"It does not matter now," the tempter whispered. "You may as well read it and know the worst. n.o.body will suspect it," and so, led on step by step, she was about to take the folded letter from the envelope, intending fully to replace it after it was read, when a rapid step warned her some one was coming, and hastily thrusting the letter in her pocket, she dropped her veil to cover her confusion, and then confronted Helen Lennox, ready for the drive, and all unconscious of the wrong which could not then be righted.
Juno was unusually kind and familiar that morning, delicately complimenting Helen"s taste with regard to pictures, and trying in various ways to forget the letter which lay upon her conscience like a leaden weight, driving all other thoughts from her mind, and leaving only the torturing one, "How can I return it without detection?" Juno did not mean to keep the letter, and all that morning she was devising measures for making rest.i.tution, even thinking once to confess the whole, but shrinking from that as more than she could do. As they were driving home they met Mark Ray; but Helen, who chanced to be looking in an opposite direction, did not see the earnest look of scrutiny he gave her, scarcely heeding Juno, whose face was all ablaze with guilt as she returned his bow, and whose voice trembled as she spoke of him to Helen and his intended departure. Helen observed the tremor in her voice, and pitied the girl whose agitation she fancied arose from the fact that her lover was so soon to go where danger and possibly death were waiting.
In Helen"s heart, too, there was a cutting pang whenever she remembered Mark, and what had so recently pa.s.sed between them, raising hopes which now were wholly blasted. For he was Juno"s, she believed, and the grief at his projected departure was the cause of that young lady"s softened and even humbled demeanor, as she insisted on Helen"s stopping at her house for lunch before going home.
To this Helen consented--Juno still revolving in her mind how to return the letter, which grew more and more a horror to her. It was in her pocket yet, she knew, for she had felt it there when, after lunch, she went to her room for a fresh handkerchief. She would accompany Helen home, would manage to slip into the library alone, and put it partly under a book, so that it would appear to be hidden, and thus account for it not having been seen before; or better yet, she would catch it up playfully and banter Helen on her carelessness in leaving her love letters so exposed. This last seemed a very clever plan, and with her spirits quite elated, Juno drove around with Helen, finding no one in the parlor below, and felicitating herself upon the fact that Helen left her alone while she ran up to Katy.
"Now is my time," she thought, stealing noiselessly into the library and feeling for the letter.
But it was not there. It was missing, gone, and no amount of search, no shaking of handkerchief, or turning of pocket inside out could avail to find it. The letter was lost, and in the utmost consternation Juno returned to the parlor, still hunting for the letter, and appearing so abstracted as scarcely to be civil when Katy came down to see her; asking if she was going that night to Sybil Grandon"s, and talking of the dreadful war, which she hoped would not be a war after all. Juno was too wretched to talk, and after a few moments she started for home, hunting in her own room and through the halls, but failing in her search, and finally giving it up, with the consoling reflection that were it found in the street, as seemed quite probable, no suspicion could fasten on her; and as fear of detection, rather than contrition for the sin, had been the cause of her distress, she grew comparatively calm, save when her conscience made itself heard and admonished confession as the only reparation which was now in her power. But Juno could not confess, and all that day she was absent-minded and silent, while her mother watched her closely, wondering what connection, if any, there was between her burning cheeks and the letter she had found upon the floor in her daughter"s room just after she had left it; the letter, at whose contents she had glanced, shutting her lips firmly together as she saw that her plans had failed, and finally putting the doc.u.ment away where there was less hope of its ever finding its rightful owner than if it had remained with Juno. Had Mrs. Cameron supposed that Helen had already seen it, she would have returned it at once; but of this she had her doubts, after learning that "Miss Lennox did not go upstairs at all." Juno, then, must have been the delinquent; and though the mother shrank from the act as unladylike, if nothing more, she resolved to keep the letter till some inquiry was made for it at least. And so Helen, sitting by her window, and looking dreamily out into the street, with a feeling of sad foreboding as she thought of the dark cloud which had burst so suddenly upon the nation"s horizon, enveloping Mark Ray in its dark fold, and bearing him away, possibly never to return again, had no suspicion of the truth, and did not guess how anxiously the young man was antic.i.p.ating the interview at Sybil Grandon"s, scarcely doubting that she would be there, and fancying just the expression of her eyes when they first met his. Alas for Mark, also for Helen, that both should be so cruelly deceived. Had the latter known of the loving words sent from the true heart which longed for some word of hers to lighten the long march and beguile the tedious days of absence, she would not have said to Katy, when asked if going to Mrs. Grandon"s, "Oh, no; please don"t urge me. I would so much rather stay at home."
