Mark knew there was plenty of time, and so he made the tour of the cars, but found, alas, no Katy.
“She’s not there,” was the report carried to the poor old man, who tremblingly repeated the words: “Not there, not come!” while over his aged face there broke a look of touching sadness, which Mark never forgot, remembering it always just as he remembered the big tear drops which from his seat by the window he saw the old man wipe away with his coat-sleeve, as whispering softly to Whitey of his disappointment he unhitched the horse and drove away alone.
“Maybe she’s writ. I’ll go and see,” he said, and driving to their regular office he found a letter directed by Wilford Cameron, but written by Katy; but he could not read it then, and thrusting it into his pocket he went slowly back to the home where the tempting dinner was prepared and the family waiting so eagerly for him. Even before he reached them they knew of the disappointment, for from the garret window Helen had watched the road by which he would come, and when the buggy appeared in sight she saw he was alone.
There was a mistake; Katy had missed the train, she said to her mother and aunts, who hoped she might be right. But Katy had not missed the train, as was indicated by the letter which Uncle Ephraim without a word put into Helen’s hand, leaning on old Whitey’s neck while she read aloud the attempt at an explanation which Katy had hurriedly written, a stain on the paper where a tear had fallen, attesting her distress at the bitter disappointment.
“Wilford did not know of the other letter,” she said, “and had made arrangements for her to go back with him to New York, inasmuch as the house was already opened and the servants there wanting a head; besides that, Wilford had been absent so long that he could not possibly stop at Silverton himself, and as he would not think of living without her, even for a few days, there was no alternative but for her to go with him on the boat directly to New York. I am sorry, oh, so sorry, but indeed I am not to blame,” she added in conclusion, and this was the nearest approach there was to an admission that anybody was to blame for this disappointment which cut so cruelly, making Uncle Ephraim cry, as out in the barn he hung away the mended harness and covered the new buggy, which had been bought for naught.
“I might have had the overcoat, for Katy will never come home again, never. God grant that it’s the Cameron pride, not hers that kept her from us,” the old man said, as on the hay he knelt down and prayed that Katy had not learned to despise the home where she was so beloved.
“Katy will never come to us again,” seemed the prevailing opinion at Silverton, where more than Uncle Ephraim felt a chilling doubt at times as to whether she really wished to come or not. If she did, it seemed easy of accomplishment to those who knew not how perfect and complete were the fetters thrown around her, and how unbending the will which governed hers. Could they have seen the look in Katy’s face when she first understood that she was not going to Silverton, their hearts would have bled for the thwarted creature who fled up the stairs to her own room, where Esther found her twenty minutes later, cold and fainting upon the bed, her face as white as ashes, and her hands clenched so tightly that the nails left marks upon the palms.
“It was not strange that the poor child should faint—indeed, it was only natural that nature should give way after so many weeks of gayety, and she very far from being strong,” Mrs. Cameron said to Wilford, who was beginning to repent of his decision, and who but for that remark perhaps might have revoked it.
Indeed, he made an attempt to do so when, as consciousness came back, Katy lay so pale and still before him; but Katy did not understand him, or guess that he wished her to meet him more than half the way, and so the verdict was unchanged, and in a kind of bewilderment, Katy wrote the hurried letter, feeling less actual pain than did its readers, for the disappointment had stunned her for a time, and all she could remember of the passage home on that same night when Mark Ray sat with Helen in the sitting-room at Silverton, was that there was a fearful storm of rain mingled with lightning flashes and thunder peals, which terrified the other ladies, but brought to her no other sensation save that it would not be so very hard to perish in the dark waters dashing so madly about the vessel’s side.