Ray, who stood by me all the time, and who somehow seemed to help me, so that I knew just what to do, and was not awkward at all. I hope not, at least for Wilford"s sake.
"You do not know how grand and dignified he is here in Boston among his own set; he is so different from what he was in Silverton that I should be afraid of him if I did not know how much he loves me. He shows that in every action, and I am perfectly happy, except when I think that to-morrow night at this time I shall be on the sea, going away from you all. Here it does not seem far to Silverton, and I often look toward home, wondering what you are doing, and if you miss me any. I wish I could see you once before I go, just to tell you all how much I love you--more than I ever did before, I am sure.
"And now I come to the trunk. I know you will be surprised at its contents, but you cannot be more so than I was when Wilford said I must pack them up and send them back--all the dresses you and Marion made."
"No, oh no," and Helen felt her strength leave her wrists in one sudden throb as the letter dropped from her hand, while she tore off the linen covering and saw for herself that Katy had written truly.
She could not weep then, but her face was white as marble as she again took up the letter and commenced at the point where she had broken off.
"It seems that people traveling in Europe do not need many things, but what they have must be just right, and so Mrs. Cameron wrote for Mrs.
Harvey to see to my wardrobe, and if I had not exactly what was proper she was to procure it. It is very funny that she did not find a single proper garment among them all, when we thought them so nice. They were not just the style, she said, and that was very desirable in Mrs.
Wilford Cameron. Somehow she tries to impress me with the idea that Mrs.
Wilford Cameron is a very different person from little Katy Lennox, but I can see no difference except that I am a great deal happier and have Wilford all the time.
"Well, as I was telling you, I was measured and fitted, and my figure praised, until my head was nearly turned, only I did not like the horrid stays they put on me, squeezing me up and making me feel so stiff. Mrs.
Harvey says no lady does without them, expressing much surprise that I had never worn them, and so I submit to the powers that be; but every chance I get here in my room I take them off and throw them on the floor, where Wilford has stumbled over them two or three times.
"This afternoon the dresses came home, and they do look beautifully, while every one has belt, and gloves, and ribbons, and sashes, and laces or muslins to match--fashionable people are so particular about these things. I have tried them on, and except that I think them too tight, they fit admirably, and do give me a different air from what Miss Hazelton"s did. But I really believe I like the old ones best, because you helped to make them; and when Wilford said I must send them home, I went where he could not see me and cried, because--well, I hardly know why I cried, unless I feared you might feel badly. Dearest Helen, don"t, will you? I love you just as much, and shall remember you the same as if I wore the dresses. Dearest sister, I can fancy the look that will come on your face, and I wish I could be present to kiss it away. Imagine me there, will you? with my arms around your neck, and tell mother not to mind. Tell her I never loved her so well as now, and that when I come home from Europe I shall bring her ever so many things. There is a new black silk for her in the trunk, and one for each of the aunties, while for you there is a lovely brown, which Wilford said was just your style, telling me to select as nice a silk as I pleased, and this he did I think because he guessed I had been crying. He asked what made my eyes so red, and when I would not tell him he took me with him to the silk store and bade me get what I liked. Oh, he is the dearest, kindest husband, and I love him all the more because I am the least bit afraid of him.
"And now I must stop, for Wilford says so. Dear Helen, dear all of you, I can"t help crying as I say good-by. Remember little Katy, and if she ever did anything bad, don"t lay it up against her. Kiss Morris and Uncle Ephraim, and say how much I love them. Darling sister, darling mother, good-by."
This was Katy"s letter, and it brought a gush of tears from the four women remembered so lovingly in it, the mother and the aunts stealing away to weep in secret, without ever stopping to look at the new dresses sent to them by Wilford Cameron. They were very soft, very handsome, especially Helen"s rich golden brown, and as she looked at it she felt a thrill of satisfaction in knowing it was hers, but this quickly pa.s.sed as she took out one by one the garments she had folded with so much care, wondering when Katy would wear each one and where she would be.
"She will never wear them, never--they are not fine enough for her now!"
she exclaimed, and as she just then came upon the little plaid, she laid her head upon the trunk lid, while her tears dropped like rain in among the discarded articles condemned by Wilford Cameron.
It seemed to her like Katy"s grave, and she was still sobbing bitterly, when a step sounded outside the window, and a voice called her name. It was Morris, and lifting up her head Helen said, pa.s.sionately:
"Oh, Morris, look! he has sent back all Katy"s clothes, which you bought and I worked so hard to make. They were not good enough for his wife to wear, and so he insulted us. Oh, Katy, I never fully realized till now how wholly she is lost to us!"
