KATHARINE ALLEN'S VISIT TO THE WHITE COTTAGE.
"Oh, Katharine Allen, is that you?" said Mrs. Mason, with a touch of
disappointment in her voice, which the girl noticed with a pang.
"Yes, Mrs. Mason, I had got through my day's work, and so ran down once
more to see if--if you had heard any thing yet."
"Yes, I thought so--it must be a comfort to have some one to run to--I
haven't a living soul!" said Mrs. Mason, a little petulantly, for
Katharine had been at the house more than once to ask these same
questions, and the young wife always shrank from acknowledging that she
had no good news. This feeling became more and more painful as the time
wore on, and her own heart grew faint with apprehension.
"Not a word? Haven't you heard any thing?" faltered the young girl,
sinking into a chair, and turning her great blue eyes on Mrs. Mason,
with an intensity of suffering that startled the unhappy woman into a
momentary forgetfulness of her own anxieties.
"No, Katharine, not one word. It breaks my heart to own it, but not a
breath of news has reached me since the brig sailed."
"And she ought to have been in weeks ago! What can be the matter, Mrs.
Mason? tell me, oh do tell me, if you have the least idea!"
"I can only guess like yourself, Kate. The ocean is a treacherous thing
to trust those you love with. The storm of a single night may have made
little Rose an orphan."
The poor woman began to cry as she said this, and calling the little
girl to her knee kissed her with mournful tenderness.
"How fond you are of the little girl--it must be a great comfort to have
his child looking into your face! One could endure almost any thing for
that!" said Katharine, evidently trembling as she spoke.
"A comfort and a pain, Katharine, for if he never comes back--"
"Oh, don't--don't say that," cried the girl, shivering. "The thought is
enough to kill one: words--I could not put that into words."
"I wish you would not take on so," said Mrs. Mason, sharply. "It's bad
enough to wait and wait, and--oh dear, oh dear, what will become of us?"
Here the poor woman burst into a flood of tears, wringing her hands
passionately.
"Mother," said little Rose, "are you crying because pa hasn't come back
with my pretty dress?"
The mother could not answer for her sobs; as for Kate Allen, she sat
looking at them with cold tears dropping down her white cheeks, as if
she longed to fall upon her knees and ask them to pity her a little.
"What do you cry for, Katy Allen?" said the child, rather jealous that
any other one should weep but her mother. "You have not got no pa, nor
no husband out to sea."
"Oh, God help me! God forgive me! I haven't, I haven't," sobbed the
beautiful girl, rocking to and fro on her chair.
Mrs. Mason checked her tears and looked on wonderingly. This strange
outburst of grief almost irritated her, for, like her child, she rather
craved a monopoly of suffering. All at once a wild apprehension seized
upon her. What if Kate had heard--what if she knew that the brig had
gone down with every soul on board, and had no strength to speak it out!
Frightened by this new dread she started up and stood over the weeping
girl.
"Tell me--tell me all you have heard," she almost shrieked. "If you
don't want to see me drop dead at your feet, before the face of my
child, speak out!"
Katharine looked up; amazement checked her tears, and the pupils of her
beautiful eyes dilated.
"I have nothing to say, Mrs. Mason; I have not heard a syllable, how
could I?"
"And are you so very sorry for us?"
"Does it make you angry, because I can't keep back the tears? Oh, it
seems as if I could die, if any one would feel for me."
"Why, Katharine, what is your trouble?"
"Nothing--nothing--I'm not in trouble."
Mrs. Mason began to look serious, an old suspicion flashed across her
mind. She was not a woman of much natural refinement, and the innate
vanity of her nature more than compassion spoke out in her next words.
"Katharine, speak out--is it about Nelson Thrasher you are taking on
so?"
The blood rushed over that white face like a sudden sunset, then the
poor girl grew pale again, and purplish shadows came out under her eyes,
leaving them, oh, how mournful.
"You need not look so frightened, Kate--there's no harm in it if you do
love him, only you haven't got my spirit, that's all."
"What!--what do you mean, Mrs. Mason?"
"What do I mean? why nothing worth mentioning." A peculiar curve of the
handsome lip, as Mrs. Mason said this, made the young girl shiver from
head to foot.
"Yes, but you have a meaning when you speak of my not having a spirit.
Oh, tell me what it is!"
