The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

In his great pity for Katy when she was first a widow, Morris had scarcely remembered that she was free, or if it did flash upon his mind, he thrust the thought aside as injustice to the dead; but as the months and the year went by, and he heard constantly from Helen of Katy’s increasing cheerfulness, it was not in his nature never to think of what might be, and more than once he had prayed, that if consistent with his Father’s will, the woman he had loved so well, should yet be his. If not, he could go his way alone, just as he had always done, knowing that it was right.

Such was the state of Morris’s mind when he returned from Washington, but now it was somewhat different. The weary weeks of sickness, during which Katy had ministered to him so kindly, had not been without their effect, and if Morris had loved the frolicsome, child-like Katy Lennox, he loved far more the gentle, beautiful woman, whose character had been so wonderfully developed by suffering, and who was more worthy of his love than in her early girlhood.

“I cannot lose her now,” was the thought constantly in Morris’s mind, as he experienced more and more how desolate were the days which did not bring her to him. “It is twenty months since Wilford died,” he said to himself one wet October afternoon, when he sat listening dreamily to the patter of the rain falling upon the windows, and looking occasionally across the fields to the farm-house, in the hope of spying in the distance the little airy form, which, in its water-proof and cloud, had braved worse storms than this at the time he was so ill.

But no such figure appeared. He hardly expected it would; but he watched the pathway just the same, and the smoke-wreaths rising so high above the farm-house. The deacon burned out his chimney that day, and Morris, whose sight had greatly improved of late, knew it by the dense, black volume of smoke, mingled with rings of fire, which rose above the roof, remembering so well another rainy day, twenty years ago, when the deacon’s chimney was cleaned, and a little toddling girl, in scarlet gown and white pinafore, had amused herself with throwing into the blazing fire upon the hearth a straw at a time, almost upsetting herself with standing so far back, and making such efforts to reach the flames. A great deal had passed since then. The little girl in the pinafore had been both wife and mother. She was a widow now, and Morris glanced across his hearth toward the empty chair he had never seen in imagination filled by any but herself.

“Surely, she would some day be his own,” and leaning his head upon the cane he carried, he prayed earnestly for the good he coveted, keeping his head down so long that, until it had left the strip of woods and emerged into the open fields, he did not see the figure wrapped in water-proof and hood, with a huge umbrella over its head and a basket upon its arm, which came picking its way daintily toward the house, stopping occasionally, and lifting up the little high-heeled Balmoral, which the mud was ruining so completely. Katy was coming to Linwood. It had been baking-day at the farm-house, and remembering how much Morris used to love her custards, Aunt Betsy had prepared him some, and asked Katy to take them over, so he could have them for tea.

“The rain won’t hurt you an atom,” she said as Katy began to demur, and glance at the lowering sky. “You can wear your water-proof boots and my shaker, if you like, and I do so want Morris to have them to-night.”

Thus importuned, Katy consented to go, but declined the loan of Aunt Betsy’s shaker, which being large of the kind, and capeless, too, was not the most becoming head-gear a woman could wear. With the basket of custards, and cup of jelly, Katy finally started, Aunt Betsy saying to her, as she stopped to take up her dress, “It must be dretful lonesome for Morris to-day. S’posin’ you stay to supper with him, and when it’s growin’ dark I’ll come over for you. You’ll find the custards fust rate.”

Katy made no reply, and walked away, while Aunt Betsy went back to the coat she was patching for her brother, saying to herself,

“I’m bound to fetch that round. It’s a shame for two young folks, just fitted to each other, to live apart when they might be so happy, with Hannah, and Lucy, and me, close by, to see to ’em, and allus make their soap, and see to the butcherin’, besides savin’ peneryle and catnip for the children, if there was any.”

Aunt Betsy had turned match-maker in her old age, and day and night she planned how to bring about the match between Morris and Katy. That they were made for each other, she had no doubt. From something which Helen inadvertently let fall, she had guessed that Morris loved Katy prior to her marriage with Wilford. She had suspected as much before; she was sure of it now, and straightway put her wits to work “to make it go,” as she expressed it. But Katy was too shy to suit her, and since Morris’s convalescence, had stayed too much from Linwood. To-day, however, Aunt Betsy “felt it in her bones,” that if properly managed something would happen, and the custards were but the means to the desired end. With no suspicion whatever of the good dame’s intentions, Katy picked her way to Linwood, and leaving her damp garments in the hall, went at once into the library, where Morris was sitting near to a large chair kept sacred for her, his face looking unusually cheerful, and the room unusually pleasant, with the bright wood fire on the hearth.