FIRST MONTH OF MARRIED LIFE.
If Katy's letters, written, one on board the steamer and another from
London, were to be trusted, she was as nearly perfectly happy as a young
bride well can be, and the people at the farmhouse felt themselves more
and more kindly disposed toward Wilford Cameron with each letter
received. They were going soon into the northern part of England, and
from thence into Scotland, Katy wrote from London, and two weeks after
found them comfortably settled at the inn at Alnwick, near to Alnwick
Castle. Wilford had seemed very anxious to get there, leaving London
before Katy was quite ready to leave, and hurrying across the country
until Alnwick was reached. He had been there before, years ago, he said,
but no one seemed to recognize him, though all paid due respect to the
distinguished-looking American and his beautiful young wife. An entrance
into Alnwick Castle was easily obtained, and Katy felt that all her
girlish dreams of grandeur and magnificence were more than realized
here in this home of the Percys, where ancient and modern styles of
architecture and furnishing were so blended together. She would never
tire of that place, she thought, but Wilford's taste led him elsewhere,
and he took more delight, it would appear, in wandering around St.
Mary's Church, which stood upon a hill commanding a view of the castle
and of the surrounding country for miles away. Here Katy also came,
rambling with him through the village graveyard where slept the dust of
centuries, the gray, mossy tombstones bearing date backward for more
than a hundred years, their quaint inscriptions both puzzling and
amusing Katy, who studied them by the hour.
One quiet summer morning, however, when the heat was unusually great,
she felt too listless to wander about, and so sat upon the grass,
listening to the birds as they sang above her head, while Wilford, at
some distance from her, stood leaning against a tree and thinking sad,
regretful thoughts, as his eye rested upon the rough headstone at his
feet.
"Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two," was the lettering upon it, and as he
read it a feeling of reproach was in his heart, while he said: "I hope I
am not glad to know that she is dead."
He had come to Alnwick for the sole purpose of finding that humble
grave, of assuring himself that after life's fitful fever, Genevra
Lambert slept quietly, forgetful of the wrong once done to her by him.
It is true he had not doubted her death before, but as seeing was
believing, so now he felt sure of it, and plucking from the turf above
her a little flower growing there, he went back to Katy and sitting down
beside her with his arm around her waist, tried to devise some way of
telling her what he had promised himself he would tell her there in that
very yard, where Genevra was buried. But the task was harder now than
before. Katy was so happy with him, trusting his love so fully that he
dared not lift the veil and read to her that page hinted at once before
in Silverton, when they sat beneath the butternut tree, with the fresh
young grass springing around them. Then, she was not his wife, and the
fear that she would not be if he told her all had kept him silent, but
now she was his alone; nothing could undo that, and there, in the shadow
of the gray old church through whose aisles Genevra had been borne out
to where the rude headstone was gleaming in the English sunlight, it
seemed meet that he should tell her sad story. And Katy would have
forgiven him then, for not a shadow of regret had darkened her life
since it was linked with his, and in her perfect love she could have
pardoned much. But Wilford did not tell. It was not needful; he made
himself believe--not necessary for her ever to know that once he met a
maiden called Genevra, almost as beautiful as she, but never so beloved.
No, never. Wilford said that truly, when that night he bent over his
sleeping Katy, comparing her face with Genevra's, and his love for her
with his love for Genevra.
"That was a boyish fancy, this love of mature years," and Wilford
pressed a kiss upon Katy's pure forehead, showing so white in the
moonlight.
Wilford was very fond of his girlish wife and very proud of her, too,
when strangers paused, as they often did, to look back after her. Thus
far nothing had arisen to mar the happiness of his first weeks of
married life; nothing except the letters from Silverton, over which Katy
always cried, until he sometimes wished that the family could not write.
But they could and they did; even Aunt Betsy inclosed in Helen's letter
a note, wonderful both in orthography and composition, and concluding
with the remark that she would be glad when Catherine returned and was
settled in a home of her own, as she would then have a new place to
visit.
There was a dark frown on Wilford's face, and for a moment he felt
tempted to withhold the note from Katy, but this he could not do then,
so he gave it into her hands, watching her as with burning cheeks, she
read it through, and asking her at its close why she looked so red.
"Oh, Wilford," and she crept closely to him, "Aunt Betsy spells so
queerly, that I was wishing you would not always open my letters first.
Do all husbands do so?"
