Part 2 (1/2)
”Did he get well?” Katy asked, her eyes filling with tears at the picture Morris drew of Jamie Cameron, sitting all day long in his wheel chair, and trying to comfort his grandmother's distress when the torturing instruments for straightening his poor back were applied.
”No, he will always be a cripple, till G.o.d takes him to Himself,” Morris said, and then Katy asked about the mother and sisters--were they proud, and did he like them much?
”They were very proud,” Morris said; ”but they were always civil to me,”
and Katy, had she been watching, might have seen a slight flush on his cheek as he told her of the stately woman, Wilford's mother, of the haughty Juno, a beauty and a belle, and lastly of Arabella, whom the family nicknamed Bluebell, from her excessive fondness for books, a fondness which made her affect a contempt for the fas.h.i.+onable life her mother and sister led.
It was very evident that neither of the young ladies were wholly to Morris' taste, but of the two he preferred the Bluebell, for though very imperious and self-willed, she really had some heart, some principle, while Juno had none. This was Morris' opinion, and it disturbed the little Katy, as was very perceptible from the nervous tapping of her foot upon the carpet and the working of her hands.
”How would I appear by the side of those ladies?” she suddenly asked, her countenance changing as Morris replied that it was almost impossible to think of her as a.s.sociated with the Camerons, she was so wholly unlike them in every respect.
”I don't believe I shocked Wilford so very much,” Katy rejoined, reproachfully, while again a heavy pain shot through Morris' heart, for he saw more and more how Wilford Cameron was mingled with every thought of the young girl, who continued: ”And if he was satisfied, I guess his mother and sisters will be. Anyway, I don't want you to make me feel how different I am from them.”
There were tears now on Katy's face, and casting aside all selfishness, Morris wound his arm around her, and smoothed her golden hair, just as he used to do when she was a child and came to him to be soothed. He said, very gently:
”My poor Kitty, you do like Wilford Cameron; tell me honestly--is it not so?”
”Yes, I guess I do,” and Katy's voice was a half sob. ”I could not help it, either, he was so kind, so--I don't know what, only I could not help doing what he bade me. Why, if he had said: 'Jump overboard, Katy Lennox,' I should have done it, I know--that is, if his eyes had been upon me, they controlled me so absolutely. Can you imagine what I mean?”
”Yes, I understand. There was the same look in Bell Cameron's eye, a kind of mesmeric influence which commanded obedience. They idolize this Wilford, and I dare say he is worthy of their idolatry. One thing, at least, is in his favor--the crippled Jamie, for whose opinion I would give more than all the rest, seemed to wors.h.i.+p his Uncle Will, talking of him continually, and telling how kind he was, sometimes staying up all night to carry him in his arms when the pain in his back was more than usually severe. So there must be a good, kind heart in Wilford Cameron, and if my Cousin Kitty likes him, as she says she does, and he likes her as I believe he must, why, I hope--”
Morris Grant could not finish the sentence; for he did not hope that Wilford Cameron would win the gem he had so long coveted as his own.
He might give Kitty up because she loved another best. He was generous enough to do that, but if he did it, she must never know how much it cost him, and lest he should betray himself he could not to-night talk with her longer of Wilford Cameron, whom he believed to be his rival. It was time now for Katy to go home, but she did not seem to remember it until Morris suggested to her that her mother might be uneasy if she stayed away much longer, and so they went together across the fields, the shadow all gone from Katy's heart, but lying so dark and heavy around Morris Grant, who was glad when he could leave Katy at the farmhouse door and go back alone to the quiet library, where only G.o.d could witness the mighty struggle it was for him to say: ”Thy will be done.” And while he prayed, not that Katy should be his, but that he might have strength to bear it if she were destined for another, Katy, up in her humble bedroom, with her head nestled close to Helen's neck, was telling her of Wilford Cameron, who, when they went down the rapids and she had cried with fear, had put his arm around her, trying to quiet her, and who once again, on the mountain overlooking Lake George, had held her hand a moment, while he pointed out a splendid view seen through the opening trees. And Helen, listening, knew just as Morris Grant had done that Katy's heart was lost, and that for Wilford Cameron to deceive her now would be a cruel thing.
CHAPTER III.
WILFORD CAMERON.
The day succeeding Katy Lennox's return to Silverton was rainy and cold for the season, the storm extending as far westward as the city of New York, and making Wilford Cameron s.h.i.+ver as he stepped from the Hudson River cars into the carriage waiting for him, first greeting pleasantly the white-gloved driver, who, carefully closing the carriage door, mounted to his seat and drove his handsome bays in the direction of No. ---- Fifth Avenue. And Wilford, leaning back among the yielding cus.h.i.+ons, thought how pleasant it was to be going home again, feeling glad, as he frequently did, that the home to which he was going was in every particular unexceptionable. The Camerons he knew were an old and highly respectable family, while it was his mother's pride that, go back as far as one might on either side, there could not be found a single blemish or a member of whom to be ashamed. On the Cameron side there were millionaires, merchant princes, bankers and stockholders, professors and scholars, while on hers, the Rossiter side, there were LL.D.'s and D.D.'s, lawyers and clergymen, authors and artists, beauties and belles, the whole forming an ill.u.s.trious line of ancestry, admirably represented and sustained by the present family of Camerons, occupying the brownstone front, corner of ---- Street and Fifth Avenue, where the handsome carriage stopped and a tall figure ran quickly up the marble steps. There was a soft rustle of silk, an odor of delicate perfume, and from the luxurious chair before the fire kindled in the grate an elderly lady arose and advanced a step or two toward the parlor door. In another moment she was kissing the young man bending over her and saluting her as mother, kissing him quietly, properly, as the Camerons always kissed. She was very glad to have Wilford home again, for he was her favorite child, and brus.h.i.+ng the raindrops from his coat she led him to the fire, offering him her own easy-chair and starting herself in quest of another. But Wilford held her back, and making her sit down, he drew an ottoman beside her and then asked her first how she had been and then how Jamie was, then where his sisters were, and if his father had come home--for there was a father, the elder Cameron, a quiet, una.s.suming man, who stayed all day in Wall Street, seldom coming home in time to carve at his own dinner table, and when he was at home, asking for nothing except to be left by his fas.h.i.+onable wife and daughters to himself, free to smoke and doze over his evening paper in the seclusion of his own reading-room.
