KATY.
“Are you of the same mind still?” Helen asked, when three weeks later
she returned from New York, and at the hour for retiring sat in her
chamber watching Katy as she brushed her hair, occasionally curling a
tress around her fingers and letting it fall upon her snowy nightdress.
They had been talking of Morris, whom Katy had seen but once since that
rainy night, and that at church, where he had been the previous Sunday.
Katy had written an account of the transaction to her sister, who had
chosen to reply by word of mouth rather than by letter, and so the first
moment they were alone she seized the opportunity to ask if Katy was of
the same mind still as when she refused the doctor.
“Yes, why shouldn’t I be?” Katy replied. “You, better than any one else,
know what passed between Wilford——”
“Do you love Morris?” Helen asked, abruptly, without waiting for Katy to
finish her sentence.
For an instant the hands stopped in their work, and Katy’s eyes filled
with tears, which dropped into her lap as she replied,
“More than I wish I did, seeing I must always tell him no. It’s strange,
too, how the love for him keeps coming, in spite of all I can do. I have
not been there since, nor spoken with him until last Sunday, but I knew
the moment he entered the church, and when in the first chant I heard
his voice, my fingers trembled so that I could hardly play, while all
the time my heart goes out after the rest I always find with him. But it
cannot be. Oh, Helen! I wish Wilford had never known that Morris loved
me.”
She was sobbing now, with her head in Helen’s lap, and Helen, smoothing
her bright hair, said gently,
“You do not reason correctly. It is right for you to answer Morris yes,
and Wilford would say so, too. When I received your letter I read it to
Bell, who then told what Wilford said before he died. You must have
forgotten it, darling. He referred to a time when you would cease to be
his widow, and he said he was willing,—said so to her, and you. Do you
remember it, Katy?”
“I do now, but I _had_ forgotten. I was so stunned then, so bewildered,
that it made no impression. I did not think he meant Morris, Helen; _do_
you believe he meant Morris?” and lifting up her face Katy looked at her
sister with a wistfulness which told how anxiously she waited for the
answer.
“I _know_ that he meant Morris,” Helen replied. “Both Bell and her
father think so, and they bade me tell you to marry Dr. Grant, with whom
you will be so happy.”
“I cannot. It is too late. I told him no, and Helen, I told him a
falsehood, too, which I wish I might take back,” she added. “I said I
was sorry he ever loved me. when I was not, for the knowing that he
_had_ made me very happy. My conscience has smitten me cruelly for that
falsehood, told not intentionally, for I did not consider what I said.”
Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once, and the next morning she
went to Linwood and brought Morris home with her. He had been there two
or three times since his return from Washington, but not since Katy’s
refusal, and her cheeks were scarlet as she met him in the parlor and
tried to be natural. He did not look unhappy. He was not taking his
rejection very hard, after all, she thought, and the little lady felt a
very little piqued to find him so cheerful, when she had scarcely known
a moment’s quiet since the day she carried him the custards and forgot
to bring away her umbrella.
As it had rained that day, so it did now, a decided, energetic rain,
which set in after Morris came, and precluded the possibility of his
going home that night.
“He would catch his death of cold,” Aunt Betsy said, while Helen, too,
joined her entreaties, until Morris consented, and the carriage which
came round for him at dark returned to Linwood with the message that the
doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow’s.
During the evening he did not often address Katy directly, but he knew
each time she moved, and watched every expression of her face, feeling a
kind of pity for her, when, without appearing to do so intentionally,
the family, one by one, stole from the room,—Uncle Ephraim and Aunt
Hannah without any excuse; Aunt Betsy to mix the cakes for breakfast;
Mrs. Lennox to wind the clock, and Helen to find a book for which Morris
had asked.
Katy might not have thought strange of their departure, were it not that
neither one came back again, and after the lapse of ten minutes or more
she felt convinced that she had purposely been left alone with Morris.
