CHAPTER XXXIV.MRS. PENELOPE SEYMOUR.
Magdalen felt herself growing very nervous and uneasy as the long train came slowly into New York, and car after car was detached and drawn away by horses. She was in the last of all, and was feeling very forlorn and homesick and half inclined to cry, just as a voice by the door asked: “Is Miss Lennox, from Belvidere, here?”
There was reassurance in the tone of the voice, and reassurance in the expression of the frank, open face of the young man, who, as Magdalen rose from her seat, came quickly to her side, and doffing his hat, said: “Miss Lennox, I presume? I am Guy Seymour, Aunt Pen’s nephew, or as she would tellyou, her husband’s nephew, and she has kept me in a constant state of worry the entire day on your account. I was at the depot at least an hour before there was any possible hope of the train, and as you are an hour behind, that makes two hours I have waited, so you see I have done my duty. Allow me to take your satchel and umbrella. You haven’t a bandbox, have you?”
The comical look in the saucy brown eyes, which turned upon Magdalen, betrayed the fact that he was quizzing her a little. But Magdalen did not mind it. She felt a kind of security with him, and liked him at once in spite of the bandbox thrust.
“This way, please; perhaps you’d better take my arm,” he said, as he made his way through the crowd to a carriage, which was waiting for him.
When once fairly seated, Magdalen had leisure to study hervis-à-vismore closely. He was apparently twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, a young man who had seen a great deal of fashion and society, and who still retained about him a certain air of frankness and candor and simplicity, which opened a way for him at once to every stranger’s heart. There was something in the wave of his hair and the cast of his head which reminded Magdalen of Roger, and made her feel as if she had found a friend. He was inclined to be quite sociable, and after exhausting the weather, he said to her, “You are from Belvidere, I believe? Do you know a Mr. Irving there, the one who has so recently come into a fortune?”
Magdalen looked quickly up, and her face was scarlet as she replied, “I know him, yes. Is he an acquaintance of yours?”
“I was two years behind him in college, but sophs and seniors are as widely apart as the poles. I wonder if he is greatly improved. I used to think him a kind of a prig.”
“I may as well start with a right understanding at once,” Magdalen thought, and she answered a little haughtily. “Mr. Frank Irving is a friend of mine. I have known him ever since I can remember. Millbank is the only home I have ever had.”
Magdalen thought her companion came near whistling in his surprise, and she felt sure that he was regarding her more curiously than he had done before, while for some reason he seemed more attentive and polite, and by the time the St. Denis was reached, she felt as if she had known him months instead of a brief half hour.
“You must not mind if you find Aunt Pen a little stiff at first. She has a great deal of starch in her composition,” he said as he ran up the stairs and down the hall in the direction of No.——.
And stiff, indeed, Magdalen did find Aunt Pen, as the nephew called her. A little, short, straight, square-backed woman of sixty or thereabouts, with iron-gray hair, arranged in puffs around her forehead,—a proud, haughty, wrinkled face, and round bright eyes, which seemed to look straight through Magdalen as Guy ushered her into the room.
“Miss Lennox, Auntie Pen,” he said, and taking Magdalen by the arm he led her up to his aunt, who felt constrained to offer her jewelled hand, but who did it in such a way that Magdalen felt the conventional gulf there was between them in the lady’s mind, and winced under it.
“I hope you’ll order dinner at once,” Guy continued. “The train was an hour behind, and Miss Lennox is fearfully tired. I’ll ring myself,” and he touched the bell rope while Mrs. Seymour was saying something about being glad to see Miss Lennox, and hoping she was not very tired.
Oh how strange and lonely Magdalen felt, when at last she was alone in her room for a few moments, while she arranged her hair and made herself more presentable for dinner! The windows looked out into a dreary court, and tears sprang to Magdalen’s eyes as she felt the contrast between these dingy brick walls and that damp, mouldy pavement, and the fresh green grass and wealth of flowers and shrubbery and forest trees which for years had been hers to gaze upon. Suppose she was to live at the St. Denis for years, and to occupy that room into which the sun never penetrated. And for aught she knew,such was to be her fate. She had made no inquiries as to where she was to live, whether in city or country, hotel or private house. Her orders were to come to the St. Denis, and there she was, and her heart was aching with homesickness, and a longing to be away,—not at Millbank, but with Roger, wherever he was. With him was home and happiness and rest, such as Magdalen felt she should never find again. But it would not do now to indulge in feelings like these. There was dinner waiting for her, as Guy’s cheery voice announced outside her door. “Never mind stopping to dress to-night. It won’t pay, and Aunt Pen don’t expect it. She is dressed enough for both,” he said; then he went away, and Magdalen heard him whistling a part of a favorite opera, and felt glad and grateful that at the very outset of her career she had met Guy Seymour to smooth away the rough places for her as he was doing in more ways than she knew of, or ever would know. To him she owed it that she was not left to find her way alone from the depot to the hotel.