"Helen, Helen," Morris kept saying, trying to stop her, for close behind him was Mark Ray, who heard her distinctly, and glancing in, saw her kneeling before the trunk, her pale face stained with tears, and her dark eyes shining with excitement.
Mark Ray understood it at a glance, feeling indignant at Wilford for thus unnecessarily wounding the sensitive girl, whose expression, as she sat there upon the floor, with her face upturned to Morris, haunted him for months. Mark was sorry for her--so sorry that his first impulse was to go quietly away, and so spare her the mortification of knowing that he had witnessed that little scene; but it was now too late. As she finished speaking her eye fell on him, and coloring scarlet she struggled to her feet, and covering her face with her hands wept still more violently. Mark was in a dilemma, and whispered softly to Morris: "I think I had better leave. You can tell her all I had to say;" but Helen heard him, and mastering her agitation she said to him:
"Please, Mr. Ray, don"t go--not yet at least, not till I have asked you of Katy. Did you see her off? Has she gone?"
Thus importuned, Mark Ray came in, and sitting down where his boot almost touched the new brown silk, he very politely began to answer her rapid questions, putting her entirely at her ease by his pleasant, affable manner, and making her forget the littered appearance of the room as she listened to his praises of her sister, who, he said, seemed so very happy, attracting universal admiration wherever she went. No allusion whatever was made to the trunk during the time of Mark"s stay, which was not long. If he took the next train to New York, he had but an hour more to spend, and feeling that Helen would rather he should spend it at Linwood he soon arose to go. Offering his hand to Helen, there pa.s.sed from his eyes into hers a look which had over her a strangely quieting influence, and prepared her for a remark which otherwise might have seemed out of place.
"I have known Wilford Cameron for years; he is my best friend, and I respect him as a brother. In some things he may be peculiar, but he will make your sister a kind husband. He loves her devotedly, I know, choosing her from the throng of ladies who would gladly have taken her place. I hope you will like him for my sake as well as Katy"s."
His warm hand unclasped from Helen"s, and with another good-by he was gone, without seeing either Mrs. Lennox, Aunt Hannah or Aunt Betsy. This was not the time for extending his acquaintance, he knew, and he went away with Morris, feeling that the farmhouse, so far as he could judge, was not exactly what Wilford had pictured it. "But then he came for a wife, and I did not," he thought, while Helen"s face came before him as it looked up to Morris, and he wondered, were he obliged to choose between the sisters, which he should prefer. During the few days pa.s.sed in Boston he had become more than half in love with Katy himself, almost envying his friend the pretty little creature he had won. She was very beautiful and very fascinating in her simplicity, but there was something in Helen"s face more attractive than mere beauty, and Mark said to Morris as they walked along:
"Miss Lennox is not much like her sister."
"Not much, no; but Helen is a splendid girl--more strength of character, perhaps, than Katy, who is younger than her years even. She has always been petted from babyhood; it will take time or some great sorrow to show what she really is."
This was Morris" reply, and the two then proceeded on in silence until they reached the boundary line between Morris" farm and Uncle Ephraim"s, where they found the deacon mending a bit of broken fence, his coat lying on a pile of stones, and his wide, blue cotton trousers hanging loosely around him. When told who Mark was and that he brought news of Katy, he greeted him cordially, and sitting down upon his fence listened to all Mark had to say. Between the old and young man there seemed at once a mutual liking, the former saying to himself as Mark went on, and he resumed his work:
"I most wish it was this chap with Katy on the sea. I like his looks the best," while Mark"s thoughts were:
"Will need not be ashamed of that man, though I don"t suppose I should really want him coming suddenly in among a drawing-room full of guests."
Morris did not feel much like entertaining Mark, but Mark was fully competent to entertain himself, and thought the hour spent at Linwood a very pleasant one, half wishing for some excuse to tarry longer; but there was none, and so at the appointed time he bade Morris good-by and went on his way to New York.
CHAPTER XII.
FIRST MONTH OF MARRIED LIFE.
If Katy"s letters, written, one on board the steamer and another from London, were to be trusted, she was as nearly perfectly happy as a young bride well can be, and the people at the farmhouse felt themselves more and more kindly disposed toward Wilford Cameron with each letter received. They were going soon into the northern part of England, and from thence into Scotland, Katy wrote from London, and two weeks after found them comfortably settled at the inn at Alnwick, near to Alnwick Castle. Wilford had seemed very anxious to get there, leaving London before Katy was quite ready to leave, and hurrying across the country until Alnwick was reached. He had been there before, years ago, he said, but no one seemed to recognize him, though all paid due respect to the distinguished-looking American and his beautiful young wife. An entrance into Alnwick Castle was easily obtained, and Katy felt that all her girlish dreams of grandeur and magnificence were more than realized here in this home of the Percys, where ancient and modern styles of architecture and furnishing were so blended together. She would never tire of that place, she thought, but Wilford"s taste led him elsewhere, and he took more delight, it would appear, in wandering around St.