Katy would not insist and so went alone with Wilford to the entertainment given to a few young men who seemed as heroes then, when the full meaning of that word had not been exemplified, as it has been since in the life so cheerfully laid down and the heart"s blood poured so freely, by the tens of thousands who have won a martyr"s and a hero"s name. Curiously, eagerly Mark Ray scanned each new arrival, feeling his lips grow white and his pulses faint when he at last caught sight of Wilford"s tall figure, and looked for what might be beside it. But only Katy was there. Helen had not come, and with a feeling of chill despair Mark listened while Katy explained to Mrs. Grandon that her sister had fully intended coming in the morning, but had suddenly changed her mind and begged to be excused.
"I am sorry," Sybil said, "and so I am sure is Mr. Ray," turning lightly to Mark, whose white face froze the gay laugh on her lips and made her try to shield him from observation until he had time to recover himself and appear as usual.
How Mark blessed Sybil Grandon for that kindness, and how wildly the blood throbbed through his veins as he thought "She would not come. She does not care. I have deceived myself in hoping that she did, and now welcome war, welcome anything which shall help me to forget."
Mark was very wretched, and his wretchedness showed itself upon his face, making more than one rally him for what they termed fear, while they tried to rea.s.sure him that to the Seventh there could be no danger after Baltimore was safely pa.s.sed. This was more than Mark could bear, and at an early hour he left the house, bidding Katy good-by in the hall, and telling her he probably should not see her again, as he would not have time to call.
"Not call to say good-by to Helen," Katy exclaimed.
"Helen will not care," was Mark"s reply as he hurried away into the darkness of the night, more welcome in his present state of mind than the gay scene he had left.
And this was all Katy had to carry to Helen, who beat the window pane nervously, fighting back the tears wrung out by her disappointment, for she had expected to see Mark once more, to bless him as a sister might bless a brother, speaking to him words of cheer and bidding him go on to where duty led. But he was not coming and she only saw him from the carriage window, as with proud step and head erect he pa.s.sed with his regiment through the densely crowded streets, where the wailing cries and the loud hurrahs of the mult.i.tude, which no man could number, rent the air and told how terribly in earnest the great city was, and how its heart was with that gallant band, their pet, their pride, sent forth on a mission such as it had never had before. But Mark did not see Helen, and only his mother"s white face as it looked when it said "G.o.d bless my boy" was clear before his eyes as he moved on through Broadway and down Cortlandt Street, until the ferryboat received him, and the crowd began to disperse.
There was more than one pillow wet with tears that night as mothers, wives and sisters wept for the loved ones gone, but nowhere were sadder, bitterer tears shed than in the silent chamber where Helen Lennox prayed that G.o.d would guard that regiment and bring it back again as full of life and vigor as it had gone away. For them all she prayed, in a general kind of way, but there was one whose image was in her heart, whose name was ever on her lip, breaking the silence of the room, which echoed the name of Mark, who, could he have heard that prayer, would have cast aside the heavy pain, so hard to bear during those first days when his cruel disappointment was fresh and the soldier duty new.
Now that Mark was gone, Mrs. Banker turned intuitively to Helen, finding greater comfort in her quiet sympathy than in the more wordy condolence offered by Juno, who as she heard nothing from the letter, began to lose her fears of detection and even suffer her friends to rally her upon the absence of Mark Ray and the anxiety she must feel on his account.
Moments there were, however, when thoughts of the stolen letter brought a pang, while Helen"s face was a continual reproach, and she was glad when toward the first of May her rival left New York for Silverton, where, as the spring and summer work came on, her services were needed.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
KATY GOES TO SILVERTON.
A summer day in Silverton--a soft, bright August day, when the early rareripes by the well were turning their red cheeks to the sun, and the flowers in the garden were lifting their heads proudly and nodding to each other as if they knew the secret which made that day so bright above all others. Old Whitey, by the hitching post, was munching at his oats and glancing occasionally at the covered buggy standing on the greensward, fresh and clean as water from the pond could make it; the harness, new, not mended, lying upon a rock, where Katy used to feed the sheep with salt, and the whip standing upright in its socket, all waiting for the deacon, donning his best suit of clothes, even to a stiff shirt collar which almost cut his ears, his face shining with antic.i.p.ations which he knew would be realized. Katy was really coming home, and in proof thereof there were behind the house and barn piles of rubbish, lath and plaster, moldy paper and broken bricks, the tokens and remains of the repairing process, which for so long a time had made the farmhouse a scene of dire confusion, driving its inmates nearly distracted, except when they remembered for whose sake they endured so much, inhaling clouds of lime, stepping over heaps of mortar, tearing their dress skirts on sundry nails projecting from every conceivable quarter, and wondering the while if the masons ever would finish or the carpenters be gone.
