CHAPTER XIX.SARATOGA AND NEWPORT.
For three weeks Katy had been at the Mountain House, growing stronger every day, until she was much like the Katy of one year ago. But their stay among the Catskills was ended, and on the morrow they were going to Saratoga, where Mrs. Cameron and her daughters were, and where, too, was Sybil Grandon, the reigning belle of the United States. So Bell had written to her brother, bidding him hasten on with Katy, as she wished to see “that chit of a widow in her proper place.” And Katy had been weak enough for a moment to feel a throb of satisfaction in knowing how effectually Sybil’s claims to belle-ship would be put aside when she was once in the field; even glancing at herself in the mirror as she leaned on Wilford’s shoulder, and feeling glad that mountain air and mountain exercise had brought the roses back to her white cheeks and the brightness to her eyes. But Katy wept passionate tears of repentance for that weakness, when an hour later she read the letter which Dr. Grant had sent in answer to one she had written from the Mountain House, confessing her short-comings, and lamenting that the evils and excesses which shocked her once did not startle her now. To this letter Morris had replied as a brother might write to an only sister, first expressing pleasure at her happiness, and then reminding her of that other life to which this is only a preparation, and beseeching her so to use the good things of this world, given her in such profusion, as not to lose the life eternal.
This was the substance of Morris’s letter, which Katy read with streaming eyes, forgetting Saratoga as Morris’s solemn words of warning and admonition rang in her ears, and shuddering as she thought of losing the lifeeternal, of going where Morris would never come, nor any of those she loved the best, unless it were Wilford, who might reproach her with having dragged him there when she could have saved him.
“Keep yourself unspotted from the world,” Morris had said, and she repeated it to herself, asking “how shall I do that? how can one be good and fashionable too?”
Then laying her head upon the rock where she was sitting, Katy tried to pray as she had not prayed in months, asking that God would teach her what she ought to know and keep her unspotted from the world. But at the Mountain House it is easier to pray that one be kept from temptation than it is at Saratoga, which this summer was crowded to overflowing, its streets presenting a fitting picture of Vanity Fair, so full were they of show and gala dress. At the United States, where Mrs. Cameron stopped, two rooms, for which an enormous price was paid, had been reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Cameron, and this of itself would have given them a certain éclat, even if there had not been present many who remembered the proud, fastidious bachelor, and were proportionately anxious to see his wife.She came, she saw, she conquered; and within three days after her arrival Katy Cameron was the acknowledged belle of Saratoga, from the United States to the Clarendon. And Katy, alas, was not quite the same as she who on the mountain ridge had sat with Morris’s letter in her hand, praying that its teachings might not be forgotten. Saratoga seemed different to her from New York, and she plunged into its gaieties, never pausing, never tiring, and seldom giving herself time to think; much less to pray, as Morris had bidden her do. And Wilford, though hardly able to recognize the usually timid Katy in the brilliant woman who led rather than followed, was sure of her faith to him, and so was only proud and gratified to see her bear off the palm from every competitor, while Juno, though she quarreled with the shadow into which she was so completely thrown, enjoyed the éclat cast upon their party by the presence of Mrs. Wilford, who had passed beyond her criticism. Sybil Grandon, too, stood back in wonder that a simple country girl should win and wear the laurels she had so longclaimed as her own; but as there was no help for it she contented herself as best she could with the admiration she did receive, and whenever opportunity occurred, said bitter things of Mrs. Wilford, whose parentage and low estate were through her pretty generally known. But it did not matter there what Katyhad been; the people took her for what shewas now, and Sybil’s glory faded like the early dawn in the coming of the full day.
As it had been at Saratoga, so it was at Newport. Urged on by Mrs. Cameron and Bell, who enjoyed her notoriety, Katy plunged into the mad excitement of dancing and driving and coqueting, until Wilford himself became uneasy, locking her once in her room, where she was sleeping after dinner, and conveniently forgetting to release her until after the departure at evening of some young men from Cambridge, whose attentions to the Ocean House belle had been more strongly marked than was altogether agreeable to him. Of course it was a mistake—the locking of the door—and a great oversight in him not to have remembered it sooner, he said to Katy, by way of apology; and Katy, with no suspicion of the truth, laughed merrily at the joke, repeating it downstairs to the old dowagers, who shrugged their shoulders meaningly and whispered to each other that it might be well if more young wives were locked into their rooms and thus kept out of mischief.
Though flattered, caressed, and admired, Katy was not doing herself much credit at Newport; but save Wilford, there was no one to raise a warning voice, until Mark Ray came down for a few days’ respite from the heated city, where he had spent the entire summer, taking charge of the business which belonged as much to Wilford as to himself. But Wilford had a wife; it was more necessary that he should leave, Mark had argued; his time would come by and by. And so he had remained at home until the last of August, when he appeared suddenly at the Ocean House one night when Katy, in her airy robes and child-like simplicity, was breaking hearts by the score. Like others, Mark was charmed, and not a little proud for Katy’s sake, to see her thus appreciated; but when one day’s experience had shown him more, and given him alook behind the scenes, he trembled for her, knowing how hard it would be for her to come out of that sea of dissipation as pure and spotless as she went in.
