TROUBLE IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
As soon as it was understood that Mrs. Wilford Cameron was able to go out, there were scores of pressing invitations from the gay world which had missed her so much, but Katy declined them all on the plea that baby needed her care. She was happier at home, and as a mother it was her place to stay there. At first Wilford listened quietly, but when he found it was her fixed determination to abjure society entirely, he interfered in his cool, decisive way, which always carried its point.
"It was foolish to take that stand," he said. "Other mothers went and why should not she? She had already stayed in too much. She was injuring herself, and"—what was infinitely worse to Wilford—"she was losing her good looks."
As proof of this he led her to the glass, showing her the pale, thin face and unnaturally large eyes, so distasteful to him. Wilford Cameron was very proud of his handsome house, proud to know that everything there was in keeping with his position and wealth, but when Katy was immured in the nursery, the bright picture was obscured, for it needed her presence to make it perfect, and he began to grow dissatisfied with his surroundings, while abroad he missed her quite as much, finding the opera, the party or the reception insipid where she was not, and feeling fully conscious that Wilford Cameron, without a wife, and that wife Katy, was not a man of half the consequence he had thought himself to be. Even Sybil Grandon did not think it worth her while to court his attention, especially if Katy were not present, for unless some one saw and felt her triumph it ceased directly to be one. On the whole Wilford was not well pleased with society, as he found it this winter, and knowing where the trouble lay he resolved that Katy should no longer remain at home, growing pale and faded and losing her good looks. Wilford would not have confessed it, and perhaps was not himself aware of the fact, that Katy's beauty was quite as dear to him as Katy herself. If she lost it her value was decreased accordingly, and so as a prudent husband it behooved him to see that what was so very precious was not unnecessarily thrown away. It did not take long for Katy to understand that her days of quiet were at an end, that neither crib nor cradle could avail her longer. Mrs. Kirby, selected from a host of applicants, was wholly competent for Baby Cameron, and Katy must throw aside the mother which sat so prettily upon her and become again the belle. It was a sad trial, but Katy knew that submission was the only alternative, and so when Mrs. Banker's invitation came, she accepted it at once, but there was a sad look upon her face as she kissed her baby for the twentieth time ere going to her dressing-maid.
Never until this night had Helen realized how beautiful Katy was when in full evening dress, and her exclamations of delight brought a soft flush to Katy's cheek, while she felt a thrill of the olden vanity as she saw herself once more arrayed in all her costly apparel. Helen did not wonder now at Wilford's desire to have Katy with him, and very proudly she watched her young sister as Esther twined the flowers in her hair and then brought out the ermine cloak she was to wear as a protection against the cold.
"If they could only see you at home," she said, while instantly there arose a thought of Dr. Grant, and Helen felt a throb of keen regret as she contrasted the gay, airy figure with the grave, quiet Morris, who found his chief delights in works of charity, and whose feet lingered amid the haunts of poverty and suffering, rather than such scenes as that to which she was going.
But Katy's path lay far from Dr. Grant's, and only Wilford Cameron had A right to say whither she should go or when return. He was standing by her now, making a few suggestions and expressing his approbation in a way which reminded Helen of that night before the marriage, when Katy's dress had been condemned, and of that sadder, bitterer time when she had poured her tears like rain into that trunk returned. All she had thought of Wilford then was now more than confirmed, but he was kind to her and very proud of Katy, so she forced back her feelings of disquiet, which, however, were roused again when she saw the dark look on his face, as Katy, at the very last, ran to the nursery to kiss baby again, succeeding this time in waking it, as was proven by the cry that made Wilford scowl angrily and brought to his lips a word of rebuke for Katy's childishness.
"You are like a girl with her first doll," he said, as he opened the door for her to pass, and Helen, though she felt the truth of the remark, knew there was no necessity for him to throw so much of lordly displeasure into his manner, and make poor Katy look so distressed and worried as they drove rapidly along the streets to Mrs. Banker's.
The party was not so large as that at Sybil Grandon's, but it was more select, and Helen enjoyed it better, meeting people like Morris, who readily appreciated the peculiarities of her mind, and who would have made her forget all else around her if she had not been a guest at Mark Ray's house. It was the first time she had met him away from home since the night of Mrs. Grandon's, and as if forgetful of her reserve, he paid her numberless attentions, which, coming from the master of the house, were the more to be valued.
With a quiet dignity Helen received them all, the thought once creeping into her heart that she was preferred, notwithstanding that engagement. But she soon repudiated this idea as unworthy of her. She could not be wholly happy with one who, to win her hand, had trampled upon the affections of another, even if that other were Juno Cameron.