As a condition on which Katy might be permitted to come home, Wilford had stipulated an improvement in the interior arrangement of the house, offering to bear the expense even to the furnishing of the rooms. To this the family demurred at first, not liking Wilford"s dictatorial manner, nor his insinuation that their home was not good enough for his wife, Mrs. Katy Cameron. But Helen turned the tide, appreciating Wilford"s feelings better than the others could do, and urging a compliance with his request.
"Anything to get Katy home," she said, and so the chimney was torn away, a window was put here and an addition made there, until the house was really improved with its pleasant, modern parlor and the large airy bedroom, with bathing-room attached, the whole the idea of Wilford, who graciously deigned to come out once or twice from New London, where he was spending a few weeks, to superintend the work and suggest how it should be done.
The furniture, too, which he sent on from New York, was perfect in its kind, not elegant like Katy"s, but well adapted to the rooms it was to adorn, and suitable in every respect. Helen enjoyed the settling very much, and when it was finished it was hard telling which was the more pleased, she or good Aunt Betsy, who, having confessed in a general kind of way at a sewing society that she did go to a playhouse, and was not so very sorry either, except as the example might do harm, had nothing on her conscience now, nothing to fear from New York, and was proportionately happy. At least she would have been if Morris had not seemed so off, as she expressed it, and evincing no pleasure at Katy"s expected visit. He had been polite to Wilford, had kept him at Linwood, taking him to and from the depot, but even Wilford had thought him changed, telling Katy how very sober and grave he had become, rarely smiling, and not seeming to care to talk unless it were about his profession or on some religious topic. And Morris was greatly changed.
The wound which in most hearts would have healed by this time had grown deeper with each succeeding year, while from all he heard he felt sure that Katy"s marriage was a sad mistake, wishing sometimes that he had spoken, and so perhaps have saved her from the life in which she could not be wholly free. "She would be happier with me," he had said, with a sad smile to Helen, when once she told him of some things which she had not mentioned elsewhere, and there were great tears in Morris" eyes, tears of which he was not ashamed when Helen spoke of Katy"s distress, and the look which crept into her face when baby was taken away. When Morris first heard of the baby he had hoped he might love Katy less; that she would seem to him as more a wife and less a girl, but she did not, and there were times when the silent doctor, living alone at Linwood, felt that his grief was too great to bear. But the deep, dark waters were always forded safely, and Morris" faith in G.o.d prevailed, so that only a dull, heavy pain remained, with the consciousness that it was no sin to remember Katy as she was remembered now. Oh, how he had longed to see her, and yet how he had dreaded it, lest poor weak human flesh should prove inadequate to the sight. But she was coming home; Providence had ordered that and he accepted it, looking eagerly for the time when he should see her again, but repressing his eagerness, so that not even Helen suspected how impatient he was for the day of her return.
Four weeks she had been at the Pequot House in New London, occupying a little cottage and luxuriating in the joy of having her child with her almost every day. Country air and country nursing had wrought wonders in the baby, which had grown so beautiful and bright that it was no longer in Wilford"s way save as it took too much of Katy"s time, and made her careless for the gay crowd at the hotel.
Marian was working at her trade, and never came to the hotel except one day when Wilford was in New York, but that day sufficed for Katy to know that after herself it was Marian whom baby loved the best--Marian, who cared for it even more than Mrs. Hubbell. And Katy was glad to have it so, especially after Wilford and his mother decided that she must leave the child in New London while she made the visit to Silverton.
Wilford did not like her taking so much care of it as she was inclined to do. It had grown too heavy for her to lift; it was better with Mrs.
Hubbell, he said, and so to the inmates of the farmhouse Katy wrote that baby was not coming.
They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy"s baby had been antic.i.p.ated quite as much as Katy herself, Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon"s only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother"s name. As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until it was white as snow.
But it would not be needed, and with a sigh the old lady carried it back, thinking "things had come to a pretty pa.s.s when a woman who could dance and carouse till twelve o"clock at night was too weakly to take care of her child," and feeling a very little awe of Katy who must have grown so fine a lady.
