CHAPTER LVII.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 comewith 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 Mortonwas 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 otherblessings 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. Heroilhadfailed, 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 herbook, 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 receivemoneyfrom 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 itwas 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 wouldnotsuffer 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 willnot 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 NOTESSilently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
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