“It was Bell,” Frank said. “She is a good housekeeper, and after the split with mother she attended to things. They had separate apartments, you know, at the last;—didn’t speak a word, which I liked better than a confounded quarrel. I tell you, Magdalen, I’ve seen sights of trouble since you found that will, and I am happier to-day, knowing I’ve got out of the scrape, than I’ve been before in years.”
He seemed disposed to be very communicative, and was going on to speak of his domestic troubles; but Magdalen quietly checked him, and then asked where his mother was intending to go.
“The mills of the gods grind slowly, but fine, exceedingly fine,” Frank said; and then he told of his mother’s fears for her money deposited in the bank of ——. There was a rumor that the bank had failed, but as it was only a rumor he still hoped for the best.
“At the first alarm, mother went to bed,” he said, “and she is there still; so you must excuse her not seeing you.”
Magdalen had no desire to see her, and when on her way to Beechwood she read in the paper of the total failure of the bank where Frank had told her his mother’s money was deposited, she did not greatly sympathize with the artful, designing woman, who almost gnashed her teeth when she, too, heard of her loss. She was all ready for removal to “Rose Cottage,” for which a friend was negotiating, and her trunks and boxes were packed with every conceivable valuable which could by any means be crowded into them; oil paintings, chromos, steel engravings, costly vases, exquisite shells, knives, forks, spoons, china, cut glass, table-linen, bed linen, and even carpets formed a part of her spoil, intended for that cottage, which now was not within her reach. There was still her oil stock left, and with that she might manage to live respectably, she thought, and resolving that no one should exult over her disappointment from any change they saw in her, she tried to appear natural, and when an attempt was made at sympathy, answered indifferently “that she was sorry, of course, as she could have done so much good with the money; but the Lord knew what was best, and she must bear patiently what was sent upon her.” This was what she said to her clergyman, who came to sympathize with her; but when he was gone, she looked the house over again, to see if there was anything more which she could take, and in case of necessity turn into money. Some one in Belvidere wrote to Roger that the house at Millbank was being robbed, and advised strongly that means be taken to prevent further depredations; and a few days after Mrs. Walter Scott was met in the hall by a stern-looking man, who said he came, at Mr. Irving’s request, to take an inventory of all the articles of furniture in the house, and also to remain there and see that nothing was harmed or removed.
He laid great stress on the last word, and the lady grew hot and red, and felt that she was suspected and looked upon as a thief, and resented it accordingly; but after that there was no more hiding of articles under lock and key, for the stranger always seemed to be present, and she knew that she was watched; and when he inquired for a small and expensive oil painting which Roger had bought in Rome, and an exquisite French chromo, and certain pieces of silver and cut glass which he had on his list as forming a part of the household goods he was appointed to care for, she found them and gave them, one by one, into his hands. And so her stock of goods diminished and she hastened to get away before everything was taken from her; and one morning in August finally departed for a boarding-house in New York, where she intended staying until something better offered.
As soon as she was gone, a bevy of servants came out from Beechwood, and Roger came from Schodick to superintend them, and old Hester came to oversee him, and the renovating process went rapidly on, while crowds of the villagers flocked to the house, curious to see the costly articles of furniture which, during the last few years, had been constantly arriving, and of which the house was full to overflowing.
The mill was Roger’s now, as well as the site of the old shoe-shop. He had bought them both on the day of their sale, and the operatives of the mill had hurrahed with might and main for their new master, never heeding the old one, who still remained in town, and who, whatever he might have felt, put a good face on the matter, and seemed as glad and as interested as the foremost of them. Only once did he manifest the slightest feeling, and that was when with Roger he entered Bell’s sleeping room, where the silken curtains were hanging and the many expensive articles of the toilet were still lying as Bell had left them. Then sitting down by the window, he cried; and, when Roger looked at him questioningly, he told of his little boy born in that room, and dead before it was born.
“Bell was glad,” he said,—“she does not like children; but I was so sorry, for if that boy had lived I should have been a better man; but it died, and Bell has left me, and mother’s gone, and my money’s gone, and I am a used-up dog generally,” he added bitterly; and then with a sudden dashing away of his tears he brightened into his former self, and said, laughingly, “But what’s the use of fretting? I shall get along some way. I always have, you know.”
In his heart he knew Roger would not let him suffer, and when Roger said as much by way of comforting him, he took it as a matter of course, and secretly hoped “the governor would give him something handsome, and let him keep a horse!”