KATY GOES TO SILVERTON.
A summer day in Silverton—a soft, bright August day, when the early
rare-ripes by the well were turning their red cheeks to the sun, and the
flowers in the garden were lifting their heads proudly, and nodding to
each other as if they knew the secret which made that day so bright
above all others. Old Whitey, by the hitching-post, was munching at his
oats and glancing occasionally at the covered buggy standing on the
green sward, fresh and clean as water from the pond could make it; the
harness, lying upon a rock, where Katy used to feed the sheep with salt,
and the whip standing upright in its socket, were waiting for the
deacon, who was donning his best suit of clothes, even to a stiff shirt
collar which almost cut his ears, his face shining with anticipations
which he knew would be realized. Katy was really coming home, and in
proof thereof there were behind the house and barn piles of rubbish,
lath and plaster, mouldy paper and broken bricks, the tokens and remains
of the repairing process, which for so long a time had made the
farm-house a scene of dire confusion, driving its inmates nearly
distracted, except when they remembered for whose sake they endured so
much, inhaling clouds of lime, stepping over heaps of mortar, tearing
their dress skirts on sundry nails projecting from every conceivable
quarter, and wondering the while if the masons ever would finish or the
carpenters be gone.
As a condition on which Katy might be permitted to come home, Wilford
had stipulated an improvement in the interior arrangement of the house,
offering to bear the expense even to the furnishing of the rooms. To
this the family demurred at first, not liking Wilford’s dictatorial
manner, nor his insinuation that their home was not good enough for his
wife. But Helen turned the tide, appreciating Wilford’s feelings better
than the others could do, and urging a compliance with his request.
“Anything to get Katy home,” she said, and so the chimney was torn away,
a window was cut here and an addition made there, until the house was
really improved with its pleasant, modern parlor and the large airy
bedroom, with bathing-room attached, the whole the idea of Wilford, who
graciously deigned to come out once or twice from New London, where he
was spending a few weeks, to superintend the work and suggest how it
should be done.
The furniture, too, which he sent on from New York, was perfect in its
kind, and suitable in every respect and Helen enjoyed the settling very
much, and when it was finished it was hard telling which was the more
pleased, she or good Aunt Betsy, who, having confessed in a general kind
of way at a sewing society, that she did go to a play-house, and was not
so very sorry either, except as the example might do harm, had nothing
to fear from New York, and was proportionably happy. At least she would
have been if Morris had not seemed so _off_, as she expressed it, taking
but little interest in the preparations and evincing no pleasure at
Katy’s expected visit. He had been polite to Wilford, had kept him at
Linwood, taking him to and from the depot, but even Wilford had thought
him changed, telling Katy how very sober and grave he had become, rarely
smiling, and not seeming to care to talk unless it were about his
profession or on some religious topic. And Morris _was_ greatly changed.
The wound which in most hearts would have healed by this time, had grown
deeper with each succeeding year, while from all he heard he felt sure
that Katy’s marriage was a sad mistake, wishing sometimes that he had
spoken, and so perhaps have saved her from the life in which she could
not be wholly free. “She would be happier with me,” he had said, with a
sad smile to Helen, when she told him of some things which she had not
mentioned elsewhere, and there were great tears in Morris’s eyes, when
Helen spoke of Katy’s distress, and the look which came into her face
when baby was taken away. Times there were when the silent Doctor,
living alone at Linwood, felt that his grief was too great to bear. But
the deep waters were always forded safely, and Morris’s faith in God
prevailed, so that only a dull heavy pain remained, with the
consciousness that it was no sin to remember Katy as she was remembered
now. Oh how he longed to see her, and yet how he dreaded it, lest poor
weak human flesh should prove inadequate to the sight. But she was
coming home; Providence had ordered that and he accepted it, looking
eagerly for the time, but repressing his eagerness, so that not even
Helen suspected how impatient he was for the day of her return. Four
weeks she had been at the Pequot House in New London, occupying a little
cottage and luxuriating in the joy of having her child with her almost
every day. Country air and country nursing had wrought wonders in the
baby, which had grown so beautiful and bright that it was no longer in
Wilford’s way save as it took too much of Katy’s time, and made her care
less for the gay crowd at the hotel.
Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one
day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know
that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best—Marian, who
cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell. And Katy was glad to have it
so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave
the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton.
Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined
to do. It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs.
Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farm-house Katy wrote
that baby was not coming.
They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy’s baby had been anticipated
quite as much as Katy herself, and Aunt Betsy had brought from the
wood-shed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked
the deacon’s only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned
to lisp his mother’s name. As a memento of those days the cradle had
been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until
she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence
Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until it was
white as snow. But it would not be needed, and with a sigh the old lady
carried it back, thinking “things had come to a pretty pass when a woman
who could dance and carouse till twelve o’clock at night was too weakly
to take care of her child,” and feeling a very little awe of Katy who
must have grown so fine a lady.
But all this passed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come,
and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Uncle
Ephraim drove from the door, setting old Whitey into a canter, which, by
the time the “race” was reached, had become a rapid trot, the old man
holding up his reins and looking proudly at the oat-fed animal, speeding
along so fast.
He did not have long to wait this time, for the train soon came rolling
across the meadow, and while his head was turned towards the car where
he fancied she might be, a pair of arms was thrown impetuously round his
neck, and a little figure, standing on tiptoe, almost pulled him down in
its attempts to kiss him.
“Uncle Eph! oh, Uncle Eph, I’ve come! I’m here!” a young voice cried;
but the words the deacon would have spoken were smothered by the kisses
pressed upon his lips, kisses which only came to an end when a voice
said rather reprovingly, “There, Katy, that will do. You have almost
strangled him.”
Wilford had not been expected, and the expression of the deacon’s face
was not a very cordial greeting to the young man who hastened to explain
that he was going directly on to Boston. In his presence the deacon was
not quite natural, but he lifted in his arms his “little Katy-did,” and
looked straight into her face, where there were as yet no real lines of
care, only shadows, which told that in some respects she was not the
same Katy he had parted with two years before. There was a good deal of
the _city_ about her dress and style; and the deacon felt a little
overawed at first; but this wore off as, on their way to the farm-house,
she talked to him in her old, loving manner, and asked questions about
the people he supposed she had forgotten, nodding to everybody she met,
whether she knew them or not, and at last, as the old house came in
sight, hiding her face in a gush of happy tears upon his neck. Scarcely
waiting for old Whitey to stop, but with one leap clearing the wheel,
she threw herself into the midst of the women waiting on the door step
to meet her. It was a joyful meeting, and when the first excitement was
over, Katy inspected the improvements, praising them all and
congratulating herself upon the nice time she was to have.
“You don’t know what a luxury it is to feel that I can rest,” she said
to Helen.
“Didn’t you rest at New London?” Helen asked.
“Yes, some,” Katy replied; “but there were dances every night, or sails
upon the bay, and I had to go, for many of our friends were there, and
Wilford was not willing for me to be quiet.”
This, then, was the reason why Katy came home so weary and pale, and
craving so much the rest she had not had in more than two years. But she
would get it now, and before the first dinner was eaten some of her old
color came stealing back to her cheeks, and her eyes began to dance just
as they used to do, while her merry voice rang out in silvery peals at
Aunt Betsy’s quaint remarks, which struck her so forcibly from not
having heard them for so long a time. Freed from the restraint of her
husband’s presence, she came back at once to what she was when a young,
careless girl she sat upon the door-steps and curled the dandelion
stalks. She did not do this now, for there were none to curl; but she
strung upon a thread the delicate petals of the phlox growing by the
door, and then bound it as a crown about the head of her mother, who
could not quite recognize her Katy in the elegant Mrs. Wilford Cameron,
with rustling silk, and diamonds flashing on her hands every time they
moved. But when she saw her racing with the old brown goat and its
little kid out in the apple orchard, her head uncovered, and her bright
curls blowing about her face, the feeling disappeared, and she felt that
Katy had indeed come back again.
Katy had inquired for Morris immediately after her arrival, but in her
excitement she had forgotten him again, until tea was over, when, just
as she had done on the day of her return from Canandaigua, she took her
hat and started on the well-worn path toward Linwood. Airily she tripped
along, her light plaid silk gleaming through the deep green of the trees
and revealing her coming to the tired man sitting upon a little rustic
seat, beneath a chestnut tree, where he once had sat with Katy, and
extracted a _cruel_ sliver from her hand, kissing the place to make it
well as she told him to. She was a child then, a little girl of twelve,
and he was twenty, but the sight of her pure face lifted confidingly to
his had stirred his heart as no other face had stirred it since, making
him look forward to a time when the hand he kissed would be his own, and
his the fairy form he watched so carefully as it expanded day by day
into the perfect woman. He was thinking of that time now, and how
differently it had all turned out, when he heard the bounding step and
saw her coming toward him, swinging her hat in childish abandon, and
warbling a song she had learned from him.
