University of Virginia Library

48. CHAPTER XLVIII.
KATY.

ARE you of the same mind still?” Helen asked,
when three weeks later she returned from New
York, and at the hour for retiring sat in her chamber
watching Katy as she brushed her hair,
occasionally curling a tress around her fingers and
letting it fall upon her snowy night-dress.

They had been talking of Morris, whom Katy had
seen but once since that rainy night, and that at church,
where he had been the previous Sunday. Katy had
written an account of the transaction to her sister, who
had chosen to reply by word of month rather than by
letter, and so the first moment they were alone she
seized the opportunity to ask if Katy was of the same
mind still as when she refused the doctor.

“Yes, why shouldn't I be?” Katy replied. “You, better
than any one else, know what passed between Wilford—”

“Do you love Morris?” Helen asked, abruptly, with-not
waiting for Katy to finish her sentence.

For an instant the hands stopped in their work, and
Katy's eyes filled with tears, which dropped into her lap
as she replied,

“More than I wish I did, seeing I must always tell
him no. It's strange, too, how the love for him keeps
coming, in spite of all I can do. I have not been there
since, nor spoken with him until last Sunday, but I knew
the moment he entered the church, and when in the first
chant I heard his voice, my fingers trembled so that I
could hardly play, while all the time my heart goes out
after the rest I always find with him. But it cannot be.
Oh, Helen! I wish Wilford had never known that Morris
loved me.”

She was sobbing now, with her head in Helen's lap,
and Helen, smoothing her bright hair, said gently,

“You do not reason correctly. It is right for you to
answer Morris yes, and Wilford would say so, too. When
I received your letter I read it to Bell, who then told
what Wilford said before he died. You must have forgotten
it, darling. He referred to a time when you would
cease to be his widow, and he said he was willing,—said
so to her, and you. Do you remember it, Katy?”

“I do now, but I had forgotten. I was so stunned
then, so bewildered, that it made no impression. I did
not think he meant Morris, Helen; do you believe he
meant Morris?” and lifting up her face Katy looked at
her sister with a wistfulness which told how anxiously
she waited for the answer.

“I know that he meant Morris,” Helen replied. “Both
Bell and her father think so, and they bade me tell you
to marry Dr. Grant, with whom you will be so happy.”

“I cannot. It is too late. I told him no, and Helen,
I told him a falsehood, too, which I wish I might take
back,” she added. “I said I was sorry he ever loved me,
when I was not, for the knowing that he had made me
very happy. My conscience has smitten me cruelly for
that falsehood, told not intentionally, for I did not consider
what I said.”

Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once, and
the next morning she went to Linwood and brought
Morris home with her. He had been there two or three
times since his return from Washington, but not since

Katy's refusal, and her cheeks were scarlet as she met
him in the parlor and tried to be natural. He did not
look unhappy. He was not taking his rejection very
hard, after all, she thought, and the little lady felt a very
little piqued to find him so cheerful, when she had
scarcely known a moment's quiet since the day she carried
him the custards and forgot to bring away her umbrella.

As it had rained that day, so it did now, a decided,
energetic rain, which set in after Morris came, and precluded
the possibility of his going home that night.

“He would catch his death of cold,” Aunt Betsy said,
while Helen, too, joined her entreaties, until Morris consented,
and the carriage which came round for him at
dark retnrned to Linwood with the message that the
doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow's.

During the evening he did not often address Katy directly,
but he knew each time she moved, and watched
every expression of her face, feeling a kind of pity for
her, when, without appearing to do so intentionally, the
family, one by one, stole from the room,—Uncle Ephraim
and Aunt Hannah without any excuse; Aunt Betsy to
mix the cakes for breakfast; Mrs. Lennox to wind the
clock, and Helen to find a book for which Morris had
asked.

Katy might not have thought strange of their departure,
were it not that neither one came back again, and
after the lapse of ten minutes or more she felt convinced
that she had purposely been left alone with Morris.

