University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX.
KATY GOES TO SILVERTON.

A SUMMER day in Silverton—a soft, bright Angust
day, when the early rare-ripes 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 green sward, fresh and clean as water
from the pond could make it; the harness, lying upon a

rock, where Katy used to feed the sheep with salt, and
the whip standing upright in its socket, were waiting for
the deacon, who was donning his best suit of clothes, even
to a stiff shirt collar which almost cut his ears, his face shining
with anticipations 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, mouldy paper and broken bricks, the tokens
and remains of the repairing process, which for so long
a time had made the farm-house 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. 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 cut 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, and suitable in every respect and
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
play-house, and was not so very sorry either, except as the

example might do harm, had nothing to fear from New
York, and was proportionably happy. At least she
would have been if Morris had not seemed so off, as she
expressed it, taking but little interest in the preparations
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 she told him of some
things which she had not mentioned elsewhere, and
there were great tears in Morris's eyes, when Helen
spoke of Katy's distress, and the look which came into
her face when baby was taken away. Times there were
when the silent Doctor, living alone at Linwood, felt
that his grief was too great to bear. But the deep
waters were always forded safely, and Morris's faith in
God 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 longed
to see her, and yet how he 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, 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 care less 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 farm-house Katy wrote that baby
was not coming.

They were bitterly disappointed, for Katy's baby had
been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself, and Aunt
Betsy had brought from the wood-shed 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 memento 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 pass 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 passed away as the time drew near when
Katy was to come, and no one seemed happier than
Aunt Betsy on the morning when Uncle Ephraim drove
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
soon came rolling across the meadow, and while his
head was turned towards the car where he fancied she

might be, a pair of arms was thrown impetuously round
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 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 was going
directly on to Boston. IN his presence the deacon was
not quite natural, but he lifted in his arms his “little
Katy-did,” and looked 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 farm-house, she talked to him in her
old, loving manner, 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. Scarcely waiting
for old Whitey to stop, but with one leap clearing the
wheel, she threw herself into the midst of the women
waiting on the door step to meet her. It was a joyful
meeting, and when the first excitement was over, Katy
inspected the improvements, praising them all and congratulating
herself upon the nice time she was to have.

“You don't know what a luxury it is to feel that I can
rest,” she said to Helen.

“Didn't you rest at New London?” Helen asked.

“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 time. Freed from the restraint
of her husband's presence, she came back at once to
what she was when a young, careless girl she sat upon
the door-steps 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 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.

Katy had inquired for Morris immediately after her
arrival, but in her excitement she had forgotten him
again, until 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.
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 differently 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, 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
beside him, he kissed her twice, but so gravely, that
Katy was not satisfied at all, and tears gathered in her
eyes as she tried to think what 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 assuring him that she was
not as vain and foolish as he might 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 could not
have borne much more; but the mention of her child
quieted him at once, so that he could calmly tell her she
was the same to him she always had 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.

“Surely an angel's countenance cannot be fairer, purer

than hers,” he thought, as she talked of the only thing
which had a power to separate her from him, making her
seem as a friend, or at most as a beloved sister.

A long time they talked together, and the sun was setting
ere Morris rose, suggesting that she go home, as the
night dew would soon be falling.

“And you are not as strong as you once were,” he added,
pulling her shawl around her shoulders with careful
solicitude, and thinking how slender she had become.

From the back parlor Helen saw them coming up the
path, detecting the changed expression of Morris's face.
and feeling a pang of fear when, as he left them after nine
o'clock, she heard her mother say that he had not appeared
so natural since Katy went away as he had done that
night. Knowing what she did, Helen trembled for
Morris, with this terrible temptation before him, and
Morris trembled for himself as he went back the lonely
path, and stopped again beneath the chestnut tree
where he had so lately sat with Katy. There was a great
fear at his heart, and it found utterance in words as
kneeling by the rustic bench with only the lonely night
around him and the green boughs over head, he asked
that he might be kept from sin, both in thought and deed,
and be to Katy Cameron just what she took him for, her
friend and elder brother. And God, who knew the sincerity
of the heart thus pleading before him, heard and
answered the prayer, so that after that first night of trial
Morris could look on Katy without a wish that she were
otherwise than Wilford Cameron's wife and the mother
of his child. He was happier because of her being at the
farm-house, though he did not go there one half as often
as she came to him.

