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 wavy 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 only seen once since that
rainy night, and that at church, where he had come 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
knew what passed between Wilford and me concerning Morris, and you
can--"
"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 though
I did not know he was coming, 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 scarcely play, while all the time my heart goes out after
the rest I always find with him. But it cannot be."
"Suppose Morris had asked you first, what then?" was Helen's next
straightforward question, and Katy, who had no secrets from her sister,
answered:
"It might have been, perhaps, though I never thought of it then. 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 have taken a morbid fancy, Katy. 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 apprising me of the refusal, I read it to Bell,
who said she was so sorry, and 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?"
"Yes, 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. "Bell thinks so, too. So
does her father, and both bade me tell you to revoke your decision, 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 since for that
falsehood told, not intentionally, for I did not consider what I said."
Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once. She knew just how
conscientious Katy was, and by working upon this principle she hoped to
persuade her into going over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she
said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would
not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage
him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the
rest. She could not be his wife.
Early the next morning Helen went to Linwood, and the same afternoon
Morris returned her call. 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 he 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, and even gay, 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 around for him at dark returned to Linwood, with the message that
the doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow's. A misty, rainy
night, who does not enjoy it when sitting by a cheerful fire, they
listen dreamily to the falling rain sifting softly through the leafless
trees, and answering to the faint sighing of the autumn wind. Morris
enjoyed it very much, and but for the green glasses he still wore would
have looked and appeared like his former self as he sat in his armchair,
now holding the skein of yarn which Aunt Betsy wound, now talking with
the deacon of the probable exchange of all the prisoners, a theme which
quickened Helen's pulse and sent the blood to her pale cheeks, and again
standing by Katy as she played his favorite airs, his rich bass voice
mingling with hers and Helen's, the three making finer music, Aunt Betsy
said, than that for which she paid two dollars at the playhouse.
He did not often address Katy directly, but he knew each time she moved,
and watched every varying 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 raise 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, too. 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 at once:
"And so you told me a falsehood the other day, and your conscience has
troubled you ever since?"
"Yes, Morris," and Katy dropped her stitch as she replied. "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, a tear dropping on her cheek as she
recalled the circumstances of Wilford's telling her.
"I understand now why you have been so shy of me," Morris said. "It was
only natural you should be until you knew what my intentions were; 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 checks 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, as I do, 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 supposed I might, even then,
have loved you, had you asked me first, but I loved him, and I was happy
with him, or 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. Once 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 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 crept up to bed, and Helen, who
was not asleep, knew by the face on which the lamplight fell, as Katy
sat for a moment in thoughtful mood, looking out into the darkness, 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 downstairs, 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."