Millbank

“ Much as I hate work I could work for her, and a life of poverty shared with her has more attractions for me than all the kingdoms in the world shared with another.”
They had reached Millbank by this time, and Magdalen met them at the door. She had been out for a drive, and the exercise and clear wintry air had brought a deeper glow than usual to her cheeks and made her eyes like diamonds. She had never been more beautiful to Frank than she was that evening in her soft crimson dress, with her hair arranged in long curls, which fell about her face and neck in such profusion. ”

“ Magdalen had cried; and with these words still ringing in his ears, Frank said to her at last, “Magdalen, you need not give your life; there is a far easier way by which Roger can be spared the pain of knowing that Millbank is not his. He never need to know of this will; no one need to know of it but ourselves,—you and me, Magdalen. We will keep the secret together, shall we?” ”

“ I brought her to Millbank in December, and within the year you were born. I heard nothing of Arthur Grey. I only knew that Jessie was not happy; satins and pearls and diamonds could not drive that sad, hungry look from her eyes, and I took her for a change to Saratoga, and there she met the villain again, and as the result she left Millbank to go with him to Europe. In a few days she was drowned, and her letter written on the ‘Sea Gull’ was sent to me by that accursed man who, when she tried to escape him, followed her to the ship bound for Charleston. ”

“ The master of Millbank could surely find a wife more worthy of him than the beggar girl who had been deserted in the cars, and that Magdalen Lennox should not marry her son was the decision she reached at a bound, and Frank must have suspected the nature of her thoughts, as she sat nervously tapping her foot upon the floor, and looking off through the window, with great wrinkles in her forehead and between her eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the night of the 10th of May, 1880, the light burned late in Lawyer Wing’s library. It was the scandal of Millbank that this occurred often. The village was given to regarding the night as a time when no man should work. “Early to bed and early to rise” was its motto, and though an opposite practice had left Theodore Wing with more of health, wealth, and wisdom than most Millbankians possessed, he had never succeeded in reconciling his townsmen to his methods. ”

“ If Frank Irving had been poor, instead of the grandson of a wealthy man, he would have made a splendid carpenter; for all his tastes, which were not given to horses, ran in the channel of a mechanic, and numerous were the frames and boxes and stools which he had fashioned at Millbank with the set of tools his grandfather had bought him. The tools had been kept at Millbank, for Mrs. Walter Scott would not have her house on Lexington Avenue “lumbered up;” and with the first dawn of the morning after Roger’s return, Frank was busy in devising what he intended as a cradle for the baby. ”

“ It is easy to imagine the condition of Millbank then. A small colony apart from the great world; living more than as neighbours, as one family almost—but not happily—under the same roof. The officials, nearly all of them of mature age, [46] having grown-up children, young ladies and young gentlemen, always about the place, and that place from its peculiar conditions, like a ship at sea, shut off from the public, and concentrated on what was going on within its walls. ”

“ But Lady Millbank is still chatting on, and in her eyes, as they meet Susan’s, there is no arrière-pensée. No; he had not betrayed her.
‘I don’t suppose we shall see much of him; he is always on the stampede,’ Lady Millbank 228is saying. ‘One would think from his habits that he was a criminal running before the law. I told him so. Ah’—rising suddenly and looking out of the window—‘there he is! And coming here! Of course, to call upon Mr. Barry. Your brother was a great friend of George Crosby’s father, I think. Eh?’
‘There was a friendship,’ says Miss Barry. ‘Susan, how pale you are! ”

“ Roger had always been tolerably well prepared for such an emergency, but matters at Millbank were managed differently now from what they were when he was master there. The rotary pump was out of order, the engine would not work well at all, and after half an hour or more of orders and counter-orders, of running to and fro, and accomplishing but little, it was certain that nothing could save the huge building, whose roof was one mass of flame, and from whose windows a light was shining brighter than any bonfire ever yet kindled in honor of a bride. ”

“ Women were not to him what they were to fickle, flirting Frank, and that he would ever marry did not seem to him very probable, unless he found some one widely different from the ladies with whom he had come in contact. Of Magdalen, his baby, he always thought as he had last seen her, with her shaker-bonnet hanging down her back, and eyes brimfull of tears as she leaned over the gate watching him going down the avenue and away from Millbank. ”

“ I’ll have a man from the city whose taste I can trust,” she said; by which it will be seen that Mrs. Walter Scott fully expected to reign triumphant at Millbank, without a thought or consideration for Roger, the dead man’s idol, who, according to all natural laws, had a far better right there than herself. ”

“ She could not swear to love and honor one, when her whole being was bound up in another. She could not marry Frank, but she hoped she might persuade him to let Roger keep Millbank, while he took the mill and the shoe-shop, and the bonds and mortgages. He would surely listen to that proposition, and she had sent for him to hear her decision, and then she meant next day to take the will from its hiding place, and carry it to Roger, with the letter she guarded so carefully. ”

