She could afford to be gracious to the boy whom she had wronged, but when Frank threw the bomb-shell at her feet with regard to the mysterious bundle under Hester’s shawl, she drew back quickly, and demanded of her young brother-in-law what it meant. She looked very grand, and tall, and white in her mourning robes, and Roger quaked as he had never done before in her presence, and half wished he had left the innocent baby to the tender mercies of the conductor and the poor-house. But this was only while he stood damp and uncomfortable in the chilly hall, with the cold rain beating in upon him. The moment he entered the warm parlor, where the fire was blazing in the grate and the light from the wax candles shone upon the familiar furniture, he felt a sense of comfort and reassurance creeping over him, and unconscious to himself a feeling of the master came with the sense of comfort, and made him less afraid of the queenly-looking woman standing by the mantel, and waiting for his story. He was at home,—his own home,—where he had a right to keep a hundred deserted children if he liked. This was what Hester had said in referring to Mrs. Walter Scott, and it recurred to Roger now with a deeper meaning than he had given it at that time. He had a right, and Mrs. Walter Scott, though she might properly suggest and advise, could not take that right from him. And the story which he told her was colored with this feeling of doing as he thought best; and shrewd Mrs. Walter Scott detected it at once, and her large black eyes had in them a gleam of scorn not altogether free from pity as she thought how mistaken he was, and how the morrow would materially change his views with regard to many things. She had not seen Roger in nearly a year and a half, and in that time he had grown taller and stouter and more manly than the boy of twelve, whom she remembered in roundabouts. He wore roundabouts still, and his collar was turned down and tied with a simple black ribbon, and he was only fourteen; but a well-grown boy for that age, with a curve about his lip and a look in his eyes, which told that the man within him was beginning to develop, and warned her that she had a stronger foe to deal with than she had anticipated; so she restrained herself, and was very calm and lady-like and collected as she asked him what he proposed doing with the child whom he had so unwisely brought to Millbank.
Roger had some vague idea of a nurse with a frilled cap, and a nursery with toys scattered over the floor, and a crib with lace curtains over it, and a baby-head making a dent in the pillow, and a baby voice cooing him a welcome when he came in, and a baby-cart, sent from New York, and a fancy blanket with it. Indeed, this pleasant picture of something he had seen in St. Louis, in one of the handsome houses where he occasionally visited, had more than once presented itself to his mind as forming a part of the future, but he would not for the world have let Mrs. Walter Scott into that sanctuary. That cold, proud-faced woman confronting him so calmly had nothing in common with his ideals, and so he merely replied:
“She can be taken care of without much trouble. Hester is not too old. She made me a capital nurse.”
It was of no use to reason with him, and Mrs. Walter Scott did not try. She merely said:
“It was a very foolish thing to do, and no one but you would have done it. You will think better of it after a little, and get the child off your hands. You were greatly shocked, of course, at the dreadful news?”
It was the very first allusion anybody had made to the cause of Roger’s being there. The baby had absorbed every one’s attention, and the dead man upstairs had been for a time forgotten by all save Roger. He had through all been conscious of a heavy load of pain, a feeling of loss; and as he drove up to the house he had looked sadly toward the windows of the room where he had oftenest seen his father. He did not know that he was there now; he did not know where he was; and when Mrs. Walter Scott referred to him so abruptly, he answered with a quivering lip: “Where is father? Did they lay him in his own room?”
“Yes, you’ll find him looking very natural,—almost as if he were alive; but I would not see him to-night. You are too tired. You must be hungry, too. You have had no supper. What can Hester be doing?”
Mrs. Walter Scott was in a very kind mood now, and volunteered to go herself to the kitchen to see why Roger’s supper was not forthcoming. But in this she was forestalled by Ruey, who came to say that supper was waiting in the dining-room, whither Roger went, followed by his sister-in-law, who poured his tea and spread him slices of bread and butter, with plenty of raspberry jam. And Roger relished the bread and jam with a boy’s keen appetite, and thought it was nicer to be at Millbank than in the poor clergyman’s box of a house at St. Louis, and then, with a great sigh, thought of the white-haired old man, who used to welcome him home and pat him so kindly on his head and call him “Roger-boy.” The white-haired man was gone forever now, and with a growing sense of loneliness and loss, Roger finished his supper and went to the kitchen, where Baby lay sleeping upon the settee which Hester had drawn to the fire, while Frank sat on a little stool, keeping watch over her. He had indorsed the Baby from the first, and when Hester gruffly bade him “keep out from under foot,” he had meekly brought up the stool and seated himself demurely between the settee and the oven door, where he was entirely out of the way.
Hester still looked very much disturbed and aggrieved, and when she met Roger on his way to the kitchen, she passed him without a word; but the Hester Floyd who, after a time, went back to the kitchen, was in a very different mood from the one who had met Roger a short time before. This change had been wrought by a few words spoken to her by Mrs. Walter Scott, who sat over the fire in the dining-room when Hester entered it, and who began to talk of the baby which “that foolish boy had brought home.”
“I should suppose he would have known better; but then, Mrs. Floyd, you must be aware of the fact that in some things Roger is rather weak and a little like his mother, who proved pretty effectually how vacillating she was, and how easily influenced.”