The weather and the family had conspired against her, but after one
throb of fear she resolved to brave the difficulty, and meet whatever
might happen as became a woman of twenty-three, and a widow. She knew
Morris was regarding her intently as she fashioned into shape the coarse
wool sock, intended for some soldier, and she could almost hear her
heart beat in the silence which fell between them ere Morris said to
her, in a tone which reassured her,
“And so you told me a falsehood the other day, and your conscience has
troubled you ever since?”
“Yes, Morris, yes; that is, I told you I was sorry that you ever loved
me, which was not exactly true, for, after I knew you did, I was happier
than before.”
Her words implied a knowledge of his love previous to that night at
Linwood when he had himself confessed it, and he said to her
inquiringly,
“You knew it, then, before I told you?”
“From Wilford,—yes,” Katy faltered.
“I understand now why you have been so shy of me,” Morris said; “but,
Katy, must this shyness continue always? Think, now, and say if you did
not tell more than _one_ falsehood the other night,—as you count
falsehoods?”
Katy looked wonderingly at him, and he continued,
“You said you could not be my wife. Was that true? Can’t you take it
back, and give me a different answer?”
Katy’s cheeks were scarlet, and her hands had ceased to flutter about
the knitting which lay upon her lap.
“I meant what I said,” she whispered; “for, knowing how Wilford felt, it
would not be right for me to be so happy.”
“Then it’s nothing personal? If there were no harrowing memories of
Wilford, you could be happy with me. Is that it, Katy?” Morris asked,
coming close to her now, and imprisoning her hands, which she did not
try to take away, but let them lie in his as he continued, “Wilford was
willing at the last. Have you forgotten that?”
“I had, until Helen reminded me,” Katy replied. “But, Morris, the
talking of this thing brings Wilford’s death back so vividly, making it
seem but yesterday since I held his dying head.”
She was beginning to relent, Morris knew, and bending nearer to her he
said,
“It was not yesterday. It will be two years in February; and this, you
know, is November. I need you, Katy. I want you so much. I have wanted
you all your life. Before it was wrong to do so, I used each day to pray
that God would give you to me, and now I feel just as sure that he has
opened the way for you to come to me as I am sure that Wilford is in
heaven. He is happy there, and shall a morbid fancy keep you from being
happy here? Tell me, then, Katy, will you be my wife?”
He was kissing her cold hands, and as he did so he felt her tears
dropping on his hair.
“If I say yes, Morris, you will not think that I never loved Wilford,
for I did, oh, yes! I did. Not exactly as I might have loved you, had
you asked me first, but I loved him, and I was happy with him, for if
there were little clouds, his dying swept them all away.”
Katy was proving herself a true woman, who remembered only the good
there was in Wilford, and Morris did not love her less for it. She was
all the dearer to him, all the more desirable, and he told her so,
winding his arms about her, and resting her head upon his shoulder,
where it lay just as it had never lain before, for with the first kiss
Morris gave her, calling her “My own little Katy,” she felt stealing
over her the same indescribable peace she had always felt with him,
intensified now, and sweeter from the knowing that it would remain if
she should will it so. And she did will it so, kissing Morris back when
he asked her to, and thus sealing the compact of her second betrothal.
It was not exactly like the first. There was no tumultuous emotions, or
ecstatic joys, but Katy felt in her inmost heart that she was happier
now than then; that between herself and Morris there was more affinity
than there had been between herself and Wilford, and as she looked back
over the road she had come, and remembered all Morris had been to her,
she wondered at her blindness in not recognizing and responding to the
love in which she had now found shelter.
It was very late that night when Katy went up to bed, and Helen, who was
not asleep, knew by the face on which the lamp-light fell that Morris
had not sued in vain. Aunt Betsy knew it, too, next morning, by the same
look on Katy’s face when she came down stairs, but this did not prevent
her saying abruptly, as Katy stood by the sink,
“Be you two engaged?”
“We are,” was Katy’s frank reply, which brought back all Aunt Betsy’s
visions of roasted fowls and frosted cake, and maybe a dance in the
kitchen, to say nothing of the feather bed which she had not dared to
offer Katy Cameron, but which she thought would come in play for “Miss
Dr. Grant.”