Читать книгу Magdalen's Vow - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 8

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Toiling slowly in the warm afternoon sunshine, up the village street, shut in from the world by those green New Hampshire hills, went George Barstone's governess. There were few people abroad, for the train had dashed in just at tea time; but those few stopped to greet heartily the pretty girl in black.

"Dear me, now, if it's not Magdalen Allward! Have you come to stay, or is it only a visit?"

"Only a visit," Magdalen replied, to these good people. "I get lonely, sometimes, and homesick, in that great, dusty city yonder, and run down among our breezy hills to freshen up."

She walked on, a rested look coming over her tired young face, after each of these greetings.

"The world is not such an unfeeling world after all," she thought. "There are kindly hearts in it—stray roses among the thorns. It is worth enduring the pain of going away, for the pleasure of coming home."

"Home! She paused before it at last—a little brown cottage, with June creepers running over it. The front door stood wide to admit the pleasant evening coolness, and she could see through into the little yellow painted kitchen. There sat Rachel over her knitting—there lay pussy, coiled up on her mat—and there toddled about a little flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked fairy, very shaky on her fat legs. The golden sunset lit up the picture like amber rain.

"Dear old home!" Magdalen murmured. "Such a haven of rest and peace, after the turmoil and strife of the big, weary world. Thank God, I can keep it for them! thank God for my youth and strength that enables me to fight the battle of life. Such a happy, happy home as it once was, before that villain came. Father, Willie, Laura all gone—all their unavenged wrongs lying at his door. Heaven grant me patience to persevere until I find him, and then—then let him beware!"

Her face darkened vindictively, and her little hand clenched. Oh, to have him at her mercy now—to stand face to face with Laura's murderer.

She pushed open the low white gate and walked in. Old Rachel's blunt hearing failed to catch the light step, but the little toddler saw her and ran forward with a scream of delight.

"My pet! my pet!" Magdalen cried, catching her up and covering the bright baby face with kisses. "How glad I am to see you again!"

Rachel started up and stood with a face of doubt and delight. The girl laughed and kissed her, too.

"Dear old nursey! Yes, it's I, and very tired, dusty and hungry I am. Is tea almost ready, Rachel, and have you got anything particularly nice?"

"My child! my darling! You don't know what a happy surprise this is!" old Rachel exclaimed. "I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you! And Laura, too—look at that child's eyes!"

"That's because she's waiting for candy," said Magdalen. "Well, you shall have some, Laura. Here's candy, peanuts, picture books, dolls, ad infinitum. Cry 'havoc,' and disembowel the bag yourself."

She gave her reticule into the child's hands, and little Laura, with a childish scream of ecstasy, sat down on the floor and proceeded to entrench herself in a breastwork of toys and sweetmeats.

Magdalen shook out her dusty robes, smoothed the shining tresses Mr. George Barstone had admired so much, and sat down and looked at her old nurse, with a face so brightly beautiful, that it was a delight only to see her. She was a fresh and sanguine girl of eighteen, and the happy radiance would break out, in spite of present drudgery and past troubles.

"It is so nice to be here," she said, fetching a long breath. "You don't know how homesick I get sometimes, Rachel. New York seems like a great stone prison, and I and the rest of the men and women, all in the treadmill. I feel as though I should die if I did not make my escape occasionally, and see the blue sky and the swelling fields, and breathe the fresh mountain wind."

"You poor child! And how long are you going to stay?"

"Only until to-morrow afternoon. I have left Mrs. Howard's, and put my head in a new yoke on Friday morning."

"My dear—left your place?"

"Yes—for a better, I hope. The salary is higher, and the work, I take it, less; but I never expect to find a more indulgent employer than gossippy, good-natured Mrs. Howard. She is going home to England, you see, and I can't go with her on account of the old lady and the bairnie here, so I answered an advertisement in the Herald, and secured this new place."

"In New York?"

"No, the country—Millford, Conn. The name of the family is Barstone, and, from the sample I have seen, I think I shall like them. I don't go until Friday, so I took time by the forelock and ran home to tell you the news. And now for supper—I told you I was famished."

Nurse Rachel bustled about in a state of ecstasy. It was delightful to see her nursling at all—it was more delightful to see her in such good health and spirits.

"I wish I had you always," Rachel said. "You bring sunshine wherever you go, my pretty darling. It is a great deal too hard on a delicate young creature like you, to have to work like a galley-slave or a kitchen maid, for a good-for-nothing old woman like me, and poor little Laura. But I hope it won't last forever—that bright face of yours, my pet, will get you a handsome young husband one of these days, with plenty of money, and all your heart can wish."

"Plenty of money and nothing to do!" sang Magdalen; "that would be bliss, Rachel; but the handsome young husband is very slow in coming, and I'm getting dreadfully old—eighteen last birthday. They advertise for husbands in New York, when they grow quite desperate. I'll wait six months longer and if he doesn't come of himself by the end of that time, I'll send two dollars to the Herald office and try my fate in print."

Rachel shook her head and replenished her young lady's cup.

"Have patience, my dear, he'll come, depend upon it. I was twenty-eight when I got married—you've time enough yet. Laura, you'll be sick if you eat any more candy, and it's time little girls were in bed."

"Yes," said Magdalen, "little girls should go to roost with little chickens. Come, Laura, auntie will put you to bed herself, and the biggest doll shall sleep with you all night."

Magdalen bore her off and it was a long time before she came down. When she did the radiance had left her face and her cheeks were wet with tears.

"I have been singing Laura to sleep," she said; "she is sleeping with dolly hugged tight in her arms, and, oh, Rachel! there is such a look of her mother in her face!"

"Yes," Rachel said, very quietly, "she does look like her. Not at all like him!"

"Thank God she does not!" the girl cried passionately.

"My dear."

"I tell you I should! I could not help it! I would forget she was Laura's child if she had that monster's face, and I should hate her as I hate him!"

"But, my dear!" very much shocked.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" Magdalen cried. "I do forget sometimes, though never forget long, and I abhor myself for it! Two years, two long years, and no nearer the end yet! When I think of it, Rachel, it sets me wild! Two years and no nearer finding that villain than the day Laura was laid in her grave!"

"But, my child, what can you do? It is not your fault."

"No, heaven knows. I have sought for him—I have inquired for him—I have looked for him everywhere. Was it not in the hope of meeting him that I went to New York, under the name of Wayne? But all in vain I have tried, until I am tempted to give up in despair."

"Better so, dear child. I wish you would."

"Never!" Magdalen cried, her eyes flashing black in the twilight. "Never while my life lasts! I will keep the vow I made beside my dead sister's grave, or he or I shall perish! Give up? I tell you, Rachel, when I think of my father, my sister, my brother, my hate and my wrongs burn in my heart and drive me nearly mad!"

She trod up and down like a young lioness, her eyes blazing, her hands clenched—a fierce young Nemesis.

"But, Magdalen, this is all very wrong, very wicked, very unchristian!"

"I don't believe it! A life for a life was Jehovah's command. It is justice—and justice should be done, though the heavens fall!"

"Ah, Magdalen, be merciful—be womanly! Not a life for a life, but 'Vengeance is mine—I will repay.'"

"Don't talk to me—don't!" the girl exclaimed, passionately. "You cannot feel as I feel! It was my father, my sister, my brother, who were done to death! Oh, my God!" she cried, raising her clasped hands, "hear me! Help me to find this man!"

There was a pause. The old woman was awed by the impassioned vehemence and despair she could not comprehend.

"You never will," she said, at last; "you never will find him. He may be dead, he may be at the other end of the universe, he may be in prison for life."

"He may! he may be! but he also may not be! You and I are alive—why not he? It is not that makes me fear—makes me despair. It is that, if I met him to-morrow, I should not know him—if I stood face to face with him this hour, I should not recognize Laura's destroyer. He is young, and he is tall—that is everything that I know about him. His name, his hair, his whiskers, all were false—you might hardly know him yourself if you met him again. I may have sat by his side, heard his voice, held his hand, and left him nothing the wiser. I suppose it is only in sensational novels and melodramas that people go about with convenient strawberry marks. There seems nothing left for me but give up in despair."

She sank down wearily, but looked around the same instant in surprise, for old Rachel had started to her feet, all at once, violently excited.

"The mark!" she cried; "the mark! I never thought of it before! The mark on Maurice Langley's arm!"

"What mark?" questioned Magdalen, breathlessly; "what mark? Speak, Rachel! One by which I may know him?"

"One by which you may know him among a thousand—a mark not to be mistaken. I recollect it as well, after three years, as if it had been three hours."

"Thank heaven!" Magdalen fervently exclaimed; "thank heaven, I may then find him yet! Tell me what it is like, Rachel?"