“ I wish there were no such thing as parting from those we love,” the young girl sighed, as, with her sheet of music in her hand, she passed through the hall, and up the stairs, to the room which had been hers so long.
Magdalen had been very happy at Charlestown, where every one loved her, from the teacher, whom she never annoyed, to the smallest child, whom she so often helped and encouraged; and she had enjoyed her vacations at Millbank, and more than once had taken two or three of her young friends there for the winter or summer holidays. ”

“ She was a woman, with all a woman’s impulses. And Roger Irving was a splendid-looking man, with something very winning in his voice and manner, and it is not strange if at that moment a life of toil with Roger looked more desirable to Magdalen than a life of ease at Millbank without him. ”

“ 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 I have bought 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. ”

“ Why can't you all dine with us? Never mind your car; ours is all right, and we'll run out into the country for dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?”
But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another invitation, in which Millbank was also included.
They stood about, veils floating, leather decorated coats thrown back, lingering for awhile to talk the garage talk which fascinates people of their type; then Millbank looked at the clock, made his adieux to Lydia, nodded significantly to Mortimer, and followed the others down-stairs. ”

“ If I did I would move heaven and earth to find it, for in that case I should have been living all these years on what belonged to others. Don’t look so frightened, Magdalen,” Roger continued, playfully touching her cheek, which had grown pale at the mere idea of his being obliged to give up Millbank. “No harm should come to you. I should take care of my little girl. ”

“ On the wall, in the library, Jessie’s picture was hung. It had been retouched and brightened up in Springfield, and the beautiful face always seemed to smile a welcome on Roger whenever he came where it was. On the monument in the graveyard Jessie’s name was cut beneath her husband’s, and every Saturday Roger carried a bouquet of flowers from the Millbank garden, and laid it on the grassy mound, in memory, not so much of his father, as of the young mother whose grave was in the sea. ”

“ 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 suppose 79Roger would want somebody besides old Hester to look after Magdalen. She must be a large girl now.” ”

“ He was going to New York soon, he said, and would do all he could to repair the wrong and bring Roger and Magdalen together.
368“You deserve her if ever a man did,” he continued, “and I hope,—yes, I know it will one day come right.”
Frank brought his visit to a close next day, and left the old-fashioned farm-house among the Schodick hills, which seemed a paradise compared with Millbank, where he found his wife cool and quiet and self-possessed as ever, and his mother angry, defiant, and terribly outraged with some fresh slight put upon her by her daughter-in-law. ”

“ He could not have Millbank and her too. There was no Will on earth which had power to take her from Roger and give her to Frank, and by some subtle intuition Magdalen recognized for a moment all she was to Roger, and felt that possibly he would prefer poverty with her to wealth without her; just as a crust shared with him would be sweeter to her than the daintiest luxury shared with Frank, who had called her his darling and who would rival Roger in everything. ”

“ He was gentlemanly to a certain extent, and knew all the ins and outs of good society; but he was not like the men with whom Bell Burleigh had associated all her life; not like the men she respected for what was in their heads rather than in their purse. But as these men had thus far been unattainable, and the coffers at home were each year growing lower and lower as her father grew older and older, Bell swallowed all sentiment, and the ideas she had once had of a husband to whom she could look up, and accepted Frank Irving and Millbank. ”

“ I hope for nothing now. I am not angry with you. I could not be so if I would. I bless you for all you have been to me. I hope you will be happy here at Millbank when I am gone; and now go, my darling. You are shivering with cold and the room is very damp. God bless you, Magda.”
He led her out into the hall, then closed the door upon her, and went back again to his solitude and his sorrow, while Magdalen, bewildered and frightened and wearied out, found her way as best she could to her own room, where a few moments later Celine found her fainting upon the floor. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He dropped off at the Bridge station, instead of coming into Millbank, and met another man, apparently by appointment, about half-way between the railroad and covered bridges. They talked about ten minutes——”
“Hold on,” interrupted McManus; “you go too fast. Was the man he met a Millbank man?”
“Oh, I forgot. It was Frank Hunter.”
“Frank Hunter!” exclaimed McManus. “You’re still pointing to our office, as I said before. It’s a grave responsibility you’re taking, Mr. Trafford.” ”

“ The gesticulating Canadian reappeared on the instant. Discipline asserted itself, and the man prepared to obey without further remonstrance.
119 CHAPTER VIII
A Man Disappears TRAFFORD sent a hasty note to McManus, postponing the afternoon appointment, and made ready to visit the logging drives at work along the Kennebec. It was certain that no physician in Millbank had set a broken shoulder or arm within the twenty-four hours; no man of the character sought had left by any of the trains or stages, and the river afforded the only unguarded means of escape. ”

“ 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 something 76beyond his means or had some old debt to pay. ”