her position.
“I supposeHesterwill live with you, of course,” she said. “She does nicely for you here. She is not so very old.”
There was a teasing look in Magdalen’s eyes, which told Rogerhe had nothing to fear, and raising himself up he drew her down beside him and said: “I ask you to be candid with me, Magda. We have wasted too much time not to be in earnest now. Your coming to me as you have could only be construed in one way, were you like most girls; but you are not. You are impulsive. You think no evil, see no evil, but do just what your generous heart prompts you to do. Now, tell me, darling, was it sympathy and a desire to make restitution, as you designate it, or was it love which sent you here when I had ceased to hope you would ever come. Tell me, Magda, do you, can you love your old friend and guardian, who has been foolish enough to hold you in his heart all these many years, even when he believed himself indifferent to you?”
Roger was talking in sober earnest, and his arm deepened its clasp around Magda’s waist, and his lips touched the shining hair of the bowed head which drew back a moment from him, then drooped lower and lower until it rested in his bosom, as Magdalen burst into a flood of tears and sobs. For a moment she did not try to speak; then, with a desperate effort to be calm, she lifted up her head and burst out with, “I never got your letter, never knew it was written until a few weeks ago. Father kept it. Forgive him, Roger; remember he was my father, and he is dead,” she cried vehemently, as she saw the dark frown gathering on Roger’s face. Yes, he was her father, and he was dead, and that kept Roger from cursing the man who had wronged him in his childhood, through his mother, and touched him still closer in his later manhood, by keeping him so long from Magdalen.
“Father told me at the last,” Magdalen said. “He was sorry he kept it, and he bade me tell you so. He did not dislikeyou. It was the name, the association; and he hoped I might forget you, but I didn’t. I have remembered you all through the long years since that dreadful day when I found the will, and it hurt me so to think you wanted me to marry Frank. That was the hardest of all.”
“But you know better now. I told you in my letter of Frank’sconfession,” Roger said, and Magdalen replied, “Yes, I know better now. Everything is clear, else I had never come here to bring you Millbank, and—and, myself, if you will take me. Will you, Roger? It is leap year, you know. I have a right to ask.”
She spoke playfully, and her eyes looked straight into his own, while for answer he took her in his arms, and kissed her forehead and lips and hair, and she felt that he was praying silently over her, thanking Heaven for this precious gift which had come to him at last. Then he spoke to her and said, “I take you, Magda, willingly, gladly; oh how gladly Heaven only knows, and as I cannot well take you without the incumbrance of Millbank, I accept that, too; and darling, though this may not be the time to say it, there has already been so much of business and money and lands mixed up with our love, that I may, I am sure, tell you I am able of myself to buy the mill in Belvidere and the site of the old shoe-shop. Frank wanted me to do it, and I put him off with saying I would wait until I knew who was to live at Millbank. I know now,” and again he rained his kisses upon the face of her who was to be his wife and the undisputed mistress, as he was the master, of Millbank.
A long time they talked together of the past, which now seemed to fade away so fast in the blissful joy of the present; and Magdalen told him of little Roger Irving, whose godmother she was, and of her mother and Alice, and the home at Beechwood, where Guy Seymour’s family would continue to live.
“It’s the same house my father built for Jessie,—for your mother,” Magdalen said, softly, and glanced up at the picture on the wall, whose blue eyes seemed to look down in blessing upon this pair to whom the world was opening so brightly.
Then they talked of Frank and Bell and Mrs. Walter Scott, and by that time the summer sun was low in the western horizon, and Hester’s tea-table was spread with every delicacy the place could afford; while Hester herself was fine and grand in her second-best black silk, which nothing less than Magdalen’s arrival could have induced her to wear on a week-day.
Guy, too, had made his appearance after waiting in vain for Magdalen’s return. Hester remembered him, and welcomed him warmly, and told him “the young folks was up chamber, billin’ and cooin’ like two turtle doves,” whereupon Guy began to whistle “Highland Mary,” which Magdalen heard, and starting up, exclaimed:
“There’s Guy come for me! I must go now back to the hotel.”
But she did not go, for Roger would not permit it, and he kept her there that night, and the next day took her to his favorite place of resort,—the rock under the pine,—and seating her upon the mossy bank knelt beside her, and gave thanks anew to Heaven, who had heard and answered the prayer made so often under that tasselled pine,—that if it were right Magda should one day come to him as his. Then they went all over the farm and down to the mill, where some of the operatives who had lived in Belvidere and knew Magdalen came to speak with her, thus raising themselves in the estimation of the less favored ones, who gazed admiringly at the beautiful young girl, rightly guessing the relation she held to Mr. Irving, and feeling glad for him.
No repairs were needed at Millbank, and but few changes; so that the house was ready any time for its new proprietors, but Magdalen would not consent to going there as its mistress until September, for she wanted the atmosphere thoroughly cleared from the taint of Mrs. Walter Scott’s presence, and it would take more than a few weeks for that. She liked Bell and she pitied Frank; but Mrs. Walter Scott was her special aversion, and so long as she remained at Millbank, Magdalen could not endure even to cross its threshold. Still it seemed necessary that she should do so before her return to Beechwood, and on the morning following the peaceful Sunday spent at Schodick she returned to Belvidere, which by this time was rife with the conjectures that Roger was coming back to Millbank and Magdalen was coming with him.