“There is no need of your going for her. People of her class can always find their way,” his aunt had said to him in the morning, when he asked what time she expected herYankee school-ma’amto arrive, saying he wished to know so as to have nothing in the way of his going up to meet her.
To his aunt’s suggestion that “people of her class could usually find their way,” he gave one of his pet whistles, and said,
“How do you know she is one of the ‘people of her class?’ And supposing she is, she is a woman, and young and possibly good looking, and New York is an awful place for a young, good-looking woman to land in, an entire stranger. So,ma chèreauntie, I shall meet her just as I should want some chap of a Guy Seymour to meet my sister if I had one. And, auntie, I beg of you to unbend a little, and try to make her feel at home. I’ve no doubt she’ll be as homesick as I was the first time I ever visited you when I was a boy, and cried so hard to go home that I vomited up that quart of green gooseberries I had eaten surreptitiously out in the garden. Do you remember it?
And so kind-hearted Guy had his way, and when he told Magdalen that his aunt had kept him in a constant worry on her account, he had reference to a widely different state of affairs from what his words implied and what he meant they should imply. He had been fighting for her all day and insisting that if she was a lady she should be treated as a lady, and when he met her at the depot, he felt that he had been wholly right in the course he had pursued.
Shewasa lady, and pretty, too, as nearly as he could judge through the drab veil which covered her face. The veil was off when she came out to dinner, and Guy, who met her at the door and conducted her to the table, started a little to see how beautiful and graceful she was, and how like a queen she bore herself toward his aunt, who took her in now, from her black, shining hair to the sweep and cut of her fashionable travelling dress.
“That is last spring’s style. It must have been made in New York,” was Mrs. Seymour’s mental comment, and she felt a growing respect for one whose dress bore so unmistakably the New York stamp upon it.
Shewas dressed in satin,—soft, French gray satin,—whose heavy folds stood out from her slender figure and covered up the absence of hoops, which she never wore. There was a point lace coiffure on her head and point lace at her throat and wrists, and diamonds on her fat white hands, and she looked to the full a lady of the high position and blood which she professed, and she was very kind to Magdalen, albeit there was a certain stiffness in her manner which would have precluded the slightest approach to anything like familiarity had Magdalen attempted it.
Evidently there was something about Magdalen which riveted her attention, for she omitted no opportunity for looking at her when Magdalen did not know it, and at certain turns of the head and flashes of the large, restless eyes which sometimes met hers so suddenly, she found herself perplexed and bewildered, and wondering when or where she had seen eyes likethese whose glance she did not like to meet, but which nevertheless kept flashing upon her, and then turning quickly away. Guy, too, caught now and then a familiar likeness to something seen before; but it was not in the eyes or the turn of the head,—it was more in the expression of the mouth and the smile which made Magdalen so beautiful, while there was something in the tone of her voice like another voice which in all the world made the sweetest music for him. He knew of whom Magdalen reminded him, though the faces of the two were no more alike than a brilliant rose and a fair, white water-lily. Still the sight of Magdalen and the silvery ring of her voice brought the absent one very near to him, and made him still kinder and more attentive to the young girl whose champion he had undertaken to be.
“Is it still your intention to leave New York to-morrow, or will you give Miss Lennox a day in the city for sight-seeing? I dare say she would like it better than plunging at once into that solitude of rocks and hills and running rills,” Guy said to his aunt, who replied: “I had intended to leave to-morrow. I am beginning to long for the solitude, as you call it, and unless Miss Lennox is very anxious to see the city—”
“Of course she is. Every young girl wants to see the Park and Broadway and the picture galleries, especially if she has never been in New York before. But I beg your pardon, Miss Lennox; for aught I know you were born here.”
Magdalen had been a close listener to the conversation between the aunt and nephew, and gathered from it that her destination was the country, and she was not to live in the noisy city, which would seem so dreary to her from contrast with the gayeties of last winter, when she was there under very different auspices. She had no desire to see Broadway, or the Park, or the pictures. She had seen them all, with Roger as her escort, and they would look so differently now. So to Mr. Seymour’s suggestion that she was possibly born in New York, she replied:
“I was here last winter, and saw, I think, all there is worthseeing. I would rather go at once to ‘the rocks and hills and running rills.’ I feel most at home with nature.”
She flashed a bright smile on Guy, who felt his blood tingle a little, while his aunt thought, “I knew her clothes were made in New York;” then to Magdalen she said, “I have many acquaintances in the city. Possibly you may have met some of them, if you werein society.”
She laid great stress upon the last two words, and Magdalen colored, while Guy, who saw his aunt’s drift, said laughingly, “Don’t pray drive Miss Lennox into telling whether she was a belle or a student, copying some picture, or perfecting herself in music. You’ll be asking next if she knew the Dagons and Draggons, whom not to know is to be nobody indeed.”