And so she kept out of his way as much as possible, watching her sister admiringly as she moved about with an easy, assured grace, or floated like a snow flake through the dance in which Wilford persuaded her to join, looking after her with a proud, all-absorbing feeling, which left no room for Sybil Grandon's coquettish advances.
As if the reappearance of Katy had awakened all that was weak and silly in Sybil's nature, she now put forth her full powers of attraction, but met only with defeat. Katy, and even Helen, was preferred before her—both belles of a different type; but both winning golden laurels from those who hardly knew which to admire most—Katy, with her pure, delicate beauty and charming simplicity, or Helen, with her attractive face and sober, quiet manner. But Katy grew tired early. She could not endure what she once did; and when she came to Wilford with a weary look upon her face and asked him to go home, he did not refuse, though Mark, who was near, protested against their leaving so soon.
"Surely Miss Lennox might remain; the carriage could be sent back for her; and he had hardly seen her at all."
But Miss Lennox chose to go; and after her white cloak and hood passed down the stairs and through the door into the street, there was nothing attractive for Mark in his crowded parlors, and he was glad when the last guest had departed and he was left alone with his mother.
Operas, parties, receptions, dinners, matineés, morning calls, drives, visits and shopping; how fast one crowded upon the other, leaving scarcely an hour of leisure to the devotee of fashion who attended to them all. How astonished Helen was to find what high life in New York implied, ceasing to wonder that so many of the young girls grew haggard and old before their time, or that the dowagers grew selfish and hard and scheming. She would die outright, she thought, and she pitied poor little Katy, who, having once returned to the world, seemed destined to remain there, in spite of her entreaties and the excuses she made for declining the invitations which poured in so fast.
"Baby was not well—baby needed her," was the plea with which she met Wilford's arguments, until the mention of his child was sure to bring a scowl upon his face, and it became a question in Helen's mind whether he would not be happier if baby had never come between him and his ambition.
To hear Katy's charms extolled, and know that she was admired, and he was envied the possession of so rare a gem, feeling all the while sure of her faith, was Wilford's great delight, and it is not strange that, without any very strong fatherly feeling or principle of right in that respect, he should be irritated by the little life so constantly interfering with his pleasure and so surely undermining Katy's health. For Katy did not improve, as Wilford hoped she might; and with his two hands he could almost span her slender waist, while the beautiful neck and shoulders, once his chiefest pride, were no longer worn uncovered, for Katy would not display her bones, whatever the fashion might be. In this dilemma Wilford sought his mother, and the result of that consultation brought a more satisfied look to his face than it had worn for many a day.
"Strange he had never thought of it, when it was what so many people did," he said to himself as he hurried home. "It was the very best thing both for Katy and the child, and would obviate every difficulty."
Next morning, as she sometimes did when more than usually fatigued, Katy breakfasted in bed; while Wilford's face, as he sat opposite Helen at the table, had on it a look of quiet determination, such as she had rarely seen there before. In a measure accustomed to his moods, she felt that something was wrong, and never dreaming that he intended honoring her with his confidence, she was wishing he would finish the coffee and leave, when, motioning the servant from the room, he said abruptly, and in a tone which roused Helen's antagonistic powers at once, it was so cool, so decided: "I believe you have more influence over your sister than I have; at least, she has latterly shown a willfulness in disregarding me and a willingness to listen to you, which confirms me in this conclusion—"
"Well," and Helen twisted her napkin ring nervously, waiting for him to say more; but her manner, so different from Katy's, disconcerted him, making him a little uncertain what might be hidden behind that rigid face, confronting him so steadily, a little doubtful as to the expression it would put on when he had said all he meant to say.
He did not expect it to wear a look as frightened and hopeless as Katy's did when he last saw it upon the pillow, for he knew how different the two sisters were, and much as he had affected to despise Helen Lennox, he was afraid of her now. It had never occurred to him before that he was somewhat uncomfortable in her presence, that her searching brown eyes held him often in check; but it came to him now that his wife's sister was in his way, for what could he do with a will almost as firm as his own, and she was sure to take Katy's part. He saw it in her face, even though she had no idea of what he meant to say.
"Well;" that was the last sound heard in the quiet room; but since its utterance the relative positions of the two individuals sitting opposite each other had changed. Wilford regarding Helen as an obstacle in his path, and Helen regarding him as a tyrant contemplating some direful harm against her sister.
He must explain some time, and so at last he continued: "You must have seen how opposed Katy is to complying with my wishes, setting them at naught, when she knows how much pleasure she would give me by yielding as she used to do."
"I don't know what you mean," Helen replied, "unless it is her aversion to going out, as that I think is the only point where her obedience has not been absolute."