"Why nothing, Kate, only I thought you would have more pride than to
take up with another woman's leavings."
"Another woman's leavings!" repeated Kate, all aghast; "another woman's
leavings!"
"That was what I observed," answered Mrs. Mason, with a slight toss of
the head. "Boasting isn't in my line, or I could point out a certain
person who gave Nelse Thrasher his walking papers more than once, as if
I would condescend to him, when his superior stood hat in hand."
"You--you--was it so? when, when?"
"Really, Miss Allen, you take away one's breath; of course it was before
I married John Mason, as if there could be a choice."
The poor girl was thunderstruck--that beautiful face drooped slowly to
her bosom, and she seemed to be shrinking into a shadow. At last, she
lifted her head with a wan smile.
"That was four long years ago, more than four years ago," she
cried--"Four years ago."
"Well, what of that; four years does not destroy the truth."
"I don't believe it," said Katharine, very quietly, "there's some
mistake."
"Mistake! what does the girl mean? as if I didn't know when a man
persecutes me with his love. Makes me a point blank offer, and goes off
to sea in despair when I marry his superior. Mistake, indeed!"
"No," persisted the girl, "I don't believe it; no woman could refuse him
if he once offered. No woman on earth; it isn't in nature."
"Indeed, you have a mighty high opinion of Nelse Thrasher, as if he was
fit to be mentioned in the same day with Captain Mason. I wonder at your
daring to say these things to me."
Katharine did not hear her; she was searching the past, urged and goaded
in her memory by keen pangs of distrust.
"Besides," she exclaimed, "he has been home since then, and never come
near you, not even as a friend."
"I'd like to see him have the impudence," was the angry rejoinder.
Katharine seemed bewildered a moment, and then clasped her hands in
passionate despair. "What's the use--oh, what's the use of saying this!
It's terrible, and they both in the deep, deep sea."
Here Mrs. Mason's vanity broke down, and her true womanliness asserted
itself.
"God forgive us for quarreling about them," she said, really penitent.
"If they only come back, I shall be as glad for your sake as you will be
for mine. Don't mind what I said, Katy, it isn't worth remembering. Tell
me now, are you really engaged to Thrasher?"
"Yes." This little word came faltering through lips as cold and white as
snow.
"And you never told of it?"
"What did I say--engaged! No, we are not engaged. How could I tell you
so!"
"Well, well, there's no harm in it if you are. God send the Floyd and
all hands safely back."
Those large eyes were lifted--oh! how pleadingly--to heaven, and then
Katharine began to gather her cloak more closely around her.
"You're not going!" said Mrs. Mason, ashamed of her unwomanly outbreak.
"Just take off your cloak, and have a cup of tea. Rose and I haven't had
ours yet; I fell to thinking over my work, and forgot it."
"No," said Katharine, more quietly, "I must go now; mother will be
anxious to hear. You forget, Mrs. Mason, that my half-brother is on
board the brig."
"Well, true enough, my head was so full of that fellow, Thrasher, that I
forgot that it might be some other person you were crying about. It's
hard, waiting and waiting in this way; but we must have patience, I
suppose."
"I'll go now," said the girl, rising.
Little Rose, with the sweet instinct of childhood, came up to where the
young girl stood, and lifted up her arms for a kiss.
Katharine bent down, with a flutter of the heart, and left a kiss on the
little rosebud of a mouth, but her lips quivered, and the child grew sad
under the mournful caress.
When Katharine Allen was gone, Mrs. Mason sat down to her work again.
She was a vain, self-sufficient woman, but not in reality an unkind one.
The distress which she had just witnessed left her in low spirits. She
was naturally of a hopeful disposition, and, in truth, was quite
incapable of the deep feeling which had disturbed her in Katharine.
Something would turn up and set all things right, she was sure of that;
contrary winds, heavy freight--there was some such reason why the brig
did not come to port; what was the use of fretting while these chances
remained. As these consoling thoughts passed through her mind, she plied
her needle with increasing diligence. Rose must have her new frock
embroidered before her father came home. A few more leaves in the vine
that enriched the skirt, and it would be completed. Mrs. Mason was
almost out of bread, or any thing from which bread is made, but she was
a woman to cover unsuitable garments with useless embroidery, rather
than turn her hand to any thing by which her necessities could be
supplied. She would rather have seen little Rose hungry a thousand times
than ill dressed.