CHAPTER LI.
MAGDALEN IS COMING HOME.
The Greys had been gone little more than three years and a half, and the soft winds of June were kissing the ripples of the sea on the morning when they finally embarked for America. They had travelled all over Europe, from sunny France to colder, bleaker Russia, but had stopped the longest at the Isle of Ischia, where at the “Piccola Sentinella” another little life came into their midst, and Guy Seymour nearly went wild with joy over his beautiful little boy, whose soft, blue eyes and golden brown hair were so much like Alice’s. Magdalen was permitted to name the wonderful baby, and without a moment’s hesitancy she said, “I would like him to be called after the best man I ever knew—‘Roger Irving.’”
“Oh, Magdalena mia, you don’t forget him, do you? Love once love forever, is your maxim,” Guy said, playfully; but he approved the name, and so did Alice, who knew more of Magdalen’s heart-history now than she once had done, and who with Guy had revolved many plans for bringing Roger and Magdalen together.
Mr. Grey did not assent quite so readily to the name, though he did not oppose it. He merely said, “Roger sounds rather old for a baby; but do as you like,—do as you like.”
So they called the baby Roger Irving, and Magdalen was godmother, and her tears fell like a baptismal shower upon the little face as she thought of her own babyhood, and the man whom she had loved so long, and who was continually in her thoughts. She knew he was not married; she had heard that from the Burleighs who came one day to the “Piccola Sentinella,” bringing news direct from home.
“Not married yet, and is not likely to be,” Mrs. Franklin Irving had said, as she sat talking with Magdalen, whose voice was rather unsteady when she asked for Roger.
Quick to read expressions of thought and feeling, Bell noted the flush on the young girl’s face, and the tremor in her voice, and felt that she had the key to Roger’s bachelorhood. She had met him twice,—once in Boston and once at Millbank,—and had liked him very much, and shown her liking in many ways, and even laid a little snare, hoping to entangle him for Grace. This Frank saw, and told her “to hang up her fiddle, for Roger’s heart was disposed of long ago to one who loved him in return, but who was laboring under some mistake.”
Bell had forgotten this, but it came back to her again with Magdalen at her side, and she told her “rumor said there was a cause for Roger’s celibacy; that he loved a young girl who had once lived with him, and that he was only waiting for chance to bring her in his way again.” Then she told how popular he was, and how greatly beloved by the people in Schodick and vicinity, and how fast he was growing rich.
Oh, how Magdalen longed to go home after that, and how she wondered that Roger did not write if he really loved her, and how little she guessed that he had written long ago, and that her father had kept the letter from her. To this act Mr. Grey had been prompted by a feeling he did not himself quite understand. Against Roger as a man he had nothing, but he did not think it right that his daughter should marry the son of the woman whose early death had been indirectly caused by himself. Had he known how strong was Magdalen’s love for Roger he would never have withheld the letter, for, if possible, Magdalen was dearer to him now than Alice, and he studied her happiness in everything. But she never spoke of Roger, and he hoped that time and absence would weaken any girlish affection she might have cherished for him. So when the letter came, and he saw it was from Schodick, he put it away unopened, and Magdalen knew nothing of it until long after Roger had ceased to expect an answer, and hope was nearly or quite extinct in his heart.