And then the train came round the river bend and the crowd fell back, and Frank went with Roger into the car and waited there until the train began to move, when with a bound he sprang upon the platform, and those nearest to him saw that he was very white and that there were traces of tears in his eyes. No one spoke to him, though all made way for him to pass to his carriage, which drove rapidly back to Millbank, which was now his beyond a doubt.
Hester Floyd went later in the day, and to the last stood out against Mrs. Walter Scott, whom she did not deign to notice by so much as a farewell nod. Over Magdalen she bent lovingly, trying to make her comprehend that she was going away, but Magdalen only stared at her a moment with her wide open eyes, and then closed them wearily, and knew nothing of Hester’s tears or the great wet kiss which was laid upon her forehead.
“She’s to be the lady of Millbank, I s’pose, but I don’t begrutch her her happiness with that old sarpent for a mother-in-law and that white-livered critter for a husband,” Hester thought as she stole softly from the room and went down to where the drayman was loading her numerous boxes and bundles. Frank offered her the use of the carriage to carry herself and Aleck to the station; but she declined the offer, and took a fierce kind of pride in seeing the village hack drive up to the side door. “She as’t no odds of nobody,” she said, and tying on her six years’ old straw bonnet, and pinning her brown shawl with a darning-needle, she saw deposited in the hack her old-fashioned work-basket and her satchel and bird cage and umbrella, and her bandbox tied up in a calico bag, and her palm-leaf fan, and Aleck, and Matty, who carried two beautiful Malta kittens in a basket as her own special property. Then, with a quick, sudden movement, and an indifference she was far from feeling, she shook the hands of all her fellow-servants over whom she had reigned so long, and hoping they would never find a “wus” mistress than she had been, sprang into the hack with an alacrity which belied her seventy summers, and was driven to the depot.
From her window Mrs. Walter Scott watched the fast receding vehicle, and felt herself breathe freer with every revolution of the wheels. When Roger went, a great weight had been lifted from her spirits, but so long as old Hester Floyd remained she could not feel altogether free; and now that the good dame was really out of the house she sat perfectly still until she heard the whistle of the engine, and saw the white smoke of the train which carried the enemy away. Then she rose up from her sitting posture, and her long graceful neck took a prouder arch, and her step was more firm, her manner more queenly, as she went directly to the kitchen, and summoning the servants to her presence told them they were at liberty to leave her employ within a month, as she should by that time have provided her self with other help. Very civilly they listened to her, and when she was through informed her that she need not wait a month before importing her new coterie of servants, as each one of them was already supplied with a situation, and was intending to leave her that night, with the exception of Celine, who had promised Mrs. Floyd to stay till Miss Lennox’s mind was restored.
With a haughty, “Very well, do as you like,” Mrs. Walter Scott swept out of the kitchen and made the circuit of the handsome rooms which were now her own. Frank, too, had watched the hack as it drove away, and listened for the signal by which he should know that Hester Floyd was gone, for not till then could he feel perfectly secure in his possessions. But as the loud, shrill blast came up over the hills and then died away amid the windings of the river, there stole over him a pleasurable sense of proprietorship, and he thought involuntarily of the familiar lines, “I am monarch of all I survey, my right there is none to dispute.” Frank liked to feel comfortable in his mind, and as he reviewed the steps by which he had reached his present position, he found many arguments in his own favor which tended to silence any misgivings he might otherwise have experienced. He was not to blame for his grandfather’s will, nor to blame for hiding it. Everybody knew that. Roger said he was not, and Roger’s opinion was worth everything to him. He had been willing to burn the will, and when he could not do that, he offered repeatedly to divide with Roger, and was willing to divide now and always would be. Surely he could do no more than he had done. He was a pretty good fellow after all, and he began to whistle “Annie Laurie” and think of the agent whom Roger had warned him against, and wished it had been anybody but Holt, who was such a good judge of horses, and had such a fine high blood for sale, which he offered cheap, because he needed a little ready money. As the war steed scents the battle from afar, and pricks up his ears at the smell of blood, so Frank felt his love of horse flesh growing strong within him. There could be no harm in riding over to see Holt’s horse. He would have to go there any way if he dismissed the man, as Roger had advised, and he would go at once and have a bad job off his mind. Accordingly, when lunch time came Mrs. Walter Scott lunched alone, and when the dinner hour came she dined alone, and when the stable doors were closed that night they shut into his new home Firefly, “the swiftest horse in the county,” which Frank had bought for eleven hundred dollars.
Holt, the agent, was not dismissed!
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE HOME IN SCHODICK.
It was a quiet, old-fashioned farm-house, with gables and projections and large rooms and pleasant fireplaces and low ceilings and small windows, looking some of them toward the village, with its houses of white nestled among the trees, and some of them upon the hills, whose shadows enfolded the farm-house in an early twilight at night, and in the morning reflected back the warm sunshine which lay so brightly upon their wooded sides. There was a kitchen with a door to the north, and a door to the south, and a door to the east, leading out into the woodshed, and there were stairs leading to an upper room, and a fire-place “big enough to roast an ox,” Hester said, when, with her basket and bandbox and umbrella and camlet cloak and bird cage and kittens and Aleck, she was dropped at her new home and began to reconnoitre, deciding, first, that the late tenants of the place were “shiffless critters, or they would never have lived there so long with only a wooden latch and a wooden button on the outside door,” and second, that they were “dirty as the rot, or they would never have left them stains on the buttry shelf, that looked so much like cheese-mould.”
Hester was not altogether pleased with the house. It came a little hard to change from luxurious Millbank to this old brown farm-house, with its oaken floors and stone hearth and tiny panes of glass, and for a time the old lady was as homesick as she could be. But this only lasted until she got well to work in the cleaning process, which occupied her mind so wholly that she forgot herself, and only thought how to make the house a fitting place for her boy to come to after his travels West. Roger had given her money with which to furnish the house, and she had added more of her own, while Frank, when parting with her, had slipped into her hands one hundred dollars, saying to her, “Roger is too proud to take anything from me, and I want you to use this for the house.”