“Morris, oh, Morris!” she cried, as he ran eagerly forward; “I am so
glad to see you. It seems so nice to be with you once more here in the
dear old woods. Don’t get up—please don’t get up,” she continued, as he
started to rise.
She was standing before him, a hand on either side of his face, into
which she was looking quite as wistfully as he was regarding her.
Something she missed in his manner, which troubled her; and thinking she
knew what it was she said to him, “Why don’t you kiss me, Morris? You
used to. Ain’t you glad to see me?”
“Yes, very glad,” he answered, and drawing her down beside him, he
kissed her twice, but so gravely, that Katy was not satisfied at all,
and tears gathered in her eyes as she tried to think what ailed Morris.
He was very thin, and there were a few white hairs about his temples, so
that, though four years younger than her husband, he seemed to her much
older, quite grandfatherly in fact, and this accounted for the liberties
she took, asking what was the matter, and trying to make him _like her
again_, by assuring him that she was not as vain and foolish as he might
suppose from what Helen had probably told him of her life since leaving
Silverton. “I do not like it at all,” she said. “I am in it, and must
conform; but, oh Morris! you don’t know how much happier I should be if
Wilford were just like you, and lived at Linwood instead of New York. I
should be so happy here with baby all the time.”
It was well she spoke that name, for Morris could not have borne much
more; but the mention of her child quieted him at once, so that he could
calmly tell her she _was_ the same to him she always had been, while
with his next breath he asked, “Where is your baby, Katy?” adding with a
smile, “I can remember when you were a baby, and I held you in my arms.”
“Can you really?” Katy said: and as if that remembrance made him older
than the hills, she nestled her curly head against his shoulder, while
she told him of her bright-eyed darling, and as she talked, the
mother-love which spread itself over her girlish face made it more
beautiful than anything Morris had ever seen.
“Surely an angel’s countenance cannot be fairer, purer than hers,” he
thought, as she talked of the only thing which had a power to separate
her from him, making her seem as a friend, or at most as a beloved
sister.
A long time they talked together, and the sun was setting ere Morris
rose, suggesting that she go home, as the night dew would soon be
falling.
“And you are not as strong as you once were,” he added, pulling her
shawl around her shoulders with careful solicitude, and thinking how
slender she had become.
From the back parlor Helen saw them coming up the path, detecting the
changed expression of Morris’s face, and feeling a pang of fear when, as
he left them after nine o’clock, she heard her mother say that he had
not appeared so natural since Katy went away as he had done that night.
Knowing what she did, Helen trembled for Morris, with this terrible
temptation before him, and Morris trembled for himself as he went back
the lonely path, and stopped again beneath the chestnut tree where he
had so lately sat with Katy. There was a great fear at his heart, and it
found utterance in words as kneeling by the rustic bench with only the
lonely night around him and the green boughs over head, he asked that he
might be kept from sin, both in thought and deed, and be to Katy Cameron
just what she took him for, her friend and elder brother. And God, who
knew the sincerity of the heart thus pleading before him, heard and
answered the prayer, so that after that first night of trial Morris
could look on Katy without a wish that she were otherwise than Wilford
Cameron’s wife and the mother of his child. He was happier because of
her being at the farm-house, though he did not go there one half as
often as she came to him.
Those September days were happy ones to Katy, who became a child again—a
petted, spoiled child, whom every one caressed and suffered to have her
way. To Uncle Ephraim it was as if some bright angel had suddenly
dropped into his path, and flooded it with sunshine. He was so glad to
have again his “Katy-did,” who went with him to the fields, waiting
patiently till his work was done, and telling him of all the wondrous
things she saw abroad, but speaking little of her city life. That was
something she did not care to talk about, and but for Wilford’s letters,
and the frequent mention of baby, the deacon could easily have imagined
that Katy had never left him. But these were barriers between the old
life and the present; these were the insignia of _Mrs. Wilford Cameron_,
who was watched and envied by the curious Silvertonians, and pronounced
charming by them all. Still there was one drawback to Katy’s happiness.
