Yes, it was good-by forever now, and he felt it in its full force, and bowed his head upon his hands and asked for strength to bear this new pain, which yet was not new, for he had long felt that Magdalen was not for him. But the pain, though old, was keener, harder to bear, and hurt as it had never hurt before, for now the barrier between them, as he believed, was a husband, and that for a time seemed worse than death.
Again the rock under the evergreen on the hillside witnessed the tears and the prayers and the anguish of the man whose face began to look old and worn, and who, the people said, was working too hard and had taken too much upon his hands. He was the superintendent now of the cotton mill, which had been enlarged, and of the shoe-shop erected since his residence in Schodick. His profession, too, was not neglected, and the little office on the green still bore his name, and all the farmers for miles around asked for “Squire Irving,” as they called him, when they came into town on business pertaining to the law. His word was trusted before that of any other. What Squire Irving said was true, and no one thought of doubting it. To him the widows came on behalf of their fatherless children, and he listened patiently and advised them always for the best, and took charge of their slender means and made the most of them. The interests of orphan children, too, were committed to his care, so that he fortunately had little time to indulge in sentiment or sorrow, except at night, when the day’s labor was over, and he was free to dwell upon the hopes of the past, the bitter disappointment of the present, and the dreariness of the future.
After that paragraph in the newspaper he had heard no more of the Greys, and had only mentioned them once. Then he told Hester of Magdalen’s marriage with the young man who had come to see them, and whom Hester remembered perfectly.
Hester did not believe a word of it, she said; but Roger replied that Magdalen herself had sent him the paper, while Mr. Grey had written, so there could be no mistake. Then Hester accepted it as a fact, and looking in her boy’s face and seeing there the pain he tried so hard to suppress, she felt her own heart throbbing with a keener regret and sense of loss than she would have felt if Roger had not cared so much.
“That settles the business for him,” she said. “He’ll never marry now, and I may as well send off to the heathen that cribby quilt I’ve been piecin’ at odd spells, thinkin’ the time might come when Roger’s wife would find it handy.”
And as she thus soliloquized old Hester washed her tea-dishes by the kitchen sink and two great tears rolled down her nose and dropped into the dish water. After that she never mentioned Magdalen, and as the quilt was not quite finished, she laid it away in the candle-box cradle which stood in the attic chamber, and over which she sometimes bent for five minutes or more, while her thoughts were back in the past; and she saw again the little girl who had sat so often in that cradle, and whose dear little feet were wandering now amid the wonders of the Old World.
And so the winter, and the spring, and the summer went by, and in the autumn Frank came for a few days to Schodick, looking almost as old as Roger, and a great deal stouter and redder in the face than when we saw him last; while a certain inflamed look in the eye told that Bell’s arguments on the subject of temperance had not prevailed with him as effectually as they had with her brother Charlie. Frank’s love of wine had increased and grown into a fondness for brandy, but during his stay in Schodick he abstained from both, and seemed much like himself. Very freely he discussed his affairs with Roger, who pitied him from his heart, for he saw that his life was not a pleasant one.
With regard to his domestic troubles, Roger forbore to make any remarks, but he advised to the best of his ability about the business matters, which were not in a very good condition. The shoe-shop had not been rebuilt; there was always trouble with the factory hands; they were either quitting entirely, or striking for higher wages; and the revenues were not what Frank thought they ought to be. Ready money was hard to get; and he was oftentimes troubled for means to pay the household expenses, which were frightfully large. As well as he could, Roger comforted the disheartened man, and promised to go to Millbank soon and see what he could do toward smoothing and lubricating the business machinery, and Frank while listening to him began to feel very hopeful of the future, and grew light-hearted and cheerful again, and ready to talk of something besides himself. And so it came about, as he sat with Roger one evening, he said to him:
“By the way, Roger, do you ever hear from the Greys? Do you know where they are?”
Roger did not; he had never heard from them, or of them, he said, since the letter from Mr. Grey, announcing Magdalen’s approaching marriage with Guy Seymour.