Magdalen was sobbing now, with her face buried in her hands, and Roger could see the great tears dropping from between her fingers. He knew she was crying for the mother she had never known, and that shame, quite as much as filial affection, was the cause of her distress, and he pitied her so much, knowing just how she felt; for there had been a time when he, too, was tormented with doubts concerning his own mother, the golden-haired Jessie, who was now cherished in his memory as the purest of women. He was very sorry for Magdalen, and very uncertain as to what, under the circumstances, it was proper for him to do. The world said she was a young lady, and if Roger had seen as much of her during the last four weeks as Frank had seen, he might have thought so too. But so absorbed had he been in his business, and so much of his time had been taken up with looking over accounts and receipts, and listening to what his agents had done, that he had given no very special attention to Magdalen, further than that perfect courtesy and politeness which he would award to any lady. He knew that she was very bright and pretty and sprightly, and that the tripping of her footsteps and the rustle of her white dress, and the sound of her clear, rich voice, breaking out in merry peals of laughter, or singing in the twilight, made Millbank very pleasant; but he thought of her still as a child, his little child, whom he had held in his lap in the dusty car and hushed to sleep in his arms. She was only eighteen, he was thirty-two; and with that difference between them, he might surely soothe and comfort her as if she really were his daughter. Moving so near to her that her muslin dress swept across his feet, he laid his hand very gently upon her hair, and Magdalen, when she felt the pitying, caressing touch of that great broad, warm hand, which seemed in some way to encircle and shield her from all care or sorrow, bowed her head upon her lap, and cried more bitterly than before,—cried now with a feeling of utter desolation, as she began dimly to realize what it would be to go away from Millbank and its master.
“Poor Magda,” he said, and his voice had in it all a father’s tenderness, “I am sorry to see you so much distressed. I can guess in part at the cause of your tears. You are crying for your mother, just as I have cried for mine many and many a time.”
“No, not as you have cried for yours,” Magdalen said, lifting up her head and flashing her brilliant eyes upon him. “Hester has told me about your mother. You believe her pure and good, while mine—oh, Mr. Irving, I don’t know what I believe of mine.”
“Try to believe the best, then, until you know the worst;” and Roger laid his arm across Magdalen’s shoulders and drew her nearer to him, as he continued; “I have thought a great deal about that woman who left you in my care. I believe she was crazy, made so by some great sorrow,—your father’s death, perhaps,—for she was dressed in black; and, if so, she was not responsible for what she did, and you need not question her motives. She had a young, innocent face, and bright, handsome eyes like yours, Magda.”
Every time he spoke that name, Magdalen felt a strange thrill creep through her veins, and she grew very quiet while Roger talked to her of her mother, and the time when he found himself with a helpless child upon his hands.
“I adopted you then as my own,—my little baby,” he said. “You had nothing to do with it; the bargain was of my making, and you cannot break it. I have never given up my guardianship, never mean to give it up until some one claims you who has a better right than I to my little girl. And this I am saying in answer to your proposition of going away from Millbank, because you have no right here,—no claim on me. I am sorry that you should feel so,—you have a claim on me,—I cannot let you go,—Millbank would be very lonely without you, Magda.”
He paused a moment, and, looking off upon the hills across the river, seemed to be thinking intently. But it was not of the interpretation which many young girls of eighteen might put upon his words and manner. Nothing could be further from his mind than making love to Magdalen. He really felt as if he stood to her in the relation of a father, and that she had the same claim upon him which a child has upon a parent. Her proposition to leave Millbank disturbed him, and led him to think that perhaps he was in some way at fault. He had not been very attentive to her;—he had been so much absorbed in his business as to forget that any attentions were due from him as master of the house. He had left all these things to Frank, who knew so much better how to entertain young ladies than he did; but he meant to do better; and his eyes came back at last from the hills across the river, and rested very kindly on her, as he said:
“I am thinking, Magda, that possibly I may have been remiss in my attentions to you since my return. I am not a lady’s man, in the common acceptation of the term; but I have never meant to neglect you; and when I have seemed the most forgetful, you have been, perhaps, the most in my mind; and the coming home at night from the business which nearly drives me crazy, has been very pleasant to me, because you were there at our home I will call it, for it is as much yours as mine, and I want you to consider it so. It is hardly probable that I shall ever marry. I have lived to be thirty-two without finding a woman whom I would care to make my wife, and, after thirty, one’s chances of matrimony lessen. But, whether I marry or not, I shall provide for you, as well as Frank, who should perhaps have had more of my father’s property. His mother once believed there was another will,—a later one,—which gave him Millbank, and disinherited me; but that is all passed now.”
This was the first time Magdalen had ever heard the will matter put in so strong a light, and, springing to her feet, she exclaimed:
“Give Millbank to Frank, and disinherit you! I never heard that hinted before. I understood that the later will merely gave more to Frank than the five thousand dollars. I never dreamed, I did not know—when I—oh, Mr. Irving, I have been such a monster!”