She missed her child, mourning for it so much that her family, quite as
anxious as herself to see it, suggested her sending for it. It would
surely take no harm with them, and Marian would come with it, if Mrs.
Hubbell could not. To this plan Katy listened more willingly from the
fact that Wilford had gone West, and the greater the distance between
them the more she dared to do. And so Marian Hazelton was one day
startled at the sudden appearance at the cottage of Katy, who had come
to take her and baby to Silverton.
There was no resisting the vehemence of Katy’s arguments, and before the
next day’s sun-setting, the farm-house, usually so quiet and orderly,
had been turned into one general nursery, where Baby Cameron reigned
supreme, screaming with delight at the _tin_ ware which Aunt Betsy
brought out, from the cake-cutter to the dipper, the little creature
beating a noisy tattoo upon the latter with an iron spoon, and then for
diversion burying its fat dimpled hands in Uncle Ephraim’s long white
hair, for the old man went down upon all fours to do his
great-grand-niece homage.
That night Morris came up, stopping suddenly as a loud baby laugh
reached him, even across the orchard, and leaning for a moment against
the wall, while he tried to prepare himself for the shock it would be to
see Katy’s child, and hold it in his arms, as he knew he must, or the
mother be aggrieved.
He had supposed it was pretty, but he was not prepared for the beautiful
little cherub which in its short white dress, with its soft curls of
golden brown clustering about its head, stood holding to a chair,
pushing it occasionally, and venturing now and then to take a step,
while its infantile laugh mingled with the screams of its delighted
auditors, watching it with so much interest.
There was one great, bitter, burning pang, and then, folding his arms
composedly upon the window sill, Dr. Grant stood looking in upon the
occupants of the room, whistling at last to baby, as he was accustomed
to whistle to the children of his patients.
“Oh, Morris,” Katy cried, “Baby can almost walk, Marian has taken so
much pains, and she can say ‘papa.’ Isn’t she a beauty?”
Baby had turned her head by this time, her ear caught by the whistle and
her eye arrested by something in Morris which fascinated her gaze.
Perhaps she thought of Wilford, of whom she had been very fond, for she
pushed her chair towards him and then held up her fat arms for him to
take her.
Never was mother prouder than Katy during the first few days succeeding
baby’s arrival, while the family seemed to tread on air, so swiftly the
time went by with that active little life in their midst, stirring them
up so constantly, putting to rout all their rules of order and keeping
their house in a state of delightful confusion. It was wonderful how
rapidly the child improved with so many teachers, learning to lisp its
mother’s name and taught by her, attempting to say “Doctor.” From the
very first the child took to Morris, crying after him whenever he went
away, and hailing his arrival with a crow of joy and an eager attempt to
reach him.
“It was altogether too forward for this world,” Aunt Betsy often said,
shaking her head ominously, but not really meaning what she predicted,
even when for a few days it did not seem as bright as usual, but lay
quietly in Katy’s lap, a blue look about the mouth and a flush upon its
cheeks, which neither Morris nor Marian liked.
More accustomed to children than the other members of the family, they
both watched it closely, Morris coming over twice one day, and the last
time he came regarding Katy with a look as if he would fain ward off
from her some evil which he feared.
“What is it, Morris?” she asked. “Is baby going to be very sick?” and a
great crushing fear came upon her as she waited for his answer.
“I hope not,” he said; “I cannot tell as yet; the symptoms are like
cholera infantum, of which I have several cases, but if taken in time I
apprehend no danger.”
There was a low shriek and baby opened its heavy lids and moaned, while
Helen came at once to Katy, who was holding her hand upon her heart as
if the pain had entered there. To Marian it was no news, for ever since
the early morning she had suspected the nature of the disease stealing
over the little child. All night the light burned in the farm-house,
where there were anxious, troubled faces, Katy bending constantly over
her darling, and even amid her terrible anxiety, dreading Wilford’s
displeasure when he should hear what she had done and its possible
result. She did not believe as yet that her child would die; but she
suffered acutely, watching for the early dawn when Morris had said he
would be there, and when at last he came, begging of him to leave his
other patients and care only for baby.
