The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

The furniture, too, which he sent on from New York, was perfect in its kind, and suitable in every respect and Helen enjoyed the settling very much, and when it was finished it was hard telling which was the more pleased, she or good Aunt Betsy, who, having confessed in a general kind of way at a sewing society, that she did go to a play-house, and was not so very sorry either, except as the example might do harm, had nothing to fear from New York, and was proportionably happy. At least she would have been if Morris had not seemed so off, as she expressed it, taking but little interest in the preparations and evincing no pleasure at Katy’s expected visit. He had been polite to Wilford, had kept him at Linwood, taking him to and from the depot, but even Wilford had thought him changed, telling Katy how very sober and grave he had become, rarely smiling, and not seeming to care to talk unless it were about his profession or on some religious topic. And Morris was greatly changed. The wound which in most hearts would have healed by this time, had grown deeper with each succeeding year, while from all he heard he felt sure that Katy’s marriage was a sad mistake, wishing sometimes that he had spoken, and so perhaps have saved her from the life in which she could not be wholly free. “She would be happier with me,” he had said, with a sad smile to Helen, when she told him of some things which she had not mentioned elsewhere, and there were great tears in Morris’s eyes, when Helen spoke of Katy’s distress, and the look which came into her face when baby was taken away. Times there were when the silent Doctor, living alone at Linwood, felt that his grief was too great to bear. But the deep waters were always forded safely, and Morris’s faith in God prevailed, so that only a dull heavy pain remained, with the consciousness that it was no sin to remember Katy as she was remembered now. Oh how he longed to see her, and yet how he dreaded it, lest poor weak human flesh should prove inadequate to the sight. But she was coming home; Providence had ordered that and he accepted it, looking eagerly for the time, but repressing his eagerness, so that not even Helen suspected how impatient he was for the day of her return. Four weeks she had been at the Pequot House in New London, occupying a little cottage and luxuriating in the joy of having her child with her almost every day. Country air and country nursing had wrought wonders in the baby, which had grown so beautiful and bright that it was no longer in Wilford’s way save as it took too much of Katy’s time, and made her care less for the gay crowd at the hotel.

Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best—Marian, who cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell. And Katy was glad to have it so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton.

Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined to do. It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs. Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farm-house Katy wrote that baby was not coming.

They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy’s baby had been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself, and Aunt Betsy had brought from the wood-shed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon’s only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother’s name. As a memento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until it was white as snow. But it would not be needed, and with a sigh the old lady carried it back, thinking “things had come to a pretty pass when a woman who could dance and carouse till twelve o’clock at night was too weakly to take care of her child,” and feeling a very little awe of Katy who must have grown so fine a lady.

But all this passed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come, and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Uncle Ephraim drove from the door, setting old Whitey into a canter, which, by the time the “race” was reached, had become a rapid trot, the old man holding up his reins and looking proudly at the oat-fed animal, speeding along so fast.

He did not have long to wait this time, for the train soon came rolling across the meadow, and while his head was turned towards the car where he fancied she might be, a pair of arms was thrown impetuously round his neck, and a little figure, standing on tiptoe, almost pulled him down in its attempts to kiss him.

“Uncle Eph! oh, Uncle Eph, I’ve come! I’m here!” a young voice cried; but the words the deacon would have spoken were smothered by the kisses pressed upon his lips, kisses which only came to an end when a voice said rather reprovingly, “There, Katy, that will do. You have almost strangled him.”

Wilford had not been expected, and the expression of the deacon’s face was not a very cordial greeting to the young man who hastened to explain that he was going directly on to Boston. In his presence the deacon was not quite natural, but he lifted in his arms his “little Katy-did,” and looked straight into her face, where there were as yet no real lines of care, only shadows, which told that in some respects she was not the same Katy he had parted with two years before. There was a good deal of the city about her dress and style; and the deacon felt a little overawed at first; but this wore off as, on their way to the farm-house, she talked to him in her old, loving manner, and asked questions about the people he supposed she had forgotten, nodding to everybody she met, whether she knew them or not, and at last, as the old house came in sight, hiding her face in a gush of happy tears upon his neck. Scarcely waiting for old Whitey to stop, but with one leap clearing the wheel, she threw herself into the midst of the women waiting on the door step to meet her. It was a joyful meeting, and when the first excitement was over, Katy inspected the improvements, praising them all and congratulating herself upon the nice time she was to have.

“You don’t know what a luxury it is to feel that I can rest,” she said to Helen.

“Didn’t you rest at New London?” Helen asked.