Family Pride Or Purified by Suffering Part 24

Wilford did not care what Helen had supposed, and her opposition only made him more resolved. Still he did not say so, and he even tried to smile as he quitted the table and remarked to her:

"I hope to find Katy reconciled when I come home. I think I had better not go up to her again, so tell her I send a good-by kiss by you. I leave her case in your hands."

It was a far more difficult case than either he or Helen imagined, and the latter started back in alarm from the white face which greeted her view as she entered Katy's room, and then with a moan hid itself in the pillow.

"Wilford thought he had better not come up, but he sent a kiss by me,"

Helen said, softly touching the bright, disordered hair, all she could see of her sister.

"It does not matter," Katy gasped. "Kisses cannot help me if they take my baby away. Did he tell you?" and she turned now partly toward Helen, who nodded affirmatively while Katy continued: "Had he taken a knife and cut a cruel gash it would not have hurt me half so badly. I could bear that, but my baby--oh, Helen, do you think they will take her away?"

She was looking straight at Helen, who shivered as she met an expression so unlike Katy, and so like to that a hunted deer might wear if its offspring were in danger.

"Say, do you think they will?" she continued, shedding back with her thin hand the ma.s.s of tangled curls which had fallen about her eyes.

"Whom do you mean by 'they'?" Helen asked, coming near to her, and sitting down upon the bed.

There was a resentful gleam in the blue eyes usually so gentle, as Katy answered:

"Whom do I mean? His folks of course! They have been the instigators of every sorrow I have known since I left Silverton. Oh, Helen, never, never marry anybody who has folks, if you wish to be happy."

Helen could not repress a smile, though she pitied her sister, who continued:

"I don't mean Father Cameron, nor Bell, nor Jamie, for I love them all, and I believe that they love me. Father does, I know, and Jamie, while Bell has helped me so often; but Mrs. Cameron and Juno--oh, Helen, you will never know what they have been to me."

"I notice you always say 'father' and 'Mrs. Cameron.' Why is that?"

Helen asked, hoping thus to divert Katy's mind from her present trouble, and feeling a little anxious to hear Katy's real sentiments with regard to her husband's family.

Since Helen came to New York there has been so much to talk about that, though Katy had told her of her fashionable life, she had said comparatively little of the Camerons. Now, however, there was no holding back on Katy's part, and beginning with the first night of her arrival in New York she told what is already known to the reader, and more, exonerating Wilford in word, but dealing out full justice to his mother and Juno, the former of whom controlled him so completely.

"I tried so hard to love her," Katy said, "and if she had given me ever so little in return I would have been satisfied, but she never did--that is, when I hungered for it most, missing you at home, and the loving care which sheltered me in childhood. After the world took me into favor she too began to caress me, but I was wicked enough to think it all came of selfishness. I know I am hard and bad, for when I was sick Mrs.

Cameron was really very kind, and I began to like her; but if she takes baby away, I shall surely die."

Katy had come back to the starting point, and in her eye there was the same fierce look which Helen had at first observed.

"Where is baby to be sent?" Helen asked, and Katy answered:

"Up the river, to a house which Father Cameron owns, and which is kept by a farmer's family. I can't trust Kirby. I do not like her. She keeps baby asleep too long, and acts so cross if I try to wake her, or hint that she looks unnatural. I cannot give baby to her care, with no one to look after her, though Wilford says I must."

"Why then do you try to resist, when you know how useless it is?" Helen asked, and something in her manner brought a sudden flush of shame to Katy's cheek, as she said:

"What do you mean? Of what are you thinking?"

Helen did not stop to consider the propriety of her remarks, but replied:

"I was thinking that you reminded me of a bird beatings wings against the bars of its cage, vainly hoping to escape into the freedom which it feels is outside its prison house, but falling back bruised and bleeding with its efforts, and no nearer escape."

For a moment Katy regarded her sister intently, while she seemed trying to digest the meaning of her words; then, as it vaguely flashed upon her, tears gathered on her eyelashes and rolled down her cheeks, while with a quivering lip she asked:

"If you were that bird, what would you do?"

"I? What would I do? I should beat my wings until I died; but your nature is different. You are more yielding, more loving, more submissive. You can bear it better."

This was not the first time since she came to New York and saw how firm, how unbending was the will which held Katy in its grasp, that Helen had thought how surely she, with her high, imperious spirit, should die, from the very resistance she should offer to that will. But as she had truly expressed it, Katy's gentle, submissive nature saved her, for never had she offered so violent opposition to any plan as she did now to that of sending her child away.

"I can't, I can't," she repeated constantly, and Mrs. Cameron's call, made that afternoon with a view to reconcile the matter, only made it worse, so that Wilford, on his return at night, felt a pang of self-reproach as he saw the drooping figure holding his child upon its lap and singing it a lullaby in a plaintive voice, which told how sore was its heart.

Wilford did not mean to be either a savage or a brute. On the contrary he had made himself believe that he was acting only for the good of both mother and child; but the sight of Katy touched him, and he might have given up the contest had not Helen unfortunately taken up the cudgels in Katy's defense, neglecting to conceal the weapons, and so defeating her purpose. It was at the dinner from which Katy was absent that she ventured to speak, not asking that the plan be given up, but speaking of it as an unnatural one which seemed to her not only useless but cruel.

