The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

In a week’s time she arrived, seeming everything Katy could ask for, and as Mrs. Cameron, too, approved her heartily as a modest, well-spoken young woman, who knew her place, it was arranged that she should return home with her little charge on Saturday, thus giving Katy the benefit of Sunday in which “to get over it and recover her usual spirits,” Mrs. Cameron said. The fact that Marian was going to New London within a week after baby went, reconciled Katy to the plan, making her even cheerful during the last day of baby’s stay at home. But as the daylight waned and the night came on, a shadow began to steal across her face, and her step was slower as she went up the stairs to the nursery, while only herself that night could disrobe the little creature and hush it into sleep.

“’Tis the last time, you know,” she said to Kirby, who went out, leaving the young mother and child alone.

Mournfully sad and sweet was the lullaby Katy sang, and Helen, who, in the hall, was listening to the low, sad moaning,—half prayer, half benediction,—likened it to a farewell between the living and dead. Half an hour later, when she glanced into the room, lighted only by the moonbeams, baby was sleeping in her crib, whilst Katy knelt beside, her face buried in her hands, and her form quivering with the sobs she tried to smother as she softly prayed that her darling might come back again; that God would keep the little child and forgive the erring mother, who had sinned so deeply since the time she used to pray in her home among the hills of Massachusetts. She was very white next morning, and to Helen she seemed to be expanding into something more womanly, more mature, as she disciplined herself to bear the pain welling up so constantly from her heart, and at last overflowing in a flood of tears, when Mrs. Hubbell was announced as in the parlor below, waiting for her charge.

It was Katy who made her baby ready, trusting her to no one else, and repelling with a kind of fierce decision all offers of assistance made either by Helen, Mrs. Cameron, Bell, or the nurse, who were present, while Katy’s hands drew on the little bright, soft socks of wool, tied the hood of satin and lace, and fastened the scarlet cloak, her tears falling fast as she met the loving, knowing look the baby was just learning to give her, half smiling, half cooing, as she bent her face down to it.

“Please all of you go out,” she said, when baby was ready—“Wilford and all. I would rather be alone.”

They granted her request, but Wilford stood beside the open door, listening while the mother bade farewell to her baby.

“Darling,” she murmured, “what will poor Katy do when you are gone, or what will comfort her as you have done? Precious baby, my heart is breaking to give you up; but will the Father in Heaven, who knows how much you are to me, keep you from harm and bring you back again? I’d give the world to keep you, but I cannot do it, for Wilford says that you must go, and Wilford is your father.”

At that moment Wilford Cameron would have given half his fortune to have kept his child for Katy’s sake, but it was now too late; the carriage was at the door, and Mrs. Hubbell was waiting in the hall for the little procession filing down the stairs. Mrs. Cameron and Bell, Wilford and Katy, who carried the baby herself, her face bent over it and her tears still dropping like rain. But it was Wilford who took the baby to the carriage, going with it to the train and seeing Mrs. Hubbell off; then, on his way back, he drove round to his own house, which even to him seemed lonely, with all the paraphernalia of babyhood removed. Still, now that the worst was over, he rather enjoyed it, for Katy was free from care; there was nothing to hinder her gratifying his every wish, and with his spirits greatly enlivened as he reflected how satisfactory everything had been managed at the last, he proposed taking both Helen and Katy to the theatre that night. But Katy answered, “No, Wilford, not to-night; it seems too much like baby’s funeral. I’ll go next week, but not to-night.”

So Katy had her way, and among the worshipers who next day knelt in Grace Church, with words of prayer upon their lips, there was not one more in earnest than she, whose only theme was, “My child, my darling child.”

She did not get over it by Monday, as Mrs. Cameron had predicted. She did not get over it at all, though she went without a word where Wilford willed that she should go, and was ere long a belle again, but nothing had power to draw one look from her blue eyes, the look which many observed, and which Helen knew sprang from the mother-love, hungering for its child. Only once before had Helen seen a look like this, and that had come to Morris’s face on the sad night when she said to him, “It might have been.” It had been there ever since, and Helen felt that by the pangs with which that look was born he was a better man, just as Katy was growing better for that hunger in her heart. God was taking His own way to purify them both, and Helen watched intently, wondering what the end would be.