CHAPTER XXXVIII.DOMESTIC TROUBLES.
Wilford was in a most unhappy frame of mind. He had been humbled to the very dust, and it was Katy who had done it—Katy, towards whom his heart kept hardening as he thought over all the past. What right had she to go to his mother’s after having once declined; or, being there, what right had she to listen and thus learn the secret he would almost have died to keep; or, having learned it, why need she have been so much excited, and sent forDr. Grantto tell her if she were really a wife, and if not to take her away? That was the point which hurt him most, for added to it was the galling fact that Morris Grant loved his wife, and was undoubtedly more worthy of her than himself. He had said that he forgave Morris, and at the time he said it he fancied he did, but as the days went by, and thought was all the busier from the moody silence he maintained, there gradually came to life a feeling of hatred for the man whose name he could not hear without a frown, while he watched Katy closely to detect, if possible, some sign by which he should know that Morris’s love was reciprocated. But Katy was innocence itself, and tried so hard to do her duty as a wife, going often to the Friend of whom Helen had told her, and finding there the grace which helped her bear what otherwise she could not have borne andlived. The entire history of her life during that wretched winter was never told save as it was written on her face, which was a volume in itself of meek and patient suffering.
Wilford had never mentioned Genevra to her since the day of his return, and Katy sometimes felt it would be well to talk that matter over. It might lead to a better understanding than existed between them now, and dissipate the cloud which hung so darkly on their domestic horizon. But Wilford repulsed all her advances on that subject, and Genevra was a dead name in their household. Times there were when for an entire day he would appear like his former self, caressing her with unwonted tenderness, but never asked her forgiveness for all he had made her suffer. He was too proud to do that, and his tenderness always passed away when he remembered Morris Grant and Katy’s remark to Helen which he accidentally overheard. “I am afraid it can never be with us as it was once. I have not the same trust in him.”
“She had no right to complain of me,” he thought, forgetting the time when he had been guilty of a similar offence in a more aggravated form. He could not reason upon anything naturally, and matters grew daily worse, while Katy’s face grew whiter and her voice sadder in its tone.
When the Lenten days came on, oh how Katy longed to be in Silverton—to kneel again in its quiet church, and offer up her penitential prayers with the loved ones at home. At last she ventured to ask Wilford if she might go, her spirits rising when he did not refuse her request at once, but asked,
“Whom do you wish to see the most?”
His black eyes seemed reading her through, and something in their expression brought to her face the blush he construed according to his jealousy, and when she answered, “I wish to see them all,” he retorted,
“Say, rather, you wish to seethat doctor, who has loved you so long, and who but for me would have asked you to be his wife!”
“What doctor, Wilford? whom do you mean?” she asked, and Wilford replied,
“Dr. Grant, of course. Did you never suspect it?”
“Never,” and Katy’s face grew very white, while Wilford continued,
“I had it from his own lips; he sitting on one side of you and I upon the other. I so forgot myself as to charge him with loving you, and he did not deny it, but confessed as pretty a piece of romance as I ever read, except that, according to his story, it was a one-sided affair, confined wholly to himself.Younever dreamed of it, he said.”
“Never, no never,” Katy said, panting for her breath, and remembering suddenly many things which confirmed what she had heard.
“Poor Morris, how my thoughtlessness must have wounded him,” she murmured, and then all the pent-up passion in Wilford’s heart burst out in an impetuous storm.
He did not charge his wife directly with returning Morris’s love; but he said she was sorry she had not known it earlier, asking her pointedly if it were not so, and pressing her for an answer, until the bewildered creature cried out,
“Oh, I don’t know. I never thought of it before.”
“But you can think of it now,” Wilford continued, his cold, icy tone making Katy shiver, as, more to herself than to him, she whispered,
“A life at Linwood with him would be perfect rest, compared withthis.”
Wilford had goaded her on to say that which roused him to a pitch of frenzy.
