The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

Juno herself could not equal that, he thought, as Katy’s fingers flew over the keys, executing a brilliant and difficult piece without a single mistake, and receiving the applause of the spectators easily, naturally, as if it were an every day occurrence. But when by request she sang “Comin’ through the Rye,” Wilford’s heart, if he had any before, was wholly gone, and he dreamed of Katy Lennox that night, wondering all the ensuing day how his haughty mother would receive that young school-girl as her daughter, wife of the son whose bride she fancied must be equal to the first lady in the land. And if Katy were not now equal she could be made so, Wilford thought, wondering if Canandaigua were the best place for her, and if she would consent to receive a year or two years’ tuition from him, provided her family were poor. He did not know as they were, but he would ask, and he did, feeling a pang of regret when he heard to some extent how Katy was circumstanced. Mrs. Woodhull had never been to Silverton, and so she did not know of Uncle Ephraim, and his old-fashioned sister; but she knew that they were poor—that some relation sent Katy to school; and she frankly told Wilford so, adding, as she detected the shadow on his face, that one could not expect everything, and that a girl like Katy was not found every day. Wilford admitted all this, growing more and more infatuated, until at last he consented to join the traveling party, provided Katy joined it too, and when on the morning of their departure for the Falls he seated himself beside her in the car, he could not well have been happier, unless she had really been his wife, as he so much wished she was.

It was a most delightful trip, and Wilford was better satisfied with himself than he had been before in years. His past life was not all free from error, and there were many sad memories haunting him, but with Katy at his side, seeing what he saw, admiring what he admired, and doing what he bade her do, he gave the bygones to the wind, feeling only an intense desire to clasp the young girl in his arms and bear her away to some spot where with her pure fresh life all his own he could begin the world anew, and retrieve the past which he had lost. This was when he was with Katy. Away from her he could remember the difference in their position, and prudential motives began to make themselves heard. Never but once had he taken an important step without consulting his mother, and the trouble in which that had involved him warned him to be more cautious a second time. And this was why Katy came back to Silverton unengaged, leaving her heart with Wilford Cameron, who would first seek advice from his mother ere committing himself by word. He had seen the white-haired man waiting for her when the train stopped at Silverton, but standing there as he did, with his silvery locks parted in the centre, and shading his honest, open face, Uncle Ephraim looked like some patriarch of old rather than a man to be despised, and Wilford felt only respect for him until he saw Katy’s arms wound so lovingly around his neck as she called him Uncle Eph. That sight grated harshly, and Wilford felt glad that he was not bound to her by any pledge. Very curiously he looked after the couple, witnessing the meeting between Katy and old Whiting, and guessing rightly that the corn-colored vehicle was the one sent to transport Katy home. He was very moody for the remainder of the route between Silverton and Albany, where he parted with his Canandaigua friends, they going on to the westward, while he stopped all night in Albany, where he had some business to transact for his father.

He was intending to tell his mother everything, except that he paid Katy’s bills. He would rather keep that to himself, as it might shock his mother’s sense of propriety and make her think less of Katy; so after dinner was over, and they had returned to the parlor, he opened the subject by asking her to guess what took him off so suddenly with Mrs. Woodhull.

The mother did not know—unless—and a strange light gleamed in her eye, as she asked if it were some girl.

“Yes, mother, it was,” and without any reservation Wilford frankly told the story of his interest in Katy Lennox.

He admitted that she was poor and unaccustomed to society, but he loved her more than words could express.

“Not as I loved Genevra,” he said, and there came a look of intense pain into his eyes as he continued. “That was the passion of a boy of nineteen, stimulated by secrecy, but this is the love of a mature man of thirty, who feels that he is capable of judging for himself.”

In Wilford’s voice there was a tone warning the mother that opposition would only feed the flame, and so she offered none directly, but heard him patiently to the end, and then quietly questioned him of Katy and her family, especially the last. What did he know of it? Was it one to detract from the Cameron line, kept untarnished so long? Were the relatives such as he never need blush to own even if they came there into their drawing-rooms as they would come if Katy did?

Wilford thought of Uncle Ephraim as he had seen him upon the platform at Silverton, and could scarcely repress a smile as he pictured to himself his mother’s consternation at beholding that man in her drawing-room. But he did not mention the deacon, though he acknowledged that Katy’s family friends were not exactly the Cameron style. But Katy was young: Katy could be easily moulded, and once away from her old associates, his mother and sisters could make of her what they pleased.

“I understand, then, that if you marry her you do not marry the family,” and in the handsome matronly face there was an expression from which Katy would have shrunk, could she have seen it and understood its meaning.