Mary"s Church, which stood upon a hill commanding a view of the castle and of the surrounding country for miles away. Here Katy also came, rambling with him through the village graveyard where slept the dust of centuries, the gray, mossy tombstones bearing date backward for more than a hundred years, their quaint inscriptions both puzzling and amusing Katy, who studied them by the hour.
One quiet summer morning, however, when the heat was unusually great, she felt too listless to wander about, and so sat upon the gra.s.s, listening to the birds as they sang above her head, while Wilford, at some distance from her, stood leaning against a tree and thinking sad, regretful thoughts, as his eye rested upon the rough headstone at his feet.
"Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two," was the lettering upon it, and as he read it a feeling of reproach was in his heart, while he said: "I hope I am not glad to know that she is dead."
He had come to Alnwick for the sole purpose of finding that humble grave, of a.s.suring himself that after life"s fitful fever, Genevra Lambert slept quietly, forgetful of the wrong once done to her by him.
It is true he had not doubted her death before, but as seeing was believing, so now he felt sure of it, and plucking from the turf above her a little flower growing there, he went back to Katy and sitting down beside her with his arm around her waist, tried to devise some way of telling her what he had promised himself he would tell her there in that very yard, where Genevra was buried. But the task was harder now than before. Katy was so happy with him, trusting his love so fully that he dared not lift the veil and read to her that page hinted at once before in Silverton, when they sat beneath the b.u.t.ternut tree, with the fresh young gra.s.s springing around them. Then, she was not his wife, and the fear that she would not be if he told her all had kept him silent, but now she was his alone; nothing could undo that, and there, in the shadow of the gray old church through whose aisles Genevra had been borne out to where the rude headstone was gleaming in the English sunlight, it seemed meet that he should tell her sad story. And Katy would have forgiven him then, for not a shadow of regret had darkened her life since it was linked with his, and in her perfect love she could have pardoned much. But Wilford did not tell. It was not needful; he made himself believe--not necessary for her ever to know that once he met a maiden called Genevra, almost as beautiful as she, but never so beloved.
No, never. Wilford said that truly, when that night he bent over his sleeping Katy, comparing her face with Genevra"s, and his love for her with his love for Genevra.
"That was a boyish fancy, this love of mature years," and Wilford pressed a kiss upon Katy"s pure forehead, showing so white in the moonlight.
Wilford was very fond of his girlish wife and very proud of her, too, when strangers paused, as they often did, to look back after her. Thus far nothing had arisen to mar the happiness of his first weeks of married life; nothing except the letters from Silverton, over which Katy always cried, until he sometimes wished that the family could not write.
But they could and they did; even Aunt Betsy inclosed in Helen"s letter a note, wonderful both in orthography and composition, and concluding with the remark that she would be glad when Catherine returned and was settled in a home of her own, as she would then have a new place to visit.
There was a dark frown on Wilford"s face, and for a moment he felt tempted to withhold the note from Katy, but this he could not do then, so he gave it into her hands, watching her as with burning cheeks, she read it through, and asking her at its close why she looked so red.
"Oh, Wilford," and she crept closely to him, "Aunt Betsy spells so queerly, that I was wishing you would not always open my letters first.
Do all husbands do so?"
It was the only time Katy had ventured to question a single act of his, submitting without a word to whatever was his will. Wilford knew that his father would never have presumed to break a seal belonging to his mother, but he had broken Katy"s and he should continue breaking them, so he answered, laughingly;
"Why, yes, I guess they do. My little wife has surely no secrets to hide from me?"
"No secrets," Katy answered, "only I did not want you to see Aunt Betsy"s letter, that"s all."
"I did not marry Aunt Betsy--I married you," was Wilford"s reply; which meant far more than Katy guessed.
With three thousand miles between him and his wife"s relatives, Wilford could endure to think of them; but whenever letters came to Katy bearing the Silverton postmark, he was conscious of a far different sensation from what he experienced when the postmark was New York and the handwriting that of his own family. But not in any way did this feeling manifest itself to Katy, who, as she always wrote to Helen, was very, very happy, and never more so, perhaps, than while they were at Alnwick, where, as if he had something for which to atone, he was unusually kind and indulgent, caressing her with unwonted tenderness, and making her ask him once if he loved her a great deal more now than when they were first married.
"Yes, darling, a great deal more," was Wilford"s answer, as he kissed her upturned face, and then went for the last time to Genevra"s grave; for on the morrow they were to leave the neighborhood of Alnwick for the heather blooms of Scotland.