It was the only time Katy had ventured to question a single act of his,
submitting without a word to whatever was his will. Wilford knew that
his father would never have presumed to break a seal belonging to his
mother, but he had broken Katy's and he should continue breaking them,
so he answered, laughingly;
"Why, yes, I guess they do. My little wife has surely no secrets to hide
from me?"
"No secrets," Katy answered, "only I did not want you to see Aunt
Betsy's letter, that's all."
"I did not marry Aunt Betsy--I married you," was Wilford's reply; which
meant far more than Katy guessed.
With three thousand miles between him and his wife's relatives, Wilford
could endure to think of them; but whenever letters came to Katy bearing
the Silverton postmark, he was conscious of a far different sensation
from what he experienced when the postmark was New York and the
handwriting that of his own family. But not in any way did this feeling
manifest itself to Katy, who, as she always wrote to Helen, was very,
very happy, and never more so, perhaps, than while they were at Alnwick,
where, as if he had something for which to atone, he was unusually kind
and indulgent, caressing her with unwonted tenderness, and making her
ask him once if he loved her a great deal more now than when they were
first married.
"Yes, darling, a great deal more," was Wilford's answer, as he kissed
her upturned face, and then went for the last time to Genevra's grave;
for on the morrow they were to leave the neighborhood of Alnwick for the
heather blooms of Scotland.
There was a trip to Edinburgh, a stormy passage across the Straits of
Dover, a two months' sojourn in Paris, and then they went to Rome, where
Wilford intended to pass the winter, journeying in the spring through
different parts of Europe. He was in no haste to return to America; he
would rather stay where he could have Katy all to himself, away from her
family and his own. But it was not so to be, and not very long after his
arrival at Rome there came a letter from his mother apprising him of his
father's dangerous illness, and asking him to come home at once. The
elder Cameron had not been well since Wilford left the country, and the
physician was fearful that the disease had assumed a consumptive form,
Mrs. Cameron wrote, adding that her husband's only anxiety was to see
his son again. To this there was no demur, and about the first of
December, six months from the time he had sailed, Wilford arrived in
Boston, having taken a steamer for that city. His first act was to
telegraph for news of his father, receiving a reply that he was better;
the alarming symptoms had disappeared, and there was now great hope of
his recovery.
"We might have stayed longer in Europe," Katy said, feeling a little
chill of disappointment--not that her father-in-law was better, but at
being called home for nothing, when her life abroad was so happy and
free from care.
Somehow the atmosphere of America seemed different from what it used
to be. It was colder, bluer, the little lady said, tapping her foot
uneasily and looking from her windows at the Revere out upon the snowy
streets, through which the wintry wind was blowing in heavy gales.
"Yes, it is a heap colder," she sighed, as she returned to the large
chair which Esther had drawn for her before the cheerful fire, charging
her disquiet to the weather once, never dreaming of imputing it to her
husband, who was far more its cause than was the December cold.
He, too, though glad of his father's improvement, was sorry to have been
recalled for nothing to a country which brought his old life back again,
with all its forms and ceremonies, reviving his dread lest Katy should
not acquit herself as was becoming Mrs. Wilford Cameron. In his
selfishness he had kept her almost wholly to himself, so that the polish
she was to acquire from her travels abroad was not as perceptible as,
now that he looked at her with his family's eyes, he could desire. Katy
was Katy still, in spite of London, Paris, or Rome. To be sure there
was about her a little more maturity and self-assurance, but in all
essential points she was the same; and Wilford winced as he thought how
the free, impulsive manner which, among the Scottish hills, where there
was no one to criticise, had been so charming to him, would shock his
lady mother and Sister Juno. And this it was which made him moody and
silent, replying hastily to Katy when she said to him: "Please, Wilford,
telegraph to Helen to be with mother at the West depot when we pass
there to-morrow. The train stops five minutes, you know, and I want to
see them so much. Will you, Wilford?"
She had come up to him now, and was standing behind him, with her hands
upon his shoulder; so she did not see the expression of his face as he
answered quickly;
"Yes, yes."
A moment after he quitted the room, and it was then that Katy, standing
before the window, charged the day with what was strictly Wilford's
fault. Returning at last to her chair she went off into a reverie as to
the new home to which she was going and the new friends she was to meet,
wondering much what they would think of her, and wondering most if they
would like her. Once she had said to Wilford:
"Which of your sisters shall I like best?"
And Wilford had answered her by asking:
"Which do you like best, books or going to parties in full dress?"
"Oh, parties and dress," Katy had said, and Wilford had then rejoined:
"You will like Juno best, for she is all fashion and gayety, while
Bluebell prefers her books and the quiet of her own room."
