KATHARINE ALLEN"S VISIT TO THE WHITE COTTAGE.
"Oh, Katharine Allen, is that you?" said Mrs. Mason, with a touch of disappointment in her voice, which the girl noticed with a pang.
"Yes, Mrs. Mason, I had got through my day"s work, and so ran down once more to see if--if you had heard any thing yet."
"Yes, I thought so--it must be a comfort to have some one to run to--I haven"t a living soul!" said Mrs. Mason, a little petulantly, for Katharine had been at the house more than once to ask these same questions, and the young wife always shrank from acknowledging that she had no good news. This feeling became more and more painful as the time wore on, and her own heart grew faint with apprehension.
"Not a word? Haven"t you heard any thing?" faltered the young girl, sinking into a chair, and turning her great blue eyes on Mrs. Mason, with an intensity of suffering that startled the unhappy woman into a momentary forgetfulness of her own anxieties.
"No, Katharine, not one word. It breaks my heart to own it, but not a breath of news has reached me since the brig sailed."
"And she ought to have been in weeks ago! What can be the matter, Mrs.
Mason? tell me, oh do tell me, if you have the least idea!"
"I can only guess like yourself, Kate. The ocean is a treacherous thing to trust those you love with. The storm of a single night may have made little Rose an orphan."
The poor woman began to cry as she said this, and calling the little girl to her knee kissed her with mournful tenderness.
"How fond you are of the little girl--it must be a great comfort to have his child looking into your face! One could endure almost any thing for that!" said Katharine, evidently trembling as she spoke.
"A comfort and a pain, Katharine, for if he never comes back--"
"Oh, don"t--don"t say that," cried the girl, shivering. "The thought is enough to kill one: words--I could not put that into words."
"I wish you would not take on so," said Mrs. Mason, sharply. "It"s bad enough to wait and wait, and--oh dear, oh dear, what will become of us?"
Here the poor woman burst into a flood of tears, wringing her hands pa.s.sionately.
"Mother," said little Rose, "are you crying because pa hasn"t come back with my pretty dress?"
The mother could not answer for her sobs; as for Kate Allen, she sat looking at them with cold tears dropping down her white cheeks, as if she longed to fall upon her knees and ask them to pity her a little.
"What do you cry for, Katy Allen?" said the child, rather jealous that any other one should weep but her mother. "You have not got no pa, nor no husband out to sea."
"Oh, G.o.d help me! G.o.d forgive me! I haven"t, I haven"t," sobbed the beautiful girl, rocking to and fro on her chair.
Mrs. Mason checked her tears and looked on wonderingly. This strange outburst of grief almost irritated her, for, like her child, she rather craved a monopoly of suffering. All at once a wild apprehension seized upon her. What if Kate had heard--what if she knew that the brig had gone down with every soul on board, and had no strength to speak it out!
Frightened by this new dread she started up and stood over the weeping girl.
"Tell me--tell me all you have heard," she almost shrieked. "If you don"t want to see me drop dead at your feet, before the face of my child, speak out!"
Katharine looked up; amazement checked her tears, and the pupils of her beautiful eyes dilated.
"I have nothing to say, Mrs. Mason; I have not heard a syllable, how could I?"
"And are you so very sorry for us?"
"Does it make you angry, because I can"t keep back the tears? Oh, it seems as if I could die, if any one would feel for me."
"Why, Katharine, what is your trouble?"
"Nothing--nothing--I"m not in trouble."
Mrs. Mason began to look serious, an old suspicion flashed across her mind. She was not a woman of much natural refinement, and the innate vanity of her nature more than compa.s.sion spoke out in her next words.
"Katharine, speak out--is it about Nelson Thrasher you are taking on so?"
The blood rushed over that white face like a sudden sunset, then the poor girl grew pale again, and purplish shadows came out under her eyes, leaving them, oh, how mournful.
"You need not look so frightened, Kate--there"s no harm in it if you do love him, only you haven"t got my spirit, that"s all."
"What!--what do you mean, Mrs. Mason?"
"What do I mean? why nothing worth mentioning." A peculiar curve of the handsome lip, as Mrs. Mason said this, made the young girl shiver from head to foot.
"Yes, but you have a meaning when you speak of my not having a spirit.
Oh, tell me what it is!"
"Why nothing, Kate, only I thought you would have more pride than to take up with another woman"s leavings."
"Another woman"s leavings!" repeated Kate, all aghast; "another woman"s leavings!"
"That was what I observed," answered Mrs. Mason, with a slight toss of the head. "Boasting isn"t in my line, or I could point out a certain person who gave Nelse Thrasher his walking papers more than once, as if I would condescend to him, when his superior stood hat in hand."
"You--you--was it so? when, when?"
"Really, Miss Allen, you take away one"s breath; of course it was before I married John Mason, as if there could be a choice."
The poor girl was thunderstruck--that beautiful face drooped slowly to her bosom, and she seemed to be shrinking into a shadow. At last, she lifted her head with a wan smile.
"That was four long years ago, more than four years ago," she cried--"Four years ago."
"Well, what of that; four years does not destroy the truth."
"I don"t believe it," said Katharine, very quietly, "there"s some mistake."
"Mistake! what does the girl mean? as if I didn"t know when a man persecutes me with his love. Makes me a point blank offer, and goes off to sea in despair when I marry his superior. Mistake, indeed!"
"No," persisted the girl, "I don"t believe it; no woman could refuse him if he once offered. No woman on earth; it isn"t in nature."
"Indeed, you have a mighty high opinion of Nelse Thrasher, as if he was fit to be mentioned in the same day with Captain Mason. I wonder at your daring to say these things to me."
Katharine did not hear her; she was searching the past, urged and goaded in her memory by keen pangs of distrust.
"Besides," she exclaimed, "he has been home since then, and never come near you, not even as a friend."
"I"d like to see him have the impudence," was the angry rejoinder.