“If I were her brother I would warn her that her present career is not one upon which she will look back with pleasure when the excitement is over,” he said to himself; “but if Wilford is satisfied it is not for me to interfere. It is surely nothing to me what Katy Cameron does,” he kept repeating to himself; but as often as he said it there came up before him a pale, anxious face, shaded with Helen Lennox’s bands of hair, and Helen Lennox’s voice whispered to him: “Save Katy, for my sake,” and so next day, when Mark found himself alone with Katy, while most of the guests were at the beach, he questioned her of her life at Saratoga and Newport, and gradually, as he talked, there crept into Katy’s heart a suspicion that he was not pleased with her account, or with what he had seen of her since his arrival.
For a moment Katy was indignant, but when he said to her kindly: “Would Helen be pleased?” her tears started at once, and she attempted an excuse for her weak folly, accusing Sybil Grandon as the first cause of the ambition for which she hated herself.
“She had been held up as my pattern,” she said, half bitterly, and forgetting to whom she was talking—“she, the one whom I was to imitate; and when I found that I could go beyond her, I yielded to the temptation, and exulted to see how far she was left behind. Besides that,” she continued, “is it no gratification, think you, to let Wilford’s proud mother and sister see the poor country girl, whom ordinarily they would despise, stand where they cannot come, and even dictate to them if she chooses so to do? I know it is wrong—I know it is wicked—but I like the excitement, and so long as I am with these people I shall never be any better. Mark Ray, you don’t know what it is to be surrounded by a set who care for nothing but fashion and display, and how they may outdo each other. I hate New York society. There is nothing there but husks.”
Katy’s tears had ceased, and on her white face there was a new look of womanhood, as if in that outburstshe had changed, and would never again be just what she was before.
“Say,” she continued, “doyoulike New York society?”
“Not always—not wholly,” Mark answered; “and still you misjudge it greatly, for all are not like the people you describe. Your husband’s family represent one extreme, while there are others equally high in the social scale who do not make fashion the rule of their lives—sensible, cultivated, intellectual people, of whose acquaintance one might be glad—people whom I fancy your sister Helen would enjoy. I have only met her twice, but my impression is thatshewould not find New York distasteful.”
Mark did not know why he had dragged Helen into that conversation, unless it were that she seemed very near to him as he talked with Katy, who replied:
“Yes, Helen finds good in all. She sees differently from what I do, and I wish so much that she was here.”
“Why not send for her?” Mark asked, casting about in his mind whether in case Helen came, he, too, could tarry for a week and leave that business in Southbridge, which he must attend to ere returning to the city.
It would be a study to watch Helen Lennox there at Newport, and in imagination Mark was already her sworn knight, shielding her from criticism, and commanding for her respect from those who respected him, when Katy tore his castle down by answering impulsively:
“I doubt if Wilford would let me send for her, nor does it matter, as I shall not remain much longer. I do not need her now, since you have shown me how foolish I have been. I was angry at first, but now I thank you for it, and so will Helen. I shall tell her when I am in Silverton. I am going there from here and oh, I so wish it was to-day.”
The guests were beginning to return from the beach by this time, and as Mark had said all he had intended saying, he left Katy with Wilford, who had just come in and joined a merry party of Bostonians only that day arrived. That night at the Ocean House the guests missed something from their festivities; the dance was not so exhilarating or the small-talk between so lively, while morethan one white-kidded dandy swore mentally at the innocent Wilford, whose wife declined to join in the gayeties, and in a plain white muslin, with only a pond lily in her hair, kept by her husband’s side, notwithstanding that he bade her leave him and accept some of her numerous invitations to join the giddy dance. This sober phase of Katy did not on the whole please Wilford as much as her gayer ones had done. All he had ever dreamed of the sensation his bride would create was more than verified. Katy had fulfilled his highest expectations, reaching a point from which, as she had said to Mark, she could dictate to his mother, if she chose, and he did not care to see her relinquish it.
But Katy remained true to herself. Dropping her girlish playfulness, she assumed a quiet, gentle dignity, which became her even better than her gayer mood had done, making her ten times more popular and more sought after, until she begged to go away, persuading Wilford at last to name the day for their departure, and then, never doubting for a moment that her destination was Silverton, she wrote to Helen that she should be home on such a day, and as they would come by way of Providence and Worcester, they would probably reach West Silverton at ten o’clock, A. M.
“Wilford,” she added in a postscript, “has gone down to bathe, and as the mail is just closing, I shall send this letter without his seeing it. Of course it can make no difference, for I have talked all summer of coming, and he understands it.”