Wilford did not like the words "obedience" and "absolute;" that is, he did not like the sound. Their definition suited him, but Helen's enunciation was at fault, and he answered quickly: "I do not require absolute obedience from Katy. I never did; but in the matter to which you refer, I think she might consult my wishes as well as her own. There is no reason for her secluding herself in the nursery as she does. Do you think there is?"
He put the question direct, and Helen answered it.
"I do not believe Katy means to displease you, but she has conceived a strong aversion for festive scenes, and besides baby is not healthy, you know, and like all young mothers she may be over-anxious, while I fancy she has not the fullest confidence in the nurse, and this may account for her unwillingness to leave the child with her."
Kirby was all that was desirable, Wilford replied. His mother had taken her from a genteel, respectable house in Bond Street, and he paid her an enormous price, consequently she must be right; and then there came out the story how his mother had decided that neither Katy nor baby would improve so long as they remained together—that for both a separation was desirable—that she had recommended sending the child into the country, where it would be better cared for than it could be at home with Katy constantly undoing all Mrs. Kirby had done, disregarding her orders, waking it from sleep whenever the fancy took her, and in short treating it much as she probably did her doll when she was a little girl. With the child away there would be nothing to prevent Katy's going out as she used to do, and getting back her good looks, which were somewhat impaired.
"Why, she looks older than you do," Wilford said, thinking thus to conciliate Helen, who quietly replied:
"There is not two years difference between us, and I have always been well, keeping regular hours until I came here."
Wilford's compliment had failed, and more annoyed than before, he asked, not what Helen thought of the arrangement, but if she would influence Katy to act and think rationally upon it; "at least you will not make it worse," he said, and this time there was something quite deferential and pleading in his manner.
Helen knew the matter was fixed, that neither Katy's tears nor entreaties would avail to revoke the decision, and so, though her whole soul rose in indignation against a man who would deliberately send his nursing baby from his roof because it was in his way, and was robbing his bride's cheek of its girlish bloom, she answered composedly:
"I will do what I can, but I must confess it seems to me an unnatural thing. I had supposed parents less selfish than that."
Wilford did not care what Helen had supposed, and her opposition only made him more resolved. Still he did not say so, and he even tried to smile as he quitted the table and remarked to her:
"I hope to find Katy reconciled when I come home. I think I had better not go up to her again, so tell her I send a good-by kiss by you. I leave her case in your hands."
It was a far more difficult case than either he or Helen imagined, and the latter started back in alarm from the white face which greeted her view as she entered Katy's room, and then with a moan hid itself in the pillow.
"Wilford thought he had better not come up, but he sent a kiss by me," Helen said, softly touching the bright, disordered hair, all she could see of her sister.
"It does not matter," Katy gasped. "Kisses cannot help me if they take my baby away. Did he tell you?" and she turned now partly toward Helen, who nodded affirmatively while Katy continued: "Had he taken a knife and cut a cruel gash it would not have hurt me half so badly. I could bear that, but my baby—oh, Helen, do you think they will take her away?"
She was looking straight at Helen, who shivered as she met an expression so unlike Katy, and so like to that a hunted deer might wear if its offspring were in danger.
"Say, do you think they will?" she continued, shedding back with her thin hand the mass of tangled curls which had fallen about her eyes.
"Whom do you mean by 'they'?" Helen asked, coming near to her, and sitting down upon the bed.
There was a resentful gleam in the blue eyes usually so gentle, as Katy answered:
"Whom do I mean? His folks of course! They have been the instigators of every sorrow I have known since I left Silverton. Oh, Helen, never, never marry anybody who has folks, if you wish to be happy."
Helen could not repress a smile, though she pitied her sister, who continued:
"I don't mean Father Cameron, nor Bell, nor Jamie, for I love them all, and I believe that they love me. Father does, I know, and Jamie, while Bell has helped me so often; but Mrs. Cameron and Juno—oh, Helen, you will never know what they have been to me."
"I notice you always say 'father' and 'Mrs. Cameron.' Why is that?" Helen asked, hoping thus to divert Katy's mind from her present trouble, and feeling a little anxious to hear Katy's real sentiments with regard to her husband's family.
Since Helen came to New York there has been so much to talk about that, though Katy had told her of her fashionable life, she had said comparatively little of the Camerons. Now, however, there was no holding back on Katy's part, and beginning with the first night of her arrival in New York she told what is already known to the reader, and more, exonerating Wilford in word, but dealing out full justice to his mother and Juno, the former of whom controlled him so completely.
"I tried so hard to love her," Katy said, "and if she had given me ever so little in return I would have been satisfied, but she never did—that is, when I hungered for it most, missing you at home, and the loving care which sheltered me in childhood. After the world took me into favor she too began to caress me, but I was wicked enough to think it all came of selfishness. I know I am hard and bad, for when I was sick Mrs. Cameron was really very kind, and I began to like her; but if she takes baby away, I shall surely die."
Katy had come back to the starting point, and in her eye there was the same fierce look which Helen had at first observed.
"Where is baby to be sent?" Helen asked, and Katy answered:
"Up the river, to a house which Father Cameron owns, and which is kept by a farmer's family. I can't trust Kirby. I do not like her. She keeps baby asleep too long, and acts so cross if I try to wake her, or hint that she looks unnatural. I cannot give baby to her care, with no one to look after her, though Wilford says I must."
"Why then do you try to resist, when you know how useless it is?" Helen asked, and something in her manner brought a sudden flush of shame to Katy's cheek, as she said:
"What do you mean? Of what are you thinking?"
Helen did not stop to consider the propriety of her remarks, but replied:
"I was thinking that you reminded me of a bird beatings wings against the bars of its cage, vainly hoping to escape into the freedom which it feels is outside its prison house, but falling back bruised and bleeding with its efforts, and no nearer escape."
For a moment Katy regarded her sister intently, while she seemed trying to digest the meaning of her words; then, as it vaguely flashed upon her, tears gathered on her eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks, while with a quivering lip she asked:
"If you were that bird, what would you do?"
"I? What would I do? I should beat my wings until I died; but your nature is different. You are more yielding, more loving, more submissive. You can bear it better."
This was not the first time since she came to New York and saw how firm, how unbending was the will which held Katy in its grasp, that Helen had thought how surely she, with her high, imperious spirit, should die, from the very resistance she should offer to that will. But as she had truly expressed it, Katy's gentle, submissive nature saved her, for never had she offered so violent opposition to any plan as she did now to that of sending her child away.
"I can't, I can't," she repeated constantly, and Mrs. Cameron's call, made that afternoon with a view to reconcile the matter, only made it worse, so that Wilford, on his return at night, felt a pang of self-reproach as he saw the drooping figure holding his child upon its lap and singing it a lullaby in a plaintive voice, which told how sore was its heart.
Wilford did not mean to be either a savage or a brute. On the contrary he had made himself believe that he was acting only for the good of both mother and child; but the sight of Katy touched him, and he might have given up the contest had not Helen unfortunately taken up the cudgels in Katy's defense, neglecting to conceal the weapons, and so defeating her purpose. It was at the dinner from which Katy was absent that she ventured to speak, not asking that the plan be given up, but speaking of it as an unnatural one which seemed to her not only useless but cruel.
Wilford did not tell her that her opinion was not desired, but his manner implied as much, and Helen felt the angry blood prickling through her veins as she listened to his reply, that it was neither unnatural nor cruel, that many people did it, and his would not be an isolated case.
"Then if it must be," Helen said, "pray let it go to Silverton, and I will be its nurse. Katy will not object to that."
In a very ironical tone Wilford thanked her for her offer, which he begged leave to decline, intimating a preference for settling his own matters according to his own ideas. Helen knew that further argument was useless, and but for Katy, wished herself at home, where there were no wills like this with which she had unwittingly come in contact, and which, ignoring Katy's tears and Katy's pleading face, would not retract one iota, or even stoop to reason with the suffering mother, except to reiterate, "It is only for your good, and every one with common sense will say so."
Next morning Helen was surprised at Katy's proposition to drive around to Fourth Street, and call on Marian, whom they had not seen for several days.
"I am always better after talking with her," Katy said, "And I have a strong presentiment that she can do me good."
"Shall you tell her?" Helen asked in some surprise; and Katy replied, "perhaps I may. I'll see."
An hour later, and Katy, up in Marian's room, sat with her hands clasped together upon the table, listening intently while Marian spoke of a letter received a few days since from an old friend who had worked with her at Madam ——'s, and to whom she had been strongly attached, keeping up a correspondence with her after her marriage and removal to New London, in Connecticut; and whose little child, born two months before Katy's, was dead, and the mother, finding her home so desolate, had written, beseeching Marian to come to her for the remainder of the winter, adding in conclusion: "If you know of any little homeless baby, bring it to me in place of mine, which God has taken. I shall thus be doing good, and in part forget my sorrow."
Instantly Helen and Katy glanced at each other, the same thought flashing upon both, and finding form in Katy's vehement outburst, "If Mrs. Hubbell would take baby, and Marian would go, too, I should be so happy."