“You can go to yourrestat Linwood as soon as you like, and I will go my way,” he whispered hoarsely, and believing himself the most injured man in existence, he left the house, and Katy heard his step, as it went furiously down the steps. For a time she sat stunned with what she had heard, and then there came stealing into her heart a glad feeling that Morris deemed her worthy of his love when she had so often feared the contrary. And in this she was not faithless to Wilford. She could pray with just as pure a heart as before, and she did pray, thanking God for the love of this good man, butasking that long ere this he might have learned to be content without her. Never once did the thought “It might have been,” intrude itself upon her, nor did she send one regret after the life she had missed. She seemed to rise above all that, and Wilford, had he read her heart, would have found no evil there.
“Poor Morris,” she kept repeating, while little throbs of pleasure went dancing through her veins, and the world was not one half so dreary for knowing he had loved her. Towards Wilford, too, her heart went out in a fresh gush of tenderness, for she knew how one of his jealous nature must have suffered.
And all that day she was thinking of him, and how pleasantly she would meet him when he came home at night, and how she would try to win him from the dark silent mood now so habitual to him. More than usual pains she took with her toilet, arranging her bright hair in the long, glossy curls, which she knew he used to admire, and making sundry little changes in her black dress. Excitement had brought a faint flush to her cheeks, and she was conscious of a feeling of gratification that for the first time in months she was looking like her former self. Slowly the minutes crept on, and the silver-toned clock in the dining-room said it was time for Wilford to come; then the night shadows gathered in the rooms, and the gas was lighted in the hall and in the parlor, where Katy’s face was pressed against the window pane, and Katy’s eyes peered anxiously out into the darkening streets, but saw no one alighting at their door. Wilford did not come. Neither six, nor seven, nor eight brought him home, and Katy sat down alone to her dinner, which, save the soup and coffee, was removed untasted. She could not eat with the terrible dread at her heart that this long protracted absence portended something more than common. Ten, eleven, and twelve struck from a distant tower. Hehadstayed out as late as that frequently, but rarely later, and Katy listened again for him, until the clock struck one, and she grew sick with fear and apprehension. It was a long, long, wretched night, but morning came at last, and at an early hour Katy drove down to Wilford’s office, finding no one therebesides Tom Tubbs and Mills, the other clerk. Katy could not conceal her agitation, and her face was very white as she asked what time Mr. Cameron left the office the previous day.
If Katy had one subject more loyal than another it was young Tom Tubbs, whose boyish blood had often boiled with rage at the cool manner with which Wilford treated his wife, when, as she sometimes did, she came into the office. Tom worshiped Katy Cameron, who, in his whispered confidences to Mattie, was an angel, while Wilford was accused of being an overbearing tyrant, whom Tom would like to thrash. He saw at once, that something unusual was troubling her, and hastening to bring her a chair, told her that Mr. Cameron left the office about four o’clock; that he had spent the most of the day in his private office writing and looking over papers; that he had given his clerks so many directions with regard to certain matters, that Mills had remarked upon it, saying, “It would seem as if he did not expect to be here to see to it himself;” and this was all Katy could learn, but it was enough to increase the growing terror at her heart, and dropping her veil, she went out to her carriage, followed by Tom, who adjusted the gay robe across her lap, and then looked wistfully after her as she drove up Broadway.
“To father Cameron’s,” she said to the driver, who turned his horses towards Fifth Avenue, where, just coming down the steps of his own house, they met the elder Cameron.
Katy would rather see him first alone, and motioning him to her side she whispered: “Oh, father, is Wilford here?”
“Wilford be——”; the old man did not say what, for the expression of Katy’s face startled him.
That there was something wrong, and father Cameron knew it, was Katy’s conviction, and she gasped out,
“Tell me the worst. Is Wilford dead?”
Father Cameron was in the carriage by this time, and riding towards Madison Square, for he did not care to introduce Katy into his household, which, just at present, presented a scene of dire confusion and dismay, occasionedby a note received from Wilford to the intent that he had left New York, and did not know when he should return.
“Katy can tell you why I go,” he added, and father Cameron was going to Katy when she met him at his door.
To Katy’s repeated question, “Is he dead?” he answered, “Worse than that, I fear. He has left the city, and no one knows for what, unless you do. From something he wrote, my wife is led to suppose there was trouble between you two. Was there?” and father Cameron’s gray eyes rested earnestly on the white, frightened face which looked up so quickly as Katy gasped,
“There hasbeen trouble—that is, he has not appeared quite the same since——”
She was interrupted by the carriage stopping before her door; but when they were in the parlor, father Cameron said,
“Go on now. Wilford has not been the same since when?”