As Wilford's question concerning his sire had been the last one asked, so it was the last one answered, his mother parting his dark hair with her jeweled hand, and telling him first that with the exception of a cold taken at the park on Sat.u.r.day afternoon when she drove out to try the new carriage, she was in usual health; second, that Jamie was very well, but impatient for his uncle's return; third, that Juno was spending a few days in Orange, and that Bell had gone to pa.s.s the night with her particular friend, Mrs. Meredith, the bluest, most bookish woman in New York.
”Your father,” the lady added, ”has not yet returned, but as the dinner is ready I think we will not wait.”
She touched a silver bell beside her, and ordering dinner to be sent up at once, went on to ask her son concerning his journey, and the people he had met. But Wilford, though intending to tell her all, for he kept nothing from his mother, would wait till after dinner. So, offering her his arm, he led her out to where the table was spread, widely different from the table prepared for Katy Lennox away among the Silverton hills, for where at the farmhouse there had been only the homely wares common to the country, with Aunt Betsy's onions served in a bowl, there was here the finest of damask, the choicest of china, the costliest of cut-gla.s.s, and the heaviest of silver, with the well-trained waiter gliding in and out, himself the very personification of strict table etiquette, such as the Barlows had never dreamed about. There was no frica.s.seed chicken here, or flaky crust, with pickled beans and apple sauce; no custard pie with strawberries and rich, sweet cream, poured from a blue earthen pitcher, but there were soups, and fish, and roasted meats, and dishes with French names and taste, and desert elaborately gotten up and served with the utmost precision, and wines, with fruit and colored cloth, and handsome finger bowl; and Mrs. Cameron presiding over all, with the ladylike decorum so much a part of herself, her soft, glossy silk of brown, with her rich lace and diamond pin seeming in keeping with herself and her surroundings. And opposite to her Wilford sat, a tall, dark, handsome man of thirty or thereabouts--a man whose polished manners betokened at once a perfect knowledge of the world, and whose face to a close observer indicated how little satisfaction he had as yet found in that world. He had tried its pleasures, drinking the cup of freedom and happiness to its very dregs, and though he thought he liked it, he often found himself dissatisfied and reaching after something which should make life more real, more worth the living for.
He had traveled all over Europe twice, had visited every spot worth visiting in his own country, had been a frequenter of every fas.h.i.+onable resort in New York, from the skating pond to the theatres, had been admitted as a lawyer, had opened an office on Broadway, acquiring some reputation in his profession, had looked at more than twenty girls with the view of making them his wife, and found them as he believed, alike fickle, selfish, artificial and hollow-hearted. In short, while thinking far more of family, and accomplishments, and style, than he ought, he was yet heartily tired of the b.u.t.terflies who flitted so constantly around him, offering to be caught if he would but stretch out his hand to catch them. This he would not do, and disgusted with the world as he saw it in New York, he had gone to the Far West, roaming a while amid the solitude of the broad prairies, and finding there much that was soothing to him, but not discovering the fulfillment of the great want he was craving, until, coming back to Canandaigua, he met with Katy Lennox. He had smiled wearily when asked by Mrs. Woodhull to go with her to the examination then in progress at the seminary. There was nothing there to interest him, he thought, as Euclid and algebra, French and rhetoric were bygone things, while young school misses in braided hair and pantalets were shockingly insipid. Still, to be polite to Mrs.
Woodhull, a childless, fas.h.i.+onable woman, who patronized Canandaigua generally, and Katy Lennox in particular, he consented to go, and soon found himself in the crowded room, the cynosure of many eyes as the whisper ran around that the fine-looking man with Mrs. Woodhull was the Wilford Cameron from New York, and brother to the proud, das.h.i.+ng Juno Cameron, who once spent a few weeks in town, Wilford knew they were talking about him, but he did not care, and a.s.suming as easy an att.i.tude as possible, he leaned hack in his chair, yawning indolently, and wis.h.i.+ng the time away, until the cla.s.s in algebra was called and Katy Lennox came tripping on to the stage, a pale blue ribbon in her golden hair and her simple dress of white relieved by no ornament except the cl.u.s.ter of wild flowers fastened in her belt and at her graceful throat.
But Katy needed no ornaments to make her more beautiful than she was at the moment when, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, modestly cast down for a moment as she took her place, and then as modestly uplifted to her teacher's face, she first burst upon Wilford's vision, a creature of rare, bewitching beauty, such as he had never dreamed about.
Wilford had met his destiny, and he felt it in every throb of blood which went rus.h.i.+ng through his veins.
”Who is she?” he asked of Mrs. Woodhull, and that lady knew at once whom he meant, even though he had not designated her.
An old acquaintance of Mrs. Lennox when she lived in East Bloomfield, Mrs. Woodhull had petted Katy from the first day of her arrival in Canandaigua with a letter of introduction to herself from the ambitious mother, and being rather inclined to match-making, she had had Katy in her mind when she urged Wilford to accompany her to the seminary.
Accordingly, she answered him at once: ”That is Katy Lennox, daughter of Judge Lennox, who died in East Bloomfield a few years ago.”