The weather and the family had conspired against her,
but after one throb of fear she resolved to brave the difficulty,
and meet whatever might happen as became a
woman of twenty-three, and a widow. She knew Morris
was regarding her intently as she fashioned into shape
the coarse wool sock, intended for some soldier, and she
could almost hear her heart beat in the silence which fell
between them ere Morris said to her, in a tone which reassured
her,

“And so you told me a falsehood the other day, and
your conscience has troubled you ever since?”

“Yes, Morris, yes; that is, I told you I was sorry
that you ever loved me, which was not exactly true, for,
after I knew you did, I was happier than before.”

Her words implied a knowledge of his love previous to
that night at Linwood when he had himself confessed it,
and he said to her inquiringly,

“You knew it, then, before I told you?”

“From Wilford,—yes,” Katy faltered.

“I understand now why you have been so shy of me,”
Morris said; “but, Katy, must this shyness continue always?
Think, now, and say if you did not tell more
than one falsehood the other night,—as you count falsehoods?”

Katy looked wonderingly at him, and he continued,

“You said you could not be my wife. Was that true?
Can't you take it back, and give me a different answer?”

Katy's cheeks were scarlet, and her hands had ceased
to flutter about the knitting which lay upon her lap.

“I meant what I said,” she whispered; “for, knowing
how Wilford felt, it would not be right for me to be so
happy.

“Then it's nothing personal? If there were no harrowing
memories of Wilford, you could be happy with me. Is
that it, Katy?” Morris asked, coming close to her now,
and imprisoning her hands, which she did not try to take
away, but let them lie in his as he continued, “Wilford
was willing at the last. Have you forgotten that?”

“I had, until Helen reminded me,” Katy replied.
“But Morris, the talking of this thing brings Wilford's
death back so vividly, making it seem but yesterday since
I held his dying head.”

She was beginning to relent, Morris knew, and bending
nearer to her he said,

“It was not yesterday. It will be two years in February;
and this, you know, is November. I need you,
Katy. I want you so much. I have wanted you all your
life. Before it was wrong to do so, I used each day to
pray that God would give you to me, and now I feel just
as sure that he has opened the way for you to come to
me as I am sure that Wilford is in heaven. He is happy
there, and shall a morbid fancy keep you from being
happy here? Tell me, then, Katy, will you be my wife?”

He was kissing her cold hands, and as he did so he
felt her tears dropping on his hair.

“If I say yes, Morris, you will not think that I never

loved Wilford, for I did, oh, yes! I did. Not exactly as
I might have loved you, had you asked me first, but I
loved him, and I was happy with him, for if there were
little clouds, his dying swept them all away.”

Katy was proving herself a true woman, who remembered
only the good there was in Wilford, and Morris
did not love her less for it. She was all the dearer to
him, all the more desirable, and he told her so, winding
his arms about her, and resting her head upon his shoulder,
where it lay just as it had never lain before, for with
the first kiss Morris gave her, calling her “My own little
Katy,” she felt stealing over her the same indescribable
peace she had always felt with him, intensified now, and
sweeter from the knowing that it would remain if she
should will it so. And she did will it so, kissing Morris back
when he asked her to, and thus sealing the compact of
her second betrothal. It was not exactly like the first.
There were no tumultuous emotions, or ecstatic joys, but
Katy felt in her inmost heart that she was happier now
than then; that between herself and Morris there was
more affinity than there had been between herself and
Wilford, and as she looked back over the road she had
come, and remembered all Morris had been to her, she
wondered at her blindness in not recognizing and responding
to the love in which she had now found shelter.

It was very late that night when Katy went up to bed,
and Helen, who was not asleep, knew by the face on
which the lamp-light fell that Morris had not sued in
vain. Aunt Betsy knew it, too, next morning, by the
same look on Katy's face when she came down stairs, but
this did not prevent her saying abruptly, as Katy stood
by the sink,

“Be you two engaged?”

“We are,” was Katy's frank reply, which brought back
all Aunt Betsy's visions of roasted fowls and frosted cake,
and maybe a dance in the kitchen, to say nothing of the
feather bed which she had not dared to offer Katy Cameron,
but which she thought would come in play for
“Miss Dr. Grant.”