Wilford did not tell her that her opinion was not desired, but his manner implied as much, and Helen felt the angry blood p.r.i.c.kling through her veins as she listened to his reply, that it was neither unnatural nor cruel, that many people did it, and his would not be an isolated case.

"Then if it must be," Helen said, "pray let it go to Silverton, and I will be its nurse. Katy will not object to that."

In a very ironical tone Wilford thanked her for her offer, which he begged leave to decline, intimating a preference for settling his own matters according to his own ideas. Helen knew that further argument was useless, and but for Katy, wished herself at home, where there were no wills like this with which she had unwittingly come in contact, and which, ignoring Katy's tears and Katy's pleading face, would not retract one iota, or even stoop to reason with the suffering mother, except to reiterate, "It is only for your good, and every one with common sense will say so."

Next morning Helen was surprised at Katy's proposition to drive around to Fourth Street, and call on Marian, whom they had not seen for several days.

"I am always better after talking with her," Katy said, "And I have a strong presentiment that she can do me good."

"Shall you tell her?" Helen asked in some surprise; and Katy replied, "perhaps I may. I'll see."

An hour later, and Katy, up in Marian's room, sat with her hands clasped together upon the table, listening intently while Marian spoke of a letter received a few days since from an old friend who had worked with her at Madam ----'s, and to whom she had been strongly attached, keeping up a correspondence with her after her marriage and removal to New London, in Connecticut; and whose little child, born two months before Katy's, was dead, and the mother, finding her home so desolate, had written, beseeching Marian to come to her for the remainder of the winter, adding in conclusion: "If you know of any little homeless baby, bring it to me in place of mine, which G.o.d has taken. I shall thus be doing good, and in part forget my sorrow."

Instantly Helen and Katy glanced at each other, the same thought flashing upon both, and finding form in Katy's vehement outburst, "If Mrs. Hubbell would take baby, and Marian would go, too, I should be so happy."

In a few moments Marian had heard Katy's trouble--struggling hard to fight back the giddy faintness she felt stealing over her, as she thought of nursing Wilford Cameron's child.

"Write to her, Marian--write to-day--now, before I go," Katy continued, clasping Marian's hand, with an expression which, more than aught else won Marian Hazelton's consent to a plan which seemed so strange.

"Yes, I will write," she answered; "I will tell Amelia what you desire."

"But, Marian, you, too, must go. I'll trust baby with you. Say, Marian, will you take care of my darling?"

It was hard to refuse, with those great, wistful, pleading eyes looking so earnestly into hers; but Marian must have time to consider. She had thought of going to New London to open a shop, and if she did she should board with Mrs. Hubbell, and so be with the child. She would decide when the answer came to the letter.

This was all the encouragement she would give; but it was enough to change the whole nature of Katy's feelings, and her face looked bright and cheerful as she tripped down the stairway, talking to Helen of what seemed to both like a direct interposition of Providence, and what she was sure would please Wilford quite as well as the farmhouse up the river.

"Surely he will yield to me in this," she said. Nor was she wrong; for glad of an opportunity to make some concessions, and still in the main have his own way, Wilford raised no objection to the plan as communicated to him by Katy, when, at an earlier hour than usual, he came home to dinner, drawn thither by a remembrance of the face which had haunted him the entire day, and bringing as a peace offering to both wife and sister--a new book for the one, and for the other a set of handsome coral, which he had heard her admire only the week before.

These he presented with that graceful, winning manner he knew so well how to a.s.sume, and with the harmony of his household once more restored, felt himself a model husband as he listened to Katy's plan of sending baby to New London. On the whole, it might be better even than the farmhouse up the river, he thought, for it was farther away, and Katy could not be tiring herself with driving out every few days, and keeping herself constantly uneasy and excited. The distance between New York and New London was the best feature of the whole; and he wondered Katy had not thought of it as an objection. But she had not, and but for the pain when she remembered the coming separation, she would have been very happy that evening, listening with Wilford and Helen to the opera of "Norma," and sympathizing so keenly with the poor distracted mother.

Very differently from this was Marian's evening pa.s.sed, and on her face there was a look such as Katy's had never worn, as on her knees she asked for guidance to choose the right, to lay all self aside, and if it were her duty and care for the child which had stirred the pulsations of her heart and made the old wound bleed and throb with bitter anguish as she remembered what she once hoped would be, and what but for a cruel wrong might still have been. And as she prayed there crept into her face another look which told that self was sacrificed at last, and Katy Cameron was safe with her.

Mrs. Hubbell was willing--aye, more than that--was glad to take the child, and the generous remuneration offered would make them so comfortable in their little cottage, she wrote to Marian, who hastened to confer by note with Katy, adding in a postscript, "Is it still your wish that I should go? if so, I am at your disposal."

It was Katy's wish, and she hastened to reply, going next to the nursery to confer with Mrs. Kirby. Dark were the frowns and dire the displeasure of that lady when told that her services would soon be no longer needed on Madison Square--that instead of going up the river as she had hoped, she was free to return to the "genteel and highly respectable home on Bond Street," where Mrs. Cameron had found her.