Millbank;

by Mary Jane Holmes

Four days later Magdalen received a letter from Frank, who was inconsolable. Alice Grey had left school suddenly, without giving him a chance to say good-by. Why she had gone or where, he did not know. He only knew she was gone, and that he thought college a bore, and New Haven a stupid place, and was mighty glad that vacation was so close at hand, as he wanted to come up to Millbank and fish again in the river.

“I think he might just as well spend a part of his time at home, as to be lazin’ ’round here for me to wait on,” Hester said, when Magdalen communicated the news of Frank’s projected visit to her.

Hester did not favor Frank’s frequent visits to Millbank. They made her too much work, for what with opening the dining-room and bringing out the silver, and getting extra meals, and seeing to his sleeping room, and ironing his seven fine shirts every week, with as many collars and pairs of socks, to say nothing of linen coats and pants, and white vests, she had her own and Bessie’s hands quite full.

“Then, too, Magdalen was jest good for nothin’ when he was there,” she said, “and made a deal more work; for, of course, she must eat with the young gentleman instead of out in the kitchen, as was her custom when they were alone; and it took more time to cook for two than one.”

Of Hester’s opinion Frank knew nothing, and he came to Millbank one delightful morning after a heavy shower of the previous night, when the air was pure and sweet with the scent of the grass just cut on the lawn, and the perfume of the flowers blooming in such profusion in the garden. Millbank was beautiful to the tired, lazy young college student, who hated books and tutors, and rules and early recitations, and was glad to get away from them all and revel awhile at Millbank. He felt perfectly at home there, and always called for what he wanted, and ordered the servants with as much assurance as if he had been the master. He had not forgotten about the will. He understood it far better now than he had done when, a little white-haired boy, he fidgeted at his mother’s side and longed to go back to the baby in the candle-box. He had heard every particular many a time from his mother, who still adhered to her olden belief that there was another will which, if not destroyed, would one day be found.

“I wish it would hurry up, then,” Frank had sometimes said, for with his expensive habits, four hundred dollars a year seemed a very paltry sum.

In his wish that “it would hurry up,” he intended no harm to Roger. Frank was not often guilty of reasoning or thinking very deeply about anything, and it did not occur to him how disastrously the finding of the will which gave him Millbank would result for Roger. He only knew that he wanted money, and unconsciously to himself had formed a habit of occasionally wondering if the missing will ever would be found. This was always in New York or New Haven, when he wanted something beyond his means or had some old debt to pay. At Millbank, where he was free from care, with his debts in the distance and plenty of servants and horses at his command, he did not often think of the will, though the possibility that there was one might have added a little to his assured manner, which was far more like one who had a right to command than Roger’s had ever been.

Magdalen was waiting for him by the gate at the end of the avenue, on the afternoon, when, with his carpet-bag in hand, he came leisurely up the street from the depot, thinking as he came how beautiful the Millbank grounds were looking, and what a “lucky dog” Roger was to have stepped into so fair an inheritance without any exertion of his own. And with these thoughts came a remembrance of the will, and Frank began to plan what he would do if it should ever be found. He would share equally with Roger, he said. He would not stint him to four hundred a year. He would let him live at Millbank just the same, and Magdalen, too, provided his mother did not raise too many objections; and that reminded him of what his mother had said to him that morning as he sat, breakfasting with her, in the same little room where we first saw her.

Mrs. Walter Scott had not been in a very amiable mood when she came down to breakfast that morning. Eleven years of the wear and tear of fashionable life had changed her from the fair, smooth-faced woman of twenty-eight into a rather faded woman of thirty-nine, who still had some pretensions to beauty, but who found that she did not attract quite so much attention as she used to do a few years ago, when she was younger, and Frank was not so tall, and so fearful a proof that her youthful days were in the past. Her hair still fell in long limp curls about her face, but part of its brightness and luxuriance was gone, and this morning, as she arranged it in a stronger light than usual, she discovered to her horror more than one white hair showing here and there among the brown, and warning her that middle age was creeping on, while the same strong light showed her how lines were deepening across her forehead and about her eyes, effects more of dissipation and late hours than of Father Time. Mrs. Walter Scott did not like to grow old and gray and ugly and poor with all the rest, as she felt that she was doing. Her house in Lexington Avenue could only afford her a shelter. It would not feed or clothe her, or pay her bills at Saratoga or Long Branch or Newport. Neither would the interest of the ten thousand dollars given her by Squire Irving, and she had long ago begun to use the principal, and had nothing to rely on when that was gone except Roger’s generosity, and the possibility of the lost will turning up at last. She was wanting to go to Long Branch this summer; her dear friends were all going, and had urged her to join them, but her account at the bank was too low to admit of that, and yesterday she had given her final answer, and seen the last of her set depart without her. She had not hinted to them the reason for her refusal to join them. She had said she did not care for Long Branch, and when they exclaimed against her remaining in the dusty city, she had mentioned Millbank and the possibility of her going there for the month of August. She did not really mean it; but when Frank, who had only been home from college three days, told her at the breakfast table that he was going to Millbank after pure air, and rich sweet cream, which was a weakness of his, she felt a longing to go, too,—a desire for the cool house and pleasant grounds, to say nothing of the luxuries which were to be had there in so great abundance. But since the morning of her departure from Millbank she had received no invitation to cross its threshold, and had not seen Roger over half a dozen times. He felt that she disliked him, and kept out of her way, stopping always at a hotel when in New York, instead of going to her house on Lexington Avenue. He had called there, however, and taken tea the day before he sailed for Europe, and Mrs. Walter Scott remembered with pleasure that she had been very affable on that occasion, and pressed him to spend the night. Surely, after that, she might venture to Millbank, and she hinted as much to Frank, who would rather she should stay where she was. But he was not quite unfilial enough to say so. He only suggested that an invitation from the proper authorities might be desirable before she took so bold a step.