But all this pa.s.sed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come, and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Whitey was eating his oats, and the carriage stood on the greensward. The sky above and the earth beneath were much as they were that other day when they were expecting Katy, but Helen"s face was not as bright, or her steps as buoyant. She could not forget who was there one year ago, and all the morning painful memories had been tugging at her heart as she remembered the past, and wondered at the gloomy silence which Mark Ray had maintained toward her ever since the day when the Seventh Regiment left New York, followed by so many prayers and tears. He had returned, she knew, but neither from his mother nor himself had there ever come a word or message for her, while Bell Cameron, who wrote to her occasionally, had spoken of his attentions to Juno as becoming more pointed than ever.
"I have strong hopes that in time Juno will be quite a woman," Bell added. "She is not so proud and sarcastic as she used to be, and all the while Mark was gone she seemed very much depressed, so that I began to believe she really liked him. You would hardly recognize her in her new phase, she acts so humble like, as if she were constantly asking forgiveness; and this, you know, is something novel for her."
After this letter Helen sat herself resolutely at work to forget all that had ever pa.s.sed between herself and Mark, succeeding so well that Silverton and its duties ceased to be very irksome, until the anniversary of the morning when he had twined the lily in her hair, and looked such fancies in her heart. It was well for her that too many things were claiming her attention to allow of solitary regrets.
Katy"s room was to be arranged, Katy"s "box bed," as Aunt Betsy called it, to be fixed, flowers to be gathered for the parlor and vegetables for the dinner, so that her hands were full, up to the moment when Uncle Ephraim drove away from the door, setting old Whitey into a canter, which, by the time the "race" was reached, had become a rapid trot, the old man holding up his reins and looking proudly at the oat-fed animal, speeding along so fast.
He did not have long to wait this time, for the train came rolling across the meadow, and while his head was turned toward the car where he fancied she might be, a pair of arms were thrown impetuously around his neck, and a little figure, standing on tiptoe, almost pulled him down in its attempts to kiss him.
"Uncle Eph! oh, Uncle Eph, I"ve come! I"m here," a young voice cried; but the words the deacon would have spoken were smothered by the kisses which pressed upon his lips, kisses which only came to an end when a voice said, rather reprovingly: "There, Katy, that will do. You have almost strangled him."
Wilford had not been expected, and the expression of the deacon"s face was not a very cordial greeting to the young man who hastened to explain that he should only stop till the next train, and then go on to Boston.
In his presence the deacon was not quite natural, but he lifted in his arms his "little Katy-did," looking straight into her face, where there were as yet no real lines of care, only shadows, which told that in some respects she was not the same Katy he had parted with two years before.
There was a good deal of the city about her dress and style, and the deacon felt a little overawed at first; but this wore off as on their way to the farmhouse, she, sitting partly in his lap and partly in her husband"s, kept one hand upon his neck, her snowy fingers occasionally playing with his silvery hair, while she looked at him with her loving old smile, and asked questions about the people he supposed she had forgotten, nodding to everybody she met, whether she knew them or not, and at last, as the old house came in sight, hiding her face in a gush of happy tears upon his neck, not Wilford"s. That gentleman was watching her in silence, wishing she were less impulsive, and wondering at the strong home-love he could not understand. To him there was nothing pleasant in that low, humble farmhouse, or in the rocks and hills which overshadowed it; while, with the exception of Helen, the women gathered at the door as they came up were very distasteful to him. But with Katy it was different. They were her rocks, her hills, her woods, and more than all, they were her folks into whose arms she threw herself with an impetuous rush, scarcely waiting for old Whitey to stop, but with one leap clearing the wheel and springing first to the embrace of her mother. It was a joyful meeting, and when the first excitement was over Katy inspected the improvements, approving all, and thanking Wilford for having done so much for her comfort.
"I shall sleep so nicely here," she said, tossing her hat into Helen"s lap, and lying down at once upon the bed it had taken so long to make.
"Yes, I shall rest so nicely, knowing I can wear my wrapper all day long. Don"t look so horrified, Wilford," she added, as she caught his eye. "I shall dress me sometimes; but you don"t know what a luxury it is to feel that I need not unless I like."
"Didn"t you rest at New London?" Helen asked, when Wilford had left the room.
"Yes, some," Katy replied; "but there were dances every night, or sails upon the bay, and I had to go, for many of our friends were there, and Wilford was not willing for me to be quiet."