In a few moments Marian had heard Katy's trouble—struggling hard to fight back the giddy faintness she felt stealing over her, as she thought of nursing Wilford Cameron's child.
"Write to her, Marian—write to-day—now, before I go," Katy continued, clasping Marian's hand, with an expression which, more than aught else won Marian Hazelton's consent to a plan which seemed so strange.
"Yes, I will write," she answered; "I will tell Amelia what you desire."
"But, Marian, you, too, must go. I'll trust baby with you. Say, Marian, will you take care of my darling?"
It was hard to refuse, with those great, wistful, pleading eyes looking so earnestly into hers; but Marian must have time to consider. She had thought of going to New London to open a shop, and if she did she should board with Mrs. Hubbell, and so be with the child. She would decide when the answer came to the letter.
This was all the encouragement she would give; but it was enough to change the whole nature of Katy's feelings, and her face looked bright and cheerful as she tripped down the stairway, talking to Helen of what seemed to both like a direct interposition of Providence, and what she was sure would please Wilford quite as well as the farmhouse up the river.
"Surely he will yield to me in this," she said. Nor was she wrong; for glad of an opportunity to make some concessions, and still in the main have his own way, Wilford raised no objection to the plan as communicated to him by Katy, when, at an earlier hour than usual, he came home to dinner, drawn thither by a remembrance of the face which had haunted him the entire day, and bringing as a peace offering to both wife and sister—a new book for the one, and for the other a set of handsome coral, which he had heard her admire only the week before.
These he presented with that graceful, winning manner he knew so well how to assume, and with the harmony of his household once more restored, felt himself a model husband as he listened to Katy's plan of sending baby to New London. On the whole, it might be better even than the farmhouse up the river, he thought, for it was farther away, and Katy could not be tiring herself with driving out every few days, and keeping herself constantly uneasy and excited. The distance between New York and New London was the best feature of the whole; and he wondered Katy had not thought of it as an objection. But she had not, and but for the pain when she remembered the coming separation, she would have been very happy that evening, listening with Wilford and Helen to the opera of "Norma," and sympathizing so keenly with the poor distracted mother.
Very differently from this was Marian's evening passed, and on her face there was a look such as Katy's had never worn, as on her knees she asked for guidance to choose the right, to lay all self aside, and if it were her duty and care for the child which had stirred the pulsations of her heart and made the old wound bleed and throb with bitter anguish as she remembered what she once hoped would be, and what but for a cruel wrong might still have been. And as she prayed there crept into her face another look which told that self was sacrificed at last, and Katy Cameron was safe with her.
Mrs. Hubbell was willing—aye, more than that—was glad to take the child, and the generous remuneration offered would make them so comfortable in their little cottage, she wrote to Marian, who hastened to confer by note with Katy, adding in a postscript, "Is it still your wish that I should go? if so, I am at your disposal."
It was Katy's wish, and she hastened to reply, going next to the nursery to confer with Mrs. Kirby. Dark were the frowns and dire the displeasure of that lady when told that her services would soon be no longer needed on Madison Square—that instead of going up the river as she had hoped, she was free to return to the "genteel and highly respectable home on Bond Street," where Mrs. Cameron had found her.
"Wait till the madam comes and then we'll see," she thought, referring to Mrs. Cameron, and feeling delighted when that very day she heard that lady's voice in the parlor.
But Mrs. Cameron, though a little anxious with regard to both Mrs. Hubbell's and Marian's antecedents, and a little doubtful as to the effect a common dressmaker's nursing might have upon the child, saw at once that Wilford was in favor of New London and so voted accordingly, only asking that she might see and talk with Marian Hazelton herself.
"One can judge so much better from hearing one converse. If her manner should be very bad and her grammar execrable, I should consider it my duty to withdraw my consent," she said, with as much deliberation as if the matter were wholly at her disposal. "Would Katy drive around with her to Marian Hazelton's to-morrow?"
Katy would be delighted; and so next day Mrs. Cameron, the elder, was holding high her aristocratic skirts and glancing ruefully around as she followed Mrs. Cameron, the younger, up the three flights of stairs to Marian's door, which did not open to the assured knock, nor yet yield to the gentle pressure. Marian was out, and there was no alternative but for Katy to scribble a few lines upon the card she left upon the knob, telling Marian who had been there, and requesting her to call that evening at No. —— Fifth Avenue, as the elder Mrs. Cameron was particularly anxious to see her before committing her grandchild to her care. "Please go, Marian, for my sake," Katy added, but in reading to Wilford's mother what she had written, she omitted that, and so escaped a lecture from that lady upon undue familiarity with inferiors.