CHAPTER XXXV.
THE INTERVIEW.
Dr. Morris was very tired, for his labors that day had been unusually severe, and it was with a feeling of comfort and relief that at an earlier hour than usual, he had turned his steps homeward, finding a bright fire waiting him in the library, where his late dinner was soon brought by the housekeeper. It was very pleasant in that cosy library of oak and green, with the bright fire on the hearth, and the smoking dinner set so temptingly before him. And Morris felt the comfort of his home, thanking the God who had given him all this, and chiding his wayward heart that it had ever dared to repine. He was not repining to-night, as with his hands crossed upon his head he sat looking into the fire and watching the bits of glowing anthracite dropping into the pan. He was thinking of the sick-bed which he had visited last, and how a faith in Jesus can make the humblest room like the gate of Heaven; thinking how the woman’s eyes had sparkled when she told him of the other world, where she would never know pain or hunger or cold again, and how quickly their lustre was dimmed when she spoke of her absent husband, the soldier to whom the news of her death, with the child he had never seen, would be a crushing blow.
“They who have neither wife nor child are the happier perhaps,” he said; and then he thought of Katy and her great sorrow when baby died, wondering if to spare herself that pain she would rather baby had never been. “No—oh, no,” he answered to his own inquiry. “She would not lose the memory which comes from that little grave for all the world contains. It is better once to love and lose than not to love at all. In Heaven we shall see and know why these things were permitted, and marvel at the poor human nature which rebelled against them.”
Just at this point of his soliloquy, the telegram was brought to him. “Come in the next train. I am in great trouble.”
He read it many times, growing more and more perplexed with each reading, and then trying to decide what his better course would be. There were no patients needing him that night, that he knew of; he might perhaps go if there was yet time for the train which passed at four o’clock. There was time, he found, and telling Mrs. Hull that he had been suddenly called to New York, he bade his boy bring out his horse and take him at once to the depot. It was better to leave no message for the deacon’s family, as he did not wish to alarm them unnecessarily. “I shall undoubtedly be back to-morrow,” he thought, as he took his seat in the car, wondering what could be the trouble which had prompted that strange despatch.
It was nearly midnight when he reached the city, but a light was shining from the windows of that house in Madison Square, and Katy, who had never for a moment doubted his coming, was waiting for him. But not in the parlor; she was too sick now to go down there, and when she heard his ring and his voice in the hall asking for her, she bade Esther show him to her room. More and more perplexed, Morris ran up to the room where Katy lay, or rather crouched, upon the sofa, her eyes so wild and her face so white that, in great alarm, Morris took the cold hands she stretched feebly towards him, and bending over her said, “What is it, Katy? Has anything dreadful happened? and where is your husband?”
At the mention of her husband Katy shivered, and rising from her crouching position, she pushed her hair back from her forehead and replied, “Oh, Morris! I am so wretched,—so full of pain! I have heard of something which took my life away. I am not Wilford’s wife, for he had another before me,—a wife in Italy,—who is not dead! And I, oh Morris! what am I? I knew you would know just what I was, and I sent for you to tell me and take me away from here, back to Silverton. Help me, Morris! I am choking! I am—yes—I am—going to faint!”
It was the first time Katy had put the great horror in words addressed to another, and the act of doing so made it more appalling, and with a moan she sank back among the pillows of the couch, while Morris tried to comprehend the strange words he had heard, “I am not Wilford’s wife, for he had another before me,—a wife in Italy,—who is not dead.”
Dr. Morris was thoroughly a man, and though much of his sinful nature had been subdued, there was enough left to make his heart rise and fall with great throbs of joy as he thought of Katy free, even though that freedom were bought at the expense of dire disgrace to others, and of misery to her. But only for a moment did he feel thus—only till he knelt beside the pallid face with the dark rings beneath the eyes, and saw the faint, quivering motion around the lips, which told that she was not wholly unconscious.
“My poor little wounded bird,” he said, as pityingly as if he had been her father, while much as a father might kiss his suffering child, he kissed the forehead and the eyelids where the tears began to gather.