“I found her in my room when I went from here and I spoke my mind freely, I s’pose, about her snoopin’ after the will when you had done so much for her, and she gave a scart kind of screech, and ran out into the hall, where Mr. Frank met her, and put his arm round her and led her to her own door, and kissed her as he had a right to if she’s to be his wife.”
Roger made no reply to this, but tried to exonerate Magdalen from all blame with regard to the will, telling what he knew about her finding it, and begging Hester to lay aside her prejudice, and care for Magdalen as she would have done six weeks ago.
And Hester promised, and called herself a foolish old woman for having distrusted the girl, and then went back to the sick-room, leaving Roger to follow her at his leisure. Something in Magdalen’s manner the previous night had led him to hope that possibly she was not irrevocably bound to Frank; there might be some mistake, and the future was not half so dreary when he thought of her sharing it with him. But Hester’s story swept all that away. Magdalen was lost to him, lost forever and ever, and for a moment he staggered under the knowledge just as if it were the first intimation he had received of it. Then recovering himself he went to Magdalen’s bedside, and when at sight of him she stretched her arms towards him and begged him to release her head, he bent over her as a brother might and took her aching head upon his broad chest and held it between his hands, and soothed and quieted her until she fell away to sleep. Very carefully he laid her back upon the pillow, and then meeting in Frank’s eye what seemed to be reproach for the liberty he had taken, he said to him in an aside, “You need not be jealous of your old uncle, boy. Let me help you nurse Magda as if she was my sister. She is going to be very sick.”
Frank had never distrusted Roger and he believed him now, and all through the long, dreary weeks when Magdalen lay at the very gates of death, and it sometimes seemed to those who watched her as if she had entered the unknown world, he never lost faith in the man who stood by her so constantly, partly because he could not leave her, and partly because she would not let him go. She got her head at last from between the boards, but it was Roger who released it for her, and with a rain of tears, she cried, “It’s out; I shall be better now;” then, lying back among her pillows, she fell into the quietest, most refreshing sleep she had known for weeks. The fever was broken, the doctor said, though it might be days before her reason was restored, and weeks before she could be moved, except with the greatest care. When the danger was over and he knew she would live, Roger absented himself from the sick-room, where he was no longer needed. She did not call for him now; she did not talk at all, but lay perfectly passive and quiet, receiving her medicines from one as readily as from another, and apparently taking no notice of anything transpiring around her. But she was decidedly better, and knowing this Roger busied himself with the settlement of his affairs, as he wished to leave Millbank as soon as possible.
CHAPTER XXX.
LEAVING MILLBANK.
It was in vain that Frank protested against the pride which refused to receive anything from the Irving estate. Roger was firm as a rock.
“I may be foolish,” he said to Lawyer Schofield, who was often at Millbank, and who once tried to persuade him into some settlement with Frank. “I may be foolish, but I cannot take a penny more than the terms of the will give to me. I have lived for years on what did not belong to me. Let that suffice, and do not try to tempt me into doing what I should hate myself for. I have been accustomed to habits of luxury, which I shall find it difficult to overcome; just as I shall at first find it hard to settle down into a steady business, and seek for patronage with which to earn my bread. But I am comparatively young yet. I can study and catch up in my profession. I passed a good examination years ago. I have tried by reading not to fall far behind the present age. I shall do very well, I’m sure.” Then he spoke of Schodick, where he had decided to go. “Some men would choose the West as a larger field in which to grow, and at first I looked that way myself; but Schodick has great attractions for me. It was my mother’s home. I shall live in the very house where she was born. You know my father gave me the farm, and though it is rocky and hilly and sterile,—much of it,—I would rather go there than out upon the prairies. I shall be very near the town, which is growing rapidly, and there is a chance of my getting in with a firm whose senior member has recently died. If I do, it will be the making of me, and you may yet hear of Roger Irving from Schodick as a great man.”
Roger had worked himself up to quite a pitch of enthusiasm, and seemed much like his olden self as he talked of his plans to Lawyer Schofield, who had never admired or respected him so much as he did when he saw him putting the best face upon matters and bearing his reverses so patiently. Everybody knew now that he was going to Schodick, in New Hampshire, and that Hester and Aleck were going with him. Both seemed to have renewed their youth to a most marvellous degree, and Hester’s form was never more erect, or her step more elastic, than during those early summer days, when, between the times of her ministering to Magdalen, of whom she still had the care, she went over the house, selecting here and there articles which she declared were hers, and with which Mrs. Walter Scott did not meddle.
Full of her dread of the fever, that lady had scrupulously kept aloof from Magdalen, and when she began to fear lest the few for whose opinion she cared should censure her for neglect she affected symptoms of the disease and stayed in her own room, where she received the visits of the doctor, in white line wrappers elaborately trimmed, and a scarlet shawl thrown across her shoulders. Frank visited her several times a day, and once, when his heart was heaviest with the fear lest Magdalen would die, he went to her for sympathy, and laying his head on the pillow beside her, wept like a child. There was no pity in her voice, for she felt none for him, and her manner was cold and indifferent as she said she apprehended no danger,—and added that she hoped Frank would not commit himself too far or allow his feelings to run away with his judgment. He must remember that Magdalen had never promised to marry him, and that if one woman could read another she did not believe she ever would.