Katy felt afraid of Bell, and in fact, now that they were so near, she
felt afraid of them all, notwithstanding Esther's assurances that they
could not help loving her. During the six months they had been together
Esther had learned to feel for her young lady that strong affection
which sometimes exists between mistress and servant. Everything which
she could do for her she did, smoothing as much as possible the meeting
which she also dreaded, for though the Camerons were too proud to
express before her their opinion of Wilford's choice, she had guessed it
readily, and pitied the young wife brought up with ideas so different
from those of her husband's family. More accustomed to Wilford's moods
than Katy, she saw that something was the matter, and it prompted her to
unusual attentions, stirring the fire into a still more cheerful blaze
and bringing a stool for Katy, who in blissful ignorance of her
husband's real feelings, sat waiting his return from the telegraph
office, whither she supposed he had gone, and building pleasant pictures
of to-morrow's meeting with her mother and Helen, and possibly Dr.
Morris, if not Uncle Ephraim himself.
The voyage home had been long and wearisome, and Katy, who had suffered
from seasickness, was feeling jaded and tired, wishing, as she told
Esther, that instead of going to New York direct she could go straight
to the farmhouse and "rest on mother's bed," that receptacle for all her
childish ills.
"I mean to ask Wilford if I may," she said to herself, and her cheeks
grew brighter as she thought of really going home to mother and Helen
and the kind old people who would pet and love her so much.
So absorbed was she in her reverie as not to hear Wilford's step as he
came in, but when he stood behind her and took her head playfully
between his hands, she started up, feeling that the weather had changed;
it was not as cold and dreary in Boston as she imagined, neither did
mother's bed seem as desirable a place to rest upon as the shoulder
where she laid her head, playing with Wilford's buttons, and saying to
him at last:
"You went out to telegraph, didn't you?"
He had gone out with the intention of telegraphing as she desired, but
in the hall below he had met with an old acquaintance who talked with
him so long that he entirely forgot his errand until Katy recalled it to
his mind, making him feel very uncomfortable as he frankly told her of
his forgetfulness.
"It is too late now," he added; "besides you could only see them for a
moment, just long enough to make you cry--a thing I do not greatly
desire, inasmuch as I wish my wife to look her best when I present her
to my family, and with red eyes she couldn't, you know."
Katy knew it was settled, and choking back her tears she tried to
listen, while Wilford, having fairly broken the ice with regard to his
family, told her how anxious he was that she should make a good first
impression upon his mother. Did Katy remember that Mrs. Morey whom they
met at Paris, and could she not throw a little of her air into her
manner--that is, could she not drop her girlishness when in the presence
of others and be a little more dignified? When alone with him he liked
to have her just what she was, a loving, affectionate little wife, but
the world looked on such things differently. Would Katy try?
Wilford, when he commenced, had no definite idea as to what he should
say, and without meaning it he made Katy moan piteously:
"I don't know what you mean. I would do anything if I knew how. Tell me,
how shall I be dignified?"
She was crying so hard that Wilford, while mentally calling himself a
fool and a brute, could only try to comfort her, telling her she need
not be anything but what she was--that his mother and sisters would love
her just as he did--and that daily association with them would teach her
all that was necessary.
Katy's tears were stopped at last; but the frightened, anxious look did
not leave her face, even though Wilford tried his best to divert her
mind. A nervous terror of her new relations had gained possession of her
heart, and nearly the entire night she lay awake, pondering in her mind
what Wilford had said, and thinking how terrible it would be if he
should be disappointed in her after all. The consequence of this was
that a very white, tired face sat opposite Wilford next morning at the
breakfast served in their private parlor; nor did it look much fresher
even after they were in the cars and rolling out of Boston. But when
Worcester was reached, and the old home waymarks began to grow familiar,
the color came stealing back, until the cheeks burned with an unnatural
red, and the blue eyes fairly danced as they rested on the hills of
Silverton.
"Only three miles from mother and Helen! Oh, if I could go there!" Katy
thought, working her fingers nervously; but the express train did not
pause there, and it went so swiftly by the depot that Katy could hardly
discover who was standing there, whether friend or stranger.