This, then, was the reason why Katy came home so weary and pale, and craving so much the rest she had not had in more than two years. But she would get it now, and before the first dinner was eaten some of her old color came stealing back to her cheeks, and her eyes began to dance just as they used to do, while her merry voice rang out in silvery peals at Aunt Betsy"s quaint remarks, which struck her so forcibly from not having heard them for so long a tune. A hit of a lecture Wilford deemed it his duty to give her when after dinner they sat together alone for half an hour. "She must restrain herself. Surely she was old enough to be more womanly, and she would tire herself out with her nervous restlessness, besides giving the people a bad opinion of Mrs. Wilford Cameron."
To this Katy listened quietly, breathing freer when it was over, and breathing freer still when Wilford was gone, even though her tears did fall as she watched him out of sight, and knew it would be at least four weeks before she saw him again. To the entire family his departure brought relief; but they were not prepared for the change it produced in Katy; who, freed from all restraint, came back so soon to what she was when a young, careless girl she sat upon the doorsteps and curled the dandelion stalks. She did not do this now, for there were none to curl; but she strung upon a thread the delicate petals of the phlox growing by the door, and then bound it as a crown about the head of her mother, who could not yet quite recognize her Katy in the elegant Mrs. Wilford Cameron, with rustling silk, and diamonds flashing on her hands every time they moved. But when she saw her racing with the old brown goat and its little kid out in the apple orchard, her head uncovered, and her bright curls blowing about her face, the feeling disappeared, and she felt that Katy had indeed come back again.
And where all the while was Morris? Were his patients so numerous that he could not find time to call upon his cousin? Katy had inquired for him immediately after her arrival, but in her excitement she had forgotten him again, until Wilford was gone and tea was over, when, just as she had done on the day of her return from Canandaigua, she took her hat and started on the well-worn path toward Linwood. She was not going there, she said, she only wanted to try the road and see if it had changed since she used to go that way to gather b.u.t.ternuts in the autumn or berries in the summer. Airily she tripped along, her light plaid silk gleaming through the deep green of the trees and revealing her coming to the tired man sitting upon a little rustic seat, beneath a chestnut tree, where he once had sat with Katy, and extracted a cruel sliver from her hand, kissing the place to make it well as she told him to. She was a child then, a little girl of twelve, and he was twenty, but the sight of her pure face lifted confidingly to his had stirred his heart as no other face had stirred it since, making him look forward to a time when the hand he kissed would be his own, and his the fairy form he watched so carefully as it expanded day by day into the perfect woman. He was thinking of that time now, and how different it had all turned out, when he heard the bounding step and saw her coming toward him, swinging her hat in childish abandon, and warbling a song she had learned from him.
"Morris, oh, Morris!" she cried, as she ran eagerly forward; "I am so glad to see you. It seems so nice to be with you once more here in the dear old woods. Don"t get up--please don"t get up," she continued, as he started to rise.
She was standing before him, a hand on either side of his face, into which she was looking quite as wistfully as he was regarding her.
Something she missed in his manner, something which troubled her; and thinking she knew what it was, she said to him: "Why don"t you kiss me, Morris? You used to. Ain"t you glad to see me?"
"Yes, very glad," he answered, and drawing her down to the bench beside him, he kissed her twice, but so gravely, so quietly, that Katy was not satisfied at all, and tears gathered in her eyes as she tried to think what it was ailed Morris.
He was very thin, and there were a few white hairs about his temples, so that, though four years younger than her husband, he seemed to her much older, quite grandfatherly in fact, and this accounted for the liberties she took, asking what was the matter, and trying to make him like her again, by a.s.suring him that she was not as vain and foolish as he must suppose from what Helen had probably told him of her life since leaving Silverton.
"I do not like it at all," she said. "I am in it, and must conform; but, oh Morris! you don"t know how much happier I should be if Wilford were just like you, and lived at Linwood instead of New York. I should be so happy here with baby all the time."
It was well she spoke that name, for Morris, listening to her as she charged him with indifference, could not have borne much more; but the mention of her child had a strange power over him, of quieting him at once, so that he could calmly tell her that she was the same to him that she had always been, while with his next breath he asked: "Where is your baby, Katy?" adding with a smile: "I can remember when you were a baby, and I held you in my arms."
"Can you really?" Katy said; and as if that remembrance made him older than the hills, she nestled her curly head against his shoulder, while she told him of her bright-eyed darling, and as she talked the mother-love which spread itself over her girlish face made it more beautiful than anything Morris had ever seen.