He spoke sarcastically now, and Magdalen’s face was scarlet, though she could not help laughing at his allusion to the “Dagons and Draggons” whom she had met, and so was not lacking in that accomplishment. She knew it was very natural that Mrs. Seymour should wish to know something of her antecedents, and she said, “I wasnothere to copy pictures. I came with friends, and saw, I suppose, what is called society; at least I met theDagonsandDraggons, if that is any proof. I was chaperoned by Mrs. Walter Irving, of whom you may have heard.”
“Mrs. Walter Scott Irving, of Lexington avenue,” Mrs. Seymour exclaimed; “I have heard of her. Are you a relative of hers?”
“No, madam, not a relative. I was adopted by her husband’s half brother, Mr. Roger Irving, when I was a very little child. He was as kind to me as if I had been his sister. I have always lived at Millbank, and always intended to live there until circumstances occurred which made it desirable for me to seek a home elsewhere and earn my own livelihood. There was found a later will than the one proven at the time of Squire Irving’s death, and by virtue of that will Mr. Roger’s nephew, Frank, came into possession of the estate, and Roger went away, while I preferred not to be dependent.”
She had told all of her history which it was necessary to tell, and after a little more conversation she bade her new acquaintance good-night and retired to her room.
“Well, Guy, what do you think of her?” Mrs. Seymour said, coming to her nephew’s side.
“I think she’s splendid,” he replied; “but who the deuce is it she looks like? She has evidently been as delicately brought up as Alice herself. It’s the finding of that will which has turned her adrift upon the world, no doubt, and I pity her, for she is every inch a lady; and, Aunt Pen, don’t for gracious sake put on airs with her, as if you were the great Mogul, and she some Liliputian. Remember from what a height she has fallen! Think of her knowing the Dagons and Draggons!”
He was teazing her now, but however much of a scapegrace she might think him to be, Auntie Pen was pretty sure to consider and follow his advice, and the next morning she was very polite to Magdalen, and offered of her own accord to stay another day in New York if she liked, saying Guy should drive them to the Park, or wherever she wished to go. But Magdalen longed to be out of the city, and an hour or two after breakfast the carriage came round to take them to the train.
Mrs. Seymour had not been very communicative with regard to Beechwood, the place to which they were going. She had said merely that it was on the Hudson. That it was her niece who was the invalid; that they had been some years abroad; that the house was very pleasant; that for certain reasons they saw but little company; and then had asked abruptly if Miss Lennox was nervous. Guy, who was not to accompany them, had asked the same question in connection with something he was saying of Beechwood, but Magdalen did not heed the question then, or attach to it any importance. She was very anxious to be off, and was glad when, at last, the car began to move, and she knew she was leaving New York.
It was a warm, still day in early October, and Magdalen enjoyed the ride along the beautiful river, and was sorry when at last it came to an end, and she was left standing on the sameplatform where, years before, another young girl had stood looking about her, half sadly, half regretfully, and wishing herself away. It was a different carriage now which was waiting for the travellers,—a new, stylish carriage, drawn by two beautiful horses, which would have driven Frank Irving wild, and John, the coachman, in high-crowned hat and white gloves, was very deferential to Mrs. Seymour, and touched his hat to Magdalen, and saw them both into the carriage, and then, closing the door, mounted to his seat, and started up the mountain road, over whichAlice Greyhad ridden many a time, for it was to her that Magdalen was going. She knew it at last, for as they rode up the mountain side she said to Mrs. Seymour:
“I do not think you have told me the name of your niece. I have heard you call her Alice, and that is all I know of her.”
“Surely, you must excuse me,” Mrs. Seymour replied; “I thought I had told you that her name was Alice Grey. You may have heard of her from Mr. Irving. We met him abroad, and again in New York.”
“Yes, I have heard of her,” Magdalen replied, her face flushing, and her heart beating rapidly as she thought of the strange Providence which was leading her to one of whom she had heard so much, and of whom when a little girl she had been so jealous.
“Hers is a most lovely character, and you are sure to like her,” Mrs. Seymour continued. “She has been sorely tried. We are all sorely tried. You told me, I think, that you were not nervous?”
This was the second time she had put the question to Magdalen, who was not now quite so certain of her nerves as she had been when the question was asked her before; but Mrs. Seymour did not wait for an answer, for just then they came in sight of the house, which she pointed out to Magdalen, who thought of Millbank as she rode through the handsome grounds and caught glimpses of the river in the distance. The carriage stopped at last at a side door, and conducting Magdalen into alittle reception room Mrs. Seymour asked the servant who met them, “where Miss Grey was?”
Magdalen could not hear the answer, it was so low; but she saw a cloud on Mrs. Seymour’s brow and divined that something was wrong.
“Show Miss Lennox to her room, the one next to my niece’s,” the lady said, and Magdalen followed the girl to a large upper room the windows of which looked out upon the river and the country beyond.
It was very pleasant there, and Magdalen threw off her hat and shawl and was just seating herself by the window for a better view of the charming prospect, when there came a gentle knock at her door, and a sweet musical voice said softly, “Please, may I come in?”