"It was by mere accident I saw it," said Rachel; "and you might meet Maurice Langley a million times, and never have an opportunity of seeing his arm. It was one day he had slightly sprained his wrist, and I had unfastened his shirt sleeve and rolled it up to the elbow to pour water on the sprain. That was how I saw the mark."

"And what was it like?"

"Like nothing I ever saw before. It was no natural mark—it was tattooing, and covered almost the whole inside part of the arm, between elbow and wrist. It was so curious that Willie, and Laura, and I forgot for a while all about the sprain in examining it."

"Well?"

"First," said Rachel, "there was a sort of wreath, done in blue ink, grapes and leaves, quite perfect. Inside the wreath, done in red ink, there was a heart, with a dagger through it, and drops falling like drops of blood. Surmounting this, in black ink, was a big capital letter 'B.' And, now I think of it, 'B' must have been the initial of his family name, though he explained it away at the time. The device was the Bleeding Heart, and very well it was done, and very much it must have hurt him to get it done. He laughed over it, and said a sailor, with half his body illuminated in like manner, had tattooed it when he was a boy. But if ever you see an arm with that device (which isn't likely), you may know the owner of that arm is Maurice Langley."

"Thank heaven!" Magdalen repeated, "I have found some distinct clue at last! Accident revealed it once to you—accident may reveal it once again to me."

Rachel shook her head.

"It is very unlikely. You might live under the same roof with him for years and never see the mark. Oh, my dear, give up thinking about it! Be happy yourself, if you can, and let poor Laura rest in her grave."

"No, Rachel—no!" Magdalen said, resolutely; "I will never give up. I could not rest in my own grave, if I died to-morrow, with my vow unfulfilled. Be happy? How can I be happy, with my only brother in a felon's cell—my only sister in a disgraced grave? Am I a monster, that I should even try to forget, while the cold-blooded, matchless villain, who has wrought the ruin of all I love, goes free before the world? I tell you no, Rachel! If I live to be a hundred years old, I will never give up! Don't try to alter my purpose. Sooner or later, so sure as there is a just and avenging God above, I will meet that man, and punish him for his crime!"

She strode up and down the room like a tragedy queen, her face pale, her eyes flashing, her voice ringing like a bell. If George Barstone could have seen her at that moment, I doubt if he would have known again the calm-eyed, gentle-voiced girl of Mrs. Howard's parlor.

Old Rachel sighed heavily. She knew it was all very wicked and unwomanly, this wild talk of revenge; but she knew, too, the indomitable nature of her nursling. When she spoke, her words were commonplace, and far from the subject.

"You must be very tired, my dear, after your day's travel. Hadn't you better go to bed?"

The twilight had faded out in the pale gray blank, and on the edge of a turquoise sky glimmered palely the new moon. She rose, to draw the curtain and light the lamp, as she spoke.

"No," replied Magdalen, abruptly turning away; "I am going out."

"My dear! At this hour! Where?"

"To Laura's grave."

With that answer, the girl left the room and went up-stairs. Five minutes later, and she passed out the front door, dressed for her walk. The old nurse sighed, and shook her head forebodingly.

"I wish she didn't remember so well," she said to herself. "She will ruin her whole life with this mad, unchristian scheme of revenge! I know that he deserves punishment, if ever man deserved it; but it is madness for her to think she will meet him, and know him, and inflict it. I wish she would ever forget!"

Vain wish! Magdalen Allward would never forget, never forgive. You could read that in the white rigidity of her face, in the dusky fire of her eyes, as she walked along in the silvery moonlight, to her sister's grave. Like sheeted ghosts in the solemn light rose up the ghastly grave-stones; but there was no superstitious fear in her brave nature, and she walked steadily on, to the three graves under the firs.

"My poor Laura! my poor sister!" she sadly murmured, the slow tears welling up. "What a weary time you have lain in your unavenged grave! I have tried, oh, heaven knows how ardently! to meet the man who wronged you so cruelly, and tried in vain. But some day, sooner or later, I will cross his path—I will stand before him, his accuser, your avenger! And then, Laura—and then!"

Nearly an hour after, while she still knelt there, heedless how the moments sped, a hand fell upon her shoulder, and looking up, she saw her faithful nurse.

"Thinking still, my dear?" Rachel said, kindly. "Your poor brain will get dazed, Magdalen. What is it all about?" and she viewed with sad, somber eyes.

"I am thinking of the mark on Maurice Langley's arm," she said. "Rachel, I don't know how it is, but I have a presentiment—a conviction—that I will meet that man before long!"