SARATOGA AND NEWPORT.
For three weeks Katy had been at the Mountain House, growing stronger
every day, until she was much like the Katy of one year ago. But their
stay among the Catskills was ended, and on the morrow they were going to
Saratoga, where Mrs. Cameron and her daughters were, and where, too, was
Sybil Grandon, the reigning belle of the United States. So Bell had
written to her brother, bidding him hasten on with Katy, as she wished
to see “that chit of a widow in her proper place.” And Katy had been
weak enough for a moment to feel a throb of satisfaction in knowing how
effectually Sybil’s claims to belle-ship would be put aside when she was
once in the field; even glancing at herself in the mirror as she leaned
on Wilford’s shoulder, and feeling glad that mountain air and mountain
exercise had brought the roses back to her white cheeks and the
brightness to her eyes. But Katy wept passionate tears of repentance for
that weakness, when an hour later she read the letter which Dr. Grant
had sent in answer to one she had written from the Mountain House,
confessing her short-comings, and lamenting that the evils and excesses
which shocked her once did not startle her now. To this letter Morris
had replied as a brother might write to an only sister, first expressing
pleasure at her happiness, and then reminding her of that other life to
which this is only a preparation, and beseeching her so to use the good
things of this world, given her in such profusion, as not to lose the
life eternal.
This was the substance of Morris’s letter, which Katy read with
streaming eyes, forgetting Saratoga as Morris’s solemn words of warning
and admonition rang in her ears, and shuddering as she thought of losing
the life eternal, of going where Morris would never come, nor any of
those she loved the best, unless it were Wilford, who might reproach her
with having dragged him there when she could have saved him.
“Keep yourself unspotted from the world,” Morris had said, and she
repeated it to herself, asking “how shall I do that? how can one be good
and fashionable too?”
Then laying her head upon the rock where she was sitting, Katy tried to
pray as she had not prayed in months, asking that God would teach her
what she ought to know and keep her unspotted from the world. But at the
Mountain House it is easier to pray that one be kept from temptation
than it is at Saratoga, which this summer was crowded to overflowing,
its streets presenting a fitting picture of Vanity Fair, so full were
they of show and gala dress. At the United States, where Mrs. Cameron
stopped, two rooms, for which an enormous price was paid, had been
reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Cameron, and this of itself would have
given them a certain éclat, even if there had not been present many who
remembered the proud, fastidious bachelor, and were proportionately
anxious to see his wife. _She came, she saw, she conquered_; and within
three days after her arrival Katy Cameron was the acknowledged belle of
Saratoga, from the United States to the Clarendon. And Katy, alas, was
not quite the same as she who on the mountain ridge had sat with
Morris’s letter in her hand, praying that its teachings might not be
forgotten. Saratoga seemed different to her from New York, and she
plunged into its gaieties, never pausing, never tiring, and seldom
giving herself time to think; much less to pray, as Morris had bidden
her do. And Wilford, though hardly able to recognize the usually timid
Katy in the brilliant woman who led rather than followed, was sure of
her faith to him, and so was only proud and gratified to see her bear
off the palm from every competitor, while Juno, though she quarreled
with the shadow into which she was so completely thrown, enjoyed the
éclat cast upon their party by the presence of Mrs. Wilford, who had
passed beyond her criticism. Sybil Grandon, too, stood back in wonder
that a simple country girl should win and wear the laurels she had so
long claimed as her own; but as there was no help for it she contented
herself as best she could with the admiration she did receive, and
whenever opportunity occurred, said bitter things of Mrs. Wilford, whose
parentage and low estate were through her pretty generally known. But it
did not matter there what Katy _had been_; the people took her for what
she _was now_, and Sybil’s glory faded like the early dawn in the coming
of the full day.
As it had been at Saratoga, so it was at Newport. Urged on by Mrs.
Cameron and Bell, who enjoyed her notoriety, Katy plunged into the mad
excitement of dancing and driving and coqueting, until Wilford himself
became uneasy, locking her once in her room, where she was sleeping
after dinner, and conveniently forgetting to release her until after the
departure at evening of some young men from Cambridge, whose attentions
to the Ocean House belle had been more strongly marked than was
altogether agreeable to him. Of course it was a mistake—the locking of
the door—and a great oversight in him not to have remembered it sooner,
he said to Katy, by way of apology; and Katy, with no suspicion of the
truth, laughed merrily at the joke, repeating it downstairs to the old
dowagers, who shrugged their shoulders meaningly and whispered to each
other that it might be well if more young wives were locked into their
rooms and thus kept out of mischief.
Though flattered, caressed, and admired, Katy was not doing herself much
credit at Newport; but save Wilford, there was no one to raise a warning
voice, until Mark Ray came down for a few days’ respite from the heated
city, where he had spent the entire summer, taking charge of the
business which belonged as much to Wilford as to himself. But Wilford
had a wife; it was more necessary that he should leave, Mark had argued;
his time would come by and by. And so he had remained at home until the
last of August, when he appeared suddenly at the Ocean House one night
when Katy, in her airy robes and child-like simplicity, was breaking
hearts by the score. Like others, Mark was charmed, and not a little
proud for Katy’s sake, to see her thus appreciated; but when one day’s
experience had shown him more, and given him a look behind the scenes,
he trembled for her, knowing how hard it would be for her to come out of
that sea of dissipation as pure and spotless as she went in.
“If I were her brother I would warn her that her present career is not
one upon which she will look back with pleasure when the excitement is
over,” he said to himself; “but if Wilford is satisfied it is not for me
to interfere. It is surely nothing to me what Katy Cameron does,” he
kept repeating to himself; but as often as he said it there came up
before him a pale, anxious face, shaded with Helen Lennox’s bands of
hair, and Helen Lennox’s voice whispered to him: “Save Katy, for my
sake,” and so next day, when Mark found himself alone with Katy, while
most of the guests were at the beach, he questioned her of her life at
Saratoga and Newport, and gradually, as he talked, there crept into
Katy’s heart a suspicion that he was not pleased with her account, or
with what he had seen of her since his arrival.
For a moment Katy was indignant, but when he said to her kindly: “Would
Helen be pleased?” her tears started at once, and she attempted an
excuse for her weak folly, accusing Sybil Grandon as the first cause of
the ambition for which she hated herself.
“She had been held up as my pattern,” she said, half bitterly, and
forgetting to whom she was talking—“she, the one whom I was to imitate;
and when I found that I could go beyond her, I yielded to the
temptation, and exulted to see how far she was left behind. Besides
that,” she continued, “is it no gratification, think you, to let
Wilford’s proud mother and sister see the poor country girl, whom
ordinarily they would despise, stand where they cannot come, and even
dictate to them if she chooses so to do? I know it is wrong—I know it is
wicked—but I like the excitement, and so long as I am with these people
I shall never be any better. Mark Ray, you don’t know what it is to be
surrounded by a set who care for nothing but fashion and display, and
how they may outdo each other. I hate New York society. There is nothing
there but husks.”
Katy’s tears had ceased, and on her white face there was a new look of
womanhood, as if in that outburst she had changed, and would never again
be just what she was before.
“Say,” she continued, “do _you_ like New York society?”
“Not always—not wholly,” Mark answered; “and still you misjudge it
greatly, for all are not like the people you describe. Your husband’s
family represent one extreme, while there are others equally high in the
social scale who do not make fashion the rule of their lives—sensible,
cultivated, intellectual people, of whose acquaintance one might be
glad—people whom I fancy your sister Helen would enjoy. I have only met
her twice, but my impression is that _she_ would not find New York
distasteful.”
Mark did not know why he had dragged Helen into that conversation,
unless it were that she seemed very near to him as he talked with Katy,
who replied:
“Yes, Helen finds good in all. She sees differently from what I do, and
I wish so much that she was here.”
“Why not send for her?” Mark asked, casting about in his mind whether in
case Helen came, he, too, could tarry for a week and leave that business
in Southbridge, which he must attend to ere returning to the city.
It would be a study to watch Helen Lennox there at Newport, and in
imagination Mark was already her sworn knight, shielding her from
criticism, and commanding for her respect from those who respected him,
when Katy tore his castle down by answering impulsively:
“I doubt if Wilford would let me send for her, nor does it matter, as I
shall not remain much longer. I do not need her now, since you have
shown me how foolish I have been. I was angry at first, but now I thank
you for it, and so will Helen. I shall tell her when I am in Silverton.
I am going there from here and oh, I so wish it was to-day.”
The guests were beginning to return from the beach by this time, and as
Mark had said all he had intended saying, he left Katy with Wilford, who
had just come in and joined a merry party of Bostonians only that day
arrived. That night at the Ocean House the guests missed something from
their festivities; the dance was not so exhilarating or the small-talk
between so lively, while more than one white-kidded dandy swore mentally
at the innocent Wilford, whose wife declined to join in the gayeties,
and in a plain white muslin, with only a pond lily in her hair, kept by
her husband’s side, notwithstanding that he bade her leave him and
accept some of her numerous invitations to join the giddy dance. This
sober phase of Katy did not on the whole please Wilford as much as her
gayer ones had done. All he had ever dreamed of the sensation his bride
would create was more than verified. Katy had fulfilled his highest
expectations, reaching a point from which, as she had said to Mark, she
could dictate to his mother, if she chose, and he did not care to see
her relinquish it.
But Katy remained true to herself. Dropping her girlish playfulness, she
assumed a quiet, gentle dignity, which became her even better than her
gayer mood had done, making her ten times more popular and more sought
after, until she begged to go away, persuading Wilford at last to name
the day for their departure, and then, never doubting for a moment that
her destination was Silverton, she wrote to Helen that she should be
home on such a day, and as they would come by way of Providence and
Worcester, they would probably reach West Silverton at ten o’clock, A.
M.
“Wilford,” she added in a postscript, “has gone down to bathe, and as
the mail is just closing, I shall send this letter without his seeing
it. Of course it can make no difference, for I have talked all summer of
coming, and he understands it.”