Those September days were happy ones to Katy, who
became a child again—a petted, spoiled child, whom
every one caressed and suffered to have her way. To
Uncle Ephraim it was as if some bright angel had suddenly
dropped into his path, and flooded it with sunshine.
He was so glad to have again his “Katy-did,” who
went with him to the fields, waiting patiently till his
work was done, and telling him of all the wondrous
things she saw abroad, but speaking little of her city

life. That was something she did not care to talk about,
and but for Wilford's letters, and the frequent mention
of baby, the deacon could easily have imagined that
Katy had never left him. But these were barriers between
the old life and the present; these were the insignia
of Mrs. Wilford Cameron, who was watched and envied
by the curious Silvertonians, and pronounced charming
by them all. Still there was one drawback to Katy's
happiness. She missed her child, mourning for it so
much that her family, quite as anxious as herself to see
it, suggested her sending for it. It would surely take
no harm with them, and Marian would come with it, if
Mrs. Hubbell could not. To this plan Katy listened
more willingly from the fact that Wilford had gone West,
and the greater the distance between them the more she
dared to do. And so Marian Hazelton was one day
startled at the sudden appearance at the cottage of Katy,
who had come to take her and baby to Silverton.

There was no resisting the vehemence of Katy's arguments,
and before the next day's sunsetting, the farm-house,
usually so quiet and orderly, had been turned into
one general nursery, where Baby Cameron reigned
supreme, screaming with delight at the tin ware which
Aunt Betsy brought out, from the cake-cutter to the
dipper, the little creature beating a noisy tattoo upon
the latter with an iron spoon, and then for diversion
burying its fat dimpled hands in Uncle Ephraim's
long white hair, for the old man went down upon all
fours to do his great-grand niece homage.

That night Morris came up, stopping suddenly as a
loud baby laugh reached him, even across the orchard,
and leaning for a moment against the wall, while he
tried to prepare himself for the shock it would be to see
Katy's child, and hold it in his arms, as he knew he
must, or the mother be aggrieved.

He had supposed it was pretty, but he was not prepared
for the beautiful little cherub which in its short
white dress, with its soft curls of golden brown clustering
about its head, stood holding to a chair, pushing it
occasionally, and venturing now and then to take a step,
while its infantile laugh mingled with the screams of its
delighted auditors, watching it with so much interest.

There was one great, bitter, burning pang, and then,
folding his arms composedly upon the window sill, Dr.
Grant stood looking in upon the occupants of the room,
whistling at last to baby, as he was accustomed to whistle
to the children of his patients.

“Oh, Morris,” Katy cried, “Baby can almost walk,
Marian has taken so much pains, and she can say `papa.'
Isn't she a beauty?”

Baby had turned her head by this time, her ear caught
by the whistle and her eye arrested by something in
Morris which fascinated her gaze. Perhaps she thought
of Wilford, of whom she had been very fond, for she
pushed her chair towards him and then held up her fat
arms for him to take her.

Never was mother prouder than Katy during the first
few days succeeding baby's arrival, while the family
seemed to tread on air, so swiftly the time went by with
that active little life in their midst, stirring them up so
constantly, putting to rout all their rules of order and
keeping their house in a state of delightful confusion.
It was wonderful how rapidly the child improved with
so many teachers, learning to lisp its mother's name and
taught by her, attempting to say “Doctor.” From the
very first the child took to Morris, crying after him whenever
he went away, and hailing his arrival with a crow
of joy and an eager attempt to reach him.

“It was altogether too forward for this world,” Aunt
Betsy often said, shaking her head ominously, but not
really meaning what she predicted, even when for a few
days it did not seem as bright as usual, but lay quietly
in Katy's lap, a blue look about the mouth and a flush
upon its cheeks, which neither Morris nor Marian liked.

More accustomed to children than the other members
of the family, they both watched it closely, Morris coming
over twice one day, and the last time he came regarding
Katy with a look as if he would fain ward off
from her some evil which he feared.

“What is it, Morris?” she asked. “Is baby going to
be very sick?” and a great crushing fear came upon her
as she waited for his answer.

“I hope not,” he said; “I cannot tell as yet; the symptoms

are like cholera infantum, of which I have several
cases, but if taken in time I apprehend no danger.”

There was a low shriek and baby opened its heavy lids
and moaned, while Helen came at once to Katy, who was
holding her hand upon her heart as if the pain had entered
there. To Marian it was no news, for ever since
the early morning she had suspected the nature of the
disease stealing over the little child. All night the
light burned in the farm-house, where there were anxious,
troubled faces, Katy bending constantly over her
darling, and even amid her terrible anxiety, dreading
Wilford's displeasure when he should hear what she had
done and its possible result. She did not believe as yet
that her child would die; but she suffered acutely,
watching for the early dawn when Morris had said he
would be there, and when at last he came, begging of
him to leave his other patients and care only for baby.

“Would that be right?” Morris asked, and Katy
blushed for her selfishness when she heard how many
were sick and dying around them. “I will spend every
leisure moment here,” he said, leaving his directions with
Marian and then hurrying away without a word of hope for
the child, which grew worse so fast that when the night
shut down again it lay upon a pillow, its blue eyes closed
and its head thrown back, while its sad moanings could
only be hushed by carrying it in one's arms about the
room, a task which Katy could not do.

She had tried it at first, refusing all their offers with the
reply, “Baby is mine, and shall I not carry her?”

But the feeble strength gave out, the limbs began to
totter, and staggering backward she cried, “Somebody
must take her.”

It was Marian who went forward, Marian, whose face
was a puzzle as she took the infant in her stronger arms,
her stony eyes, which had not wept as yet, fastening
themselves upon the face of Wilford Cameron's child
with a look which seemed to say, “Retribution, retribution.”

But only when she remembered the father, now so
proud of his daughter, was that word in her heart. She
could not harbor it when she glanced at the mother,
and her lips moved in earnest prayer that, if possible,

God would not leave her so desolate. An hour later and
Morris came, relieving Marian of her burden, which he
carried in his own arms, while he strove to comfort Katy,
who, crouching by the empty crib, was sitting motionless
in a kind of dumb despair, all hope crushed out by
his answer to her entreaties that he would tell her the
truth, and keep nothing back.

“I think your baby will die,” he said to her very
gently, pausing a moment in awe of the white face,
whose expression terrified him, it was so full of agony.

Bowing her head upon her hands, poor Katy whispered
sadly, “God must not take my baby. Oh, Morris,
pray that he will not. He will hear and answer you; I
have been so bad I cannot pray, but I am not going to
be bad again. If he will let me keep my darling I will
begin a new life. I will try to serve him. Dear Lord,
hear and answer, and not let baby die.”

She was praying herself now, and Morris's broad chest
heaved as he glanced at her kneeling figure, and then at
the death-like face upon the pillow, with the pinched look
about the nose and lips, which to his practiced eye was
a harbinger of death.

“It's father should be here,” he thought, and when
Katy lifted up her head again he asked if she was sure
her husband had not yet returned from Minnesota.

“Yes, sure—that is, I think he has not,” was Katy's
answer, a chill creeping over her at the thought of meeting
Wilford, and giving him his daughter dead.

“I shall telegraph in the morning at all events,” Morris
continued, “and if he is not in New York, it will be
forwarded.”

“Yes, that will be best,” was the reply, spoken so
mournfully that Morris stopped in front of Katy, and
tried to reason with her.

But Katy would not listen, and only answered that
he did not know, he could not feel, he never had been
tried.

“Perhaps not,” Morris said; “but Heaven is my witness,
Katy, that if I could save you this pain by giving
up my life for baby's I would do it willingly; but God
does not give us our choice. He knoweth what is best,
and baby is better with Him than us.”

For a moment Katy was silent; then, as a new idea
took possession of her mind, she sprang to Morris's side
and seizing his arm, demanded, “Can an unbaptized
child be saved?”

“We nowhere read that baptism is a saving ordinance,”
was Morris's answer; while Katy continued,
“but do you believe they will be saved?”

“Yes, I do,” was the decided response, which, however,
did not ease Katy's mind, and she moaned on, “A
child of heathen parents may, but I knew better. I
knew it was my duty to give the child to God, and for a
foolish fancy withheld the gift until it is too late, and
God will take it without the mark upon its forehead, the
water on its brow. Oh, baby, baby, if she should be
lost—no name, no mark, no baptismal sign.”

“Not water, but the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all
sin,” Morris said, “and as sure as he died so sure this
little one is safe. Besides, there may be time for the
baptism yet—that is, to-morrow. Baby will not die to-night,
and if you like, it still shall have a name.”

Eagerly Katy seized upon that idea, thinking more
of the sign, the water, than the name, which scarcely
occupied her thoughts at all. It did not matter what
the child was called, so that it became one of the little
ones in glory, and with a calmer, quieter demeanor than
she had shown that day, she saw Morris depart at a late
hour; and then turning to the child which Uncle Ephraim
was holding, kissed it lovingly, whispering as she
did so, “Baby shall be baptized—baby shall have the
sign.”