Thus importuned, Katy continued,
“Since baby died. I think he blamed me as the cause of its death.”
“Don’t babies die every day?” father Cameron growled, while Katy, without considering that he had never heard of Genevra, continued,
“And then it was worse after I found out about Genevra, his first wife.”
“Genevra! Genevra, Wilford’s first wife! Thunder and lightning! what are you talking about?” and father Cameron bent down to look in Katy’s face, thinking she was going mad.
But Katy was not mad, and knowing it was now too late to retract, she told the story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to thefools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he meant what he said.
“It’s all accounted for now,” he said; “the piles of money that boy had abroad, his privacy with his mother, and all the other tomfoolery I could not understand. Katy,” and pausing in his walk, Mr. Cameron came close to his daughter-in-law, who was lying with her face upon the sofa. “Katy, be glad your baby died. Had it lived it might have proved a curse, just as mine have done—not all, for Bell, though fiery as a pepper-pod, has some heart, some sense—and there was Jack, myoldestboy, a little fast it’s true, but when he died over the sea, I forgave all that, and forgot the chair he broke over a tutor’s head, and the scrapes for which I paid as high as a thousand at one time. He sowed his wild oats, and died before he could reap them—died a good man, I believe, and went to Heaven. Juno you know, and you can judge whether she is such as would delight a parent’s heart; while Wilford, my only boy, to deceive me so; I knew he was a fool in some things, but I did trust Wilford.”
The old man’s voice shook now, and Katy felt his tears dropping on her hair as he stooped over her. Checking them, however, he said,
“And he was cross because you found him out. Was there no other reason?”
Katy thought of Dr. Morris, but she could not tell of that, and so she answered,
“There was—but please don’t ask me now. I can’t tell, only I was not to blame. Believe me, father, I was not to blame.”
“I’ll swear to that,” was the reply, and father Cameron commenced his walking again, just as Esther came to the door with the morning letters.
There was one from Wilford for Katy, who nervously tore off the envelope and read as follows:
“Will you be sorry when you read this and find that I am gone, that you are free from the husband you do not love,—whom, perhaps, you never loved, though I thought you did. I trusted you once, and now I do not blame you as much as I ought, for you are young and easily influenced. You are very susceptible to flattery, as wasproven by your career at Saratoga and Newport. I had no suspicion of you then, but now that I know you better, I see that it was not all childish simplicity which made you smile so graciously upon those who sought your favor. You are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, if I had not learned that another man loved you first and wished to make you his wife, while you, in your secret heart, wish you had known it sooner. Don’t deny it, Katy; I saw it in your face when I first told you of Dr. Grant’s confession, and I heard it in your voice as well as in your words when you said ‘A life at Linwood would be perfect rest compared with this.’ That hurt me cruelly, Katy. I did not deserve it from one for whom I have done and borne so much, and it was the final cause of my leaving you, for I am going to Washington to enroll myself in the service of my country. You will be happier without me for awhile, and perhaps when I return, Linwood will not look quite the little paradise it does now.
“I might reproach you with having telegraphed to Dr. Grant about that miserable Genevra affair which you had not discretion enough to keep to yourself. Few men would care to have their wives send for a former lover in their absence and ask that lover to take them away. Your saintly cousin, good as he is, cannot wonder at my vexation, or blame me greatly for going away. Perhaps he will offer you comfort, both religious and otherwise: but if you ever wish me to return, avoid him as you would shun a deadly poison. Until I countermand the order, I wish you to remain in the house which I bought for you. Helen and your mother both may live with you, while father will have a general oversight of your affairs; I shall send him a line to that effect.
“Your Disappointed Husband.”
“Your Disappointed Husband.”
“Your Disappointed Husband.”
“Your Disappointed Husband.”
This was the letter, and there was perfect silence while Katy read it through, Mr. Cameron never taking his eyes from her face, which turned first white, then red, then spