“Why not send for her?” Mark asked, casting about in his mind whether in case Helen came, he, too, could tarry for a week and leave that business in Southbridge, which he must attend to ere returning to the city.
It would be a study to watch Helen Lennox there at Newport, and in imagination Mark was already her sworn knight, shielding her from criticism, and commanding for her respect from those who respected him, when Katy tore his castle down by answering impulsively:
“I doubt if Wilford would let me send for her, nor does it matter, as I shall not remain much longer. I do not need her now, since you have shown me how foolish I have been. I was angry at first, but now I thank you for it, and so will Helen. I shall tell her when I am in Silverton. I am going there from here and oh, I so wish it was to-day.”
The guests were beginning to return from the beach by this time, and as Mark had said all he had intended saying, he left Katy with Wilford, who had just come in and joined a merry party of Bostonians only that day arrived. That night at the Ocean House the guests missed something from their festivities; the dance was not so exhilarating or the small-talk between so lively, while more than one white-kidded dandy swore mentally at the innocent Wilford, whose wife declined to join in the gayeties, and in a plain white muslin, with only a pond lily in her hair, kept by her husband’s side, notwithstanding that he bade her leave him and accept some of her numerous invitations to join the giddy dance. This sober phase of Katy did not on the whole please Wilford as much as her gayer ones had done. All he had ever dreamed of the sensation his bride would create was more than verified. Katy had fulfilled his highest expectations, reaching a point from which, as she had said to Mark, she could dictate to his mother, if she chose, and he did not care to see her relinquish it.
But Katy remained true to herself. Dropping her girlish playfulness, she assumed a quiet, gentle dignity, which became her even better than her gayer mood had done, making her ten times more popular and more sought after, until she begged to go away, persuading Wilford at last to name the day for their departure, and then, never doubting for a moment that her destination was Silverton, she wrote to Helen that she should be home on such a day, and as they would come by way of Providence and Worcester, they would probably reach West Silverton at ten o’clock, A. M.
“Wilford,” she added in a postscript, “has gone down to bathe, and as the mail is just closing, I shall send this letter without his seeing it. Of course it can make no difference, for I have talked all summer of coming, and he understands it.”
CHAPTER XX.
MARK RAY AT SILVERTON.
The last day of summer was dying out in a fierce storm of rain which swept in sheets across the Silverton hills, hiding the pond from view, and beating against the windows of the farm-house, whose inmates were nevertheless unmindful of the storm save as they hoped the morrow would prove bright and fair, such as the day should be which brought them back their Katy. Nearly worn out with constant reference was her letter, the mother catching it up from time to time to read the part referring to herself, where Katy had told how blessed it would be “to rest again on mother’s bed,” just as she had so often wished to do, “and hear mother’s voice;” the deacon spelling out by his spluttering tallow candle, with its long, smoky wick, what she had said of “darling old Uncle Eph,” and the rides into the fields; Aunt Betsy, too, reading mostly from memory the words: “Good old Aunt Betsy, with her skirts so limp and short, tell her she will look handsomer to me than the fairest belle at Newport;” and as often as Aunt Betsy read it she would ejaculate: “The land! what kind of company must the child have kept?” wondering next if Helen had never written of the hoop, for which she paid a dollar, and which was carefully hung in her closet, waiting for the event of to-morrow, while the hem of her pongee had been let down and one breadth gored to accommodate the hoop. On the whole, Aunt Betsy expected to make a stylish appearance before the little lady of whom she stood in awe, always speaking of her to the neighbors as “My niece, Miss Cammen, from New York,” and taking good care to report what she had heard of “Miss Cammen’s” costly dress and the grandeur of her house, where the furniture of the best chamber cost over fifteen hundred dollars.
“What could it be?” Aunt Betsy had asked in her simplicity, feeling an increased respect for Katy, and consenting the more readily to the change in her pongee, as suggested to her by Helen.
But that was for to-morrow when Katy came; to-night she only wore a dotted brown, whose hem just reached the top of her “bootees,” as she went to strain the milk brought in by Uncle Ephraim, while Helen took her position near the window, looking drearily out upon the leaden clouds, and hoping it would brighten before the morrow. Like the others, Helen had read Katy’s letter many times, dwelling longest upon the part which said: “I have been so bad, so frivolous and wicked here at Newport, that it will be a relief to make you my confessor, depending, as I do, upon your love to grant me absolution.”