But when at last they came to West Silverton, and the long train slowly
stopped, the first object she saw was Dr. Morris, driving down from the
village. He had no intention of going to the depot, and only checked his
horse a moment, lest it should prove restive if too near the engine; but
when a clear young voice called from the window: "Morris! oh, Cousin
Morris! I've come!" his heart gave a great heavy throb, for he knew
whose voice that was and whose the little hand beckoning to him. He had
supposed her far away beneath Italian skies, for at the farmhouse no
intelligence had been received of her intended return, and in much
surprise he reined up to the rear door, and throwing his lines to a boy,
went forward to where Katy stood, her face glowing with delight as she
flew into his arms, wholly forgetful of the last night's lecture on
dignity, also forgetful of Wilford, standing close beside her. He had
not tried to hold her back when, at the sight of Morris, she sprang away
from him; but he followed after, biting his lip, and wishing she had a
little more discretion. Surely it was not necessary to half strangle Dr.
Grant as she was doing, kissing his hand even after she had kissed his
face a full half dozen times, and all the people looking on. But Katy
did not care for people. She only knew that Morris was there--the Morris
whom, in her great happiness abroad, she had perhaps slighted by not
writing directly to him but once. In Wilford's sheltering care she had
not felt the need of this good cousin, as she used to do; but she was so
glad to see him, wondering why he looked so thin and sad. Was he sick?
she asked, gazing up into his face with a pitying look, which made him
shiver as he answered:
"No, not sick, though tired, perhaps, as I have at present an unusual
amount of work to do."
And this was true--he was usually busy. But that was not the cause of
the thin face, which others than Katy remarked. Helen's words: "It might
have been," spoken to him on the night of Katy's bridal, had never left
his mind, much as he had tried to dislodge them. Some men can love a
dozen times; but it was not so with Morris. He could overcome his love
so that it should not be a sin, but no other could ever fill the place
where Katy had been; and as he looked along the road through life he
felt that he must travel it alone. Truly, if Katy were not yet passing
through the fire, he was, and it had left its mark upon him, purifying
as it burned, and bringing his every act into closer submission to his
God. Only Helen and Marian Hazelton interpreted aright that look upon
his face, and knew it came from the hunger of his heart, but they kept
silence; while others said that he was working far too hard, urging him
to abate his unwearied labors, for they would not lose their young
physician yet. But Morris smiled his patient, kindly smile on all their
fears and went his way, doing his work as one who knew he must render
strict account for the popularity he was daily gaining, both in his own
town and those around. He could think of Katy now without a sin, but he
was not thinking of her when she came so unexpectedly upon him, and for
an instant she almost bore his breath away in her vehement joy.
Quick to note a change in those he knew, he saw that her form was not
quite so full, nor her cheeks so round; but she was weary with the
voyage, she said, and knowing how seasickness will wear upon one's
strength, Morris imputed it wholly to that, and believed she was, as
she professed to be, perfectly happy.
"Come, Katy, we must go now," Wilford said, as the bell rang its first
alarm, and the passengers, some with sandwiches and some with fried
cakes in their hands, ran back to find their seats.
"Yes, I know, but I have not asked half I meant to. Oh, how I want to go
home with you, Morris," Katy exclaimed, again throwing her arms around
the doctor's neck as she bade him good-by, and sent fresh messages of
love to the friends at home, who, had they known she was to be there at
that time, would have walked the entire distance for the sake of looking
once more into her dear face.
"I intended to have brought them heaps of things," she said, "but we
came home so suddenly I had no time. Here, take Helen this. Tell her
it is real," and the impulsive creature drew from her finger a small
diamond set in black enamel, which Wilford had bought in Paris. "She did
not need it; she had two more, and she was sure Wilford would not mind,"
she said, turning to him for his approbation.
But Wilford did mind, and his face indicated as much, although he tried
to be natural as he replied: "Certainly, send it if you like."
In her excitement Katy did not observe it, but Morris did, and he at
first declined taking it, saying Helen had no use for it and would be
better pleased with something not half as valuable. Katy, however,
insisted, appealing to Wilford, who, ashamed of his first emotion, now
seemed quite as anxious as Katy herself, until Morris placed the ring
in his purse, and then bade Katy hasten or she would certainly be left.
One more wave of the hand, one more kiss thrown from the window, and the
train moved on, Katy feeling like a different creature for having seen
some one from home.
"I am so glad I saw him--so glad I sent the ring, for now they will know
I am the same Katy Lennox, and I think Helen sometimes feared I might
get proud with you," she said, while Wilford pulled her rich fur around
her, smiling to see how bright and pretty she was looking since that
meeting with Dr. Grant. "It was better than medicine," Katy said, when
beyond Springfield he referred to it a second time, and leaning her head
upon his shoulder she fell into a refreshing sleep, from which she did
not waken until New York was reached, and Wilford, lifting her gently
up, whispered to her: "Come, darling, we are home at last."