“Would that be right?” Morris asked, and Katy blushed for her
selfishness when she heard how many were sick and dying around them. “I
will spend every leisure moment here,” he said, leaving his directions
with Marian and then hurrying away without a word of hope for the child,
which grew worse so fast that when the night shut down again it lay upon
the pillow, its blue eyes closed and its head thrown back, while its sad
moanings could only be hushed by carrying it in one’s arms about the
room, a task which Katy could not do.
She had tried it at first, refusing all their offers with the reply,
“Baby is mine, and shall I not carry her?”
But the feeble strength gave out, the limbs began to totter, and
staggering backward she cried, “Somebody must take her.”
It was Marian who went forward, Marian, whose face was a puzzle as she
took the infant in her stronger arms, her stony eyes, which had not wept
as yet, fastening themselves upon the face of Wilford Cameron’s child
with a look which seemed to say, “Retribution, retribution.”
But only when she remembered the father, now so proud of his daughter,
was that word in her heart. She could not harbor it when she glanced at
the mother, and her lips moved in earnest prayer that, if possible, God
would not leave her so desolate. An hour later and Morris came,
relieving Marian of her burden, which he carried in his own arms, while
he strove to comfort Katy, who, crouching by the empty crib, was sitting
motionless in a kind of dumb despair, all hope crushed out by his answer
to her entreaties that he would tell her the truth, and keep nothing
back.
“I think your baby will die,” he said to her very gently, pausing a
moment in awe of the white face, whose expression terrified him, it was
so full of agony.
Bowing her head upon her hands, poor Katy whispered sadly, “God must not
take my baby. Oh, Morris, pray that he will not. He will hear and answer
you; I have been so bad I cannot pray, but I am not going to be bad
again. If he will let me keep my darling I will begin a new life. I
_will_ try to serve him. Dear Lord, hear and answer, and not let baby
die.”
She was praying herself now, and Morris’s broad chest heaved as he
glanced at her kneeling figure, and then at the death-like face upon the
pillow, with the pinched look about the nose and lips, which to his
practiced eye was a harbinger of death.
“Its father should be here,” he thought, and when Katy lifted up her
head again he asked if she was sure her husband had not yet returned
from Minnesota.
“Yes, sure—that is, I think he has not,” was Katy’s answer, a chill
creeping over her at the thought of meeting Wilford, and giving him his
daughter dead.
“I shall telegraph in the morning at all events,” Morris continued, “and
if he is not in New York, it will be forwarded.”
“Yes, that will be best,” was the reply, spoken so mournfully that
Morris stopped in front of Katy, and tried to reason with her.
But Katy would not listen, and only answered that _he_ did not know, he
could not feel, he never had been tried.
“Perhaps not,” Morris said; “but Heaven is my witness, Katy, that if I
could save you this pain by giving up my life for baby’s I would do it
willingly; but God does not give us our choice. He knoweth what is best,
and baby is better with Him than us.”
For a moment Katy was silent; then, as a new idea took possession of her
mind, she sprang to Morris’s side and seizing his arm, demanded, “Can an
unbaptized child be saved?”
“We nowhere read that baptism is a saving ordinance,” was Morris’s
answer; while Katy continued, “but _do_ you believe they will be saved?”
“Yes, I do,” was the decided response, which, however, did not ease
Katy’s mind, and she moaned on, “A child of heathen parents may, but _I_
knew better. I knew it was my duty to give the child to God, and for a
foolish fancy withheld the gift until it is too late, and God will take
it without the mark upon its forehead, the water on its brow. Oh, baby,
baby, if she should be lost—_no name, no mark, no baptismal sign_.”
“Not water, but the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin,” Morris said,
“and as sure as he died so sure this little one is safe. Besides, there
may be time for the baptism yet—that is, to-morrow. Baby will not die
to-night, and if you like, it still shall have a name.”
Eagerly Katy seized upon that idea, thinking more of the sign, the
water, than the _name_, which scarcely occupied her thoughts at all. It
did not matter what the child was called, so that it became one of the
little ones in glory, and with a calmer, quieter demeanor than she had
shown that day, she saw Morris depart at a late hour; and then turning
to the child which Uncle Ephraim was holding, kissed it lovingly,
whispering as she did so, “Baby shall be baptized—baby shall have the
sign.”