CHAPTER X.FRANK AT MILLBANK.
Four days later Magdalen received a letter from Frank, who was inconsolable. Alice Grey had left school suddenly, without giving him a chance to say good-by. Why she had gone or where, he did not know. He only knew shewasgone, and that he thought college a bore, and New Haven a stupid place, and was mighty glad that vacation was so close at hand, as he wanted to come up to Millbank and fish again in the river.
“I think he might just as well spend a part of his time at home, as to be lazin’ ’round here for me to wait on,” Hester said, when Magdalen communicated the news of Frank’s projected visit to her.
Hester did not favor Frank’s frequent visits to Millbank. They made her too much work, for what with opening the dining-room and bringing out the silver, and getting extra meals, and seeing to his sleeping room, and ironing his seven fine shirtsevery week, with as many collars and pairs of socks, to say nothing of linen coats and pants, and white vests, she had her own and Bessie’s hands quite full.
“Then, too, Magdalen was jest good for nothin’ when he was there,” she said, “and made a deal more work; for, of course, she must eat with the young gentleman instead of out in the kitchen, as was her custom when they were alone; and it took more time to cook for two than one.”
Of Hester’s opinion Frank knew nothing, and he came to Millbank one delightful morning after a heavy shower of the previous night, when the air was pure and sweet with the scent of the grass just cut on the lawn, and the perfume of the flowers blooming in such profusion in the garden. Millbank was beautiful to the tired, lazy young college student, who hated books and tutors, and rules and early recitations, and was glad to get away from them all and revel awhile at Millbank. He felt perfectly at home there, and always called for what he wanted, and ordered the servants with as much assurance as if he had been the master. He had not forgotten about the will. He understood it far better now than he had done when, a little white-haired boy, he fidgeted at his mother’s side and longed to go back to the baby in the candle-box. He had heard every particular many a time from his mother, who still adhered to her olden belief that there was another will which, if not destroyed, would one day be found.
“I wish it would hurry up, then,” Frank had sometimes said, for with his expensive habits, four hundred dollars a year seemed a very paltry sum.
In his wish that “it would hurry up,” he intended no harm to Roger. Frank was not often guilty of reasoning or thinking very deeply about anything, and it did not occur to him how disastrously the finding of the will which gave him Millbank would result for Roger. He only knew that he wanted money, and unconsciously to himself had formed a habit of occasionally wondering if the missing will ever would be found. This was always in New York or New Haven, when he wanted somethingbeyond his means or had some old debt to pay. At Millbank, where he was free from care, with his debts in the distance and plenty of servants and horses at his command, he did not often think of the will, though the possibility that there was one might have added a little to his assured manner, which was far more like one who had a right to command than Roger’s had ever been.
Magdalen was waiting for him by the gate at the end of the avenue, on the afternoon, when, with his carpet-bag in hand, he came leisurely up the street from the depot, thinking as he came how beautiful the Millbank grounds were looking, and what a “lucky dog” Roger was to have stepped into so fair an inheritance without any exertion of his own. And with these thoughts came a remembrance of the will, and Frank began to plan what he would do if it should ever be found. He would share equally with Roger, he said. He would not stint him to four hundred a year. He would let him live at Millbank just the same, and Magdalen, too, provided his mother did not raise too many objections; and that reminded him of what his mother had said to him that morning as he sat, breakfasting with her, in the same little room where we first saw her.
Mrs. Walter Scott had not been in a very amiable mood when she came down to breakfast that morning. Eleven years of the wear and tear of fashionable life had changed her from the fair, smooth-faced woman of twenty-eight into a rather faded woman of thirty-nine, who still had some pretensions to beauty, but who found that she did not attract quite so much attention as she used to do a few years ago, when she was younger, and Frank was not so tall, and so fearful a proof that her youthful days were in the past. Her hair still fell in long limp curls about her face, but part of its brightness and luxuriance was gone, and this morning, as she arranged it in a stronger light than usual, she discovered to her horror more than one white hair showing here and there among the brown, and warning her that middle age was creeping on, while the same strong light showed her howlines were deepening across her forehead and about her eyes, effects more of dissipation and late hours than of Father Time. Mrs. Walter Scott did not like to grow old and gray and ugly and poor with all the rest, as she felt that she was doing. Her house in Lexington Avenue could only afford her a shelter. It would not feed or clothe her, or pay her bills at Saratoga or Long Branch or Newport. Neither would the interest of the ten thousand dollars given her by Squire Irving, and she had long ago begun to use the principal, and had nothing to rely on when that was gone except Roger’s generosity, and the possibility of the lost will turning up at last. She was wanting to go to Long Branch this summer; her dear friends were all going, and had urged her to join them, but her account at the bank was too low to admit of that, and yesterday she had given her final answer, and seen the last of her set depart without her. She had not hinted to them the reason for her refusal to join them. She had said she did not care for Long Branch, and when they exclaimed against her remaining in the dusty city, she had mentioned Millbank and the possibility of her going there for the month of August. She did not really mean it; but when Frank, who had only been home from college three days, told her at the breakfast table that he was going to Millbank after pure air, and rich sweet cream, which was a weakness of his, she felt a longing to go, too,—a desire for the cool house and pleasant grounds, to say nothing of the luxuries which were to be had there in so great abundance. But since the morning of her departure from Millbank she had received no invitation to cross its threshold, and had not seen Roger over half a dozen times. He felt that she disliked him, and kept out of her way, stopping always at a hotel when in New York, instead of going to her house on Lexington Avenue. He had called there, however, and taken tea the day before he sailed for Europe, and Mrs. Walter Scott remembered with pleasure that she had been very affable on that occasion, and pressed him to spend the night. Surely, after that, she might venture to Millbank, and she hinted as much to Frank, who would rather she shouldstay where she was. But he was not quite unfilial enough to say so. He only suggested that an invitation from the proper authorities might be desirable before she took so bold a step.
“You used to snub Roger awfully,” he said; “and if he was like anybody else, he wouldn’t forget it in a hurry; but, then, he isn’t like anybody else. He’s the best-hearted and most generous chap I ever knew.”
“Generous!” Mrs. Walter Scott repeated, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice.
“Yes, generous,” said Frank. “He has always allowed me more than the will said he must, and he’s helped me out of more than forty scrapes. I say, again, he is the most generous chap I ever knew.”
“I hope he will prove it in a few weeks, when you are of age, by giving you more than that five thousand named in the will,” was Mrs. Walter Scott’s next remark. “Frank,”—and she lowered her voice lest the walls should hear and report,—“we arepoor. This house and three thousand dollars are all we have in the world; and unless Roger does something handsome for you, there is no alternative for us but to mortgage the house, or sell it, and acknowledge our poverty to the world. I have sold your father’s watch and his diamond cross.”
“Mother!” Frank exclaimed, his tone indicative of his surprise and indignation.
“I had to pay Bridget’s wages, and defray the expense of that little party I gave last winter,” was the lady’s apology, to which Frank responded:
“Confound your party! People as poor as we are have no business with parties. Sell father’s watch! and I was intending to claim it myself when I came of age. It’s too bad! You’ll be selling me next! I’ll be hanged if it isn’t deuced inconvenient to be so poor! I mean to go to Millbank and stay. I’m seldom troubled with the blues when there.”
“I wish you could get me an invitation to go there, too,” Mrs. Walter Scott said. “It will look so queer to stay in the city all summer, as I am likely to do. I should supposeRoger would want somebody besides old Hester to look after Magdalen. She must be a large girl now.”
It was the first sign of interest Mrs. Walter Scott had shown in Magdalen, and Frank, who liked the girl, followed it up by expatiating upon her good qualities, telling how bright and smart she was, and how handsome she would be if only she could be dressed decently. Then he told her of Roger’s intention to send her to school, and after a few more remarks arose from the table and began his preparations for Millbank. Frank was usually very light-hearted and hopeful, but there was a weight on his spirits, and his face wore a gloomy look all the way from New York to Hartford. But it began to clear as Millbank drew near. There was his Eldorado, and by the time the station was reached, he had forgotten the impending mortgage, and his father’s watch, and his own poverty. It all came back, however, with a thought of the will, and he found himself wishing most devoutly that the missing document could be found, or else that Roger would do the handsome thing, and come down with a few thousands on his twenty-first birthday, now only three weeks in the distance. The sight of Magdalen, however, in her new white ruffled apron, with her hair curling in rings about her head, and her great round eyes dancing with joy, diverted his mind from Roger and the will, and scattered the blues at once.
“Oh; Mag, is that you?” he exclaimed, coming quickly to her side. “How bright and pretty you look!”
And the tall young man bent down to kiss the little girl, who was very glad to see him, and who told him how dull it had been at Millbank, and how Aleck said there was good fishing now in the creek, and a great many squirrels in the woods, though she did not want him to kill them, and that he was going to have the blue room instead of his old one, which was damp from a leak around the chimney; that she had put lots of flowers in it, and a photograph of herself, in a little frame made of twigs. This last she had meant to keep a secret, and surprise the young man, who was sure to be so delighted. Butshe had let it out, and she rattled on about it, till the house was reached, and Frank stood in the blue room, where the wonderful picture was.
“Here, Frank, this is it. This is me;” and she directed his attention at once to the picture of herself, sitting up very stiff and prim, with mitts on her hands, and Hester’s best collar pinned around her high-necked dress, and Bessie’s handkerchief, trimmed with cotton lace, fastened conspicuously at her belt.
Frank laughed a loud, hearty laugh, which had more of ridicule in it than approval; and Magdalen, who knew him so well, detected the ridicule, and knew he was making fun of what she thought so nice.
“You don’t like it, and I got it on purpose for you and Mr. Roger, and sold strawberries to pay for it, because Hester said a present we earned ourselves was always worth more than if we took somebody else’s money to buy it,” Magdalen said, her lip beginning to quiver and her eyes to fill with tears.
“The man was a bungler who took you in that stiff position,” Frank replied, “and your dress is too old. I’ll show you one I have of Alice Grey, and maybe take you to Springfield, where you can sit just as she does.”
This did not mend the matter much, and Magdalen felt as if something had been lost from the brightness of the day, and wondered if Roger too would laugh at her photograph, which had gone to him in Hester’s letter. Frank knew he had wounded her, and was very kind and gracious to her by way of making amends, and gave her the book with colored plates which he had bought for Alice Grey just before she left New Haven so suddenly. It happened to be in his trunk, which was brought from the station that night, and he blessed his good stars that it was there, and gave it as a peace-offering to Magdalen, whose face cleared entirely; and who next day went with him down to the old haunt by the river, and fastened to his hook the worms she dug before he was up; and told him allabout the stranger in the graveyard, and about her going to school. And then she asked him about Alice Grey, and the picture which he had of her.
“Did she give it to you?” Magdalen asked; but Frank affected not to hear her, and pretended to be busy with something which hurt his foot. He did not care to tell her that he had bought the picture at the gallery where it was taken. He would rather she should think Alice gave it to him, and after a moment he took it from his pocket and handed it to Magdalen, who stood for a long time gazing at it without saying a word. It was the picture of a sweet-faced young girl, whose short, chestnut hair rippled in waves all over her head just as Magdalen’s did. Her dress was a white muslin, with clusters of tucks nearly to the waist, and her little rosetted slipper showed below the hem. Her head was leaning upon one hand, and the other held a spray of flowers, while around her were pictures, and vases, and statuettes, with her straw hat lying at her feet, where she had evidently thrown it when she sat down to rest. It was a beautiful picture, and nothing could be more graceful than Alice’s attitude, or afford a more striking contrast to the stiff position of poor Mag in that picture on Frank’s table, in the blue room. Magdalen saw the difference at once, and ceased to wonder at Frank’s non-appreciation of her photograph. Itwasa botch, compared with Alice’s, and she herself was a botch, an awkward, unsightly thing in her long dress and coarse shoes, two sizes too big for her, such as she always insisted upon wearing for fear of pinching her toes. She had them on now, and a pair of stockings which wrinkled on the top of her foot, and she glanced first at them and then at the delicate slipper in the picture, and the small round waist, and pretty tucked skirt, and then, greatly to Frank’s amazement, burst into a flood of tears.
“I don’t wonder you like her best,” she said, when Frank asked what was the matter. “I don’t look like that. I can’t, I haven’t any slippers, nor any muslin dress; and if I had, Hesterwouldn’t let me have it tucked, it’s such hard work to iron it. Alice has a mother, I know,—a good, kind mother, to take care of her and make her look like other little girls. Oh, I wish her mother was mine, or I had one just like her.”
Alas, poor Magdalen. She little guessed the truth, or dreamed how dark a shadow lay across the pathway of pretty Alice Grey. She only thought of her as handsome and graceful and happy in mother and friends, and she wept on for a moment, while Frank tried to comfort her.
There was no more fishing that day, for Maggie’s head began to ache, and they went back to Millbank, across the pleasant fields, in the quiet of the summer afternoon. Frank missed Magdalen’s photograph from his table the next day, and had he been out by the little brook which ran through the grounds, he would have seen the fragments of it floating down the stream, with Magdalen standing by and watching them silently. They fished again after a day or two, and hunted in the woods and sat together beneath an old gnarled oak where Frank grew confidential, and told Magdalen of his moneyed troubles, and wondered if Roger would allow him more than five thousand when he came of age. And then he inadvertently alluded to the missing will, and told Magdalen about it, and said it might be well enough for her to hunt for it occasionally, as she had access to all parts of the house. And Magdalen promised that she would, without a thought of how the finding of it might affect Roger. She would not for the world have harmed one whom she esteemed and venerated as she did Roger, but he was across the sea, and Frank had her ear and her sympathy. It would be a fine thing to find the will, particularly as Frank had promised her a dress like Alice Grey’s and a piano, if she succeeded.
Frank was not a scoundrel, as some reader may be ready to suppose. He had no idea that the finding of the will would ruin Roger. He had received no such impression from his mother. She had not thought best to tell him all she believed, and had only insinuated that the missing will was more inhis favor than the one then in force. Frank wanted money,—a great deal of money, and his want was growing constantly, and so he casually recommended Magdalen to hunt for the will, and then for a time gave the subject no more thought. But not so with Magdalen. She dreamed of the will by night, and hunted for it by day, when Frank did not claim her attention, until at last Hester stumbled upon her turning over the identical barrel of papers which Mrs. Walter Scott had once looked through.
“In the name of the people, what are you doing?” she asked; and Magdalen, who never thought of keeping her intentions a secret, replied, “I’m looking for that will which Mrs. Walter Scott says Squire Irving made before he died.”
For an instant Hester was white as a ghost, and her voice was thick with passion or fright, as she exclaimed, “A nice business, after all Roger has done for you, and a pretty pickle you’d be in, too, if such a will could be found. Don’t you know you’d be hustled out of this house in less than no time? You’d be a beggar in the streets. Put up them papers quick, and don’t let me catch you rummagin’ again. If Frank is goin’ to put such notions into your head, he’d better stay away from Millbank. Come with me, I say!”
Hester was terribly excited, and Magdalen looked at her curiously, while there flashed across her mind a thought, which yet was hardly a thought, that, if therewasa will, Hester knew something of it. Let a woman once imagine there is a secret or a mystery in the house, and she seldom rests until she has ferreted it out. So Magdalen, though not a woman, had the instincts of one, and her interest in the lost document was doubled by Hester’s excitement, but she did not look any more that day, nor for many succeeding ones.
On Frank’s birthday there came letters from Roger, and the same train which brought them brought also Mrs. Walter Scott. She had found the city unendurable with all her acquaintance away, and had ventured to come unasked to Millbank. Hester was not glad to see her. Since finding Magdalen in the garret,she had suspected Frank of all manner of evil designs, and now his mother had come to help him carry them out. She had no fears of their succeeding. She knew they would not; but she did not want them there, and she spoke very short and crisp to Mrs. Walter Scott, and was barely civil to her. Mrs. Walter Scott, on the contrary, was extremely urbane and sweet. She did not feel as assured as she had done when last at Millbank. There was nothing of the mistress about her now. She was all smiles and softness, and gentleness, and called Hester “My dear Mrs. Floyd,” and squeezed her hand, and told her how well and young she was looking, and petted Magdalen, and ran her white fingers through her rings of hair, and said it was partly on her account she had come to Millbank.
“I heard from Frank that she was to go to school in the autumn, and knowing what a bore it would be for you, Mrs. Floyd, to see to her wardrobe, with all the rest you have to do, I ventured to come, especially as I have been longing to see the old place once more. How beautiful it is looking, and how nicely you and your good husband have kept everything! How is Mr. Floyd?”
Hester knew there was a good deal of what she called “soft-soap” in all the lady said; but kind words go a great ways with everybody, and Hester insensibly relaxed her stiffness and went herself with Mrs. Walter Scott to her room and opened the shutters, and brought clean towels for the rack, and asked if her guest would have a lunch or wait till dinner was ready.
“Oh, I’ll wait, of course. I do not mean to give you one bit of trouble,” was the suave reply, and Hester departed, wondering to herself at the change, and if “Mrs. Walter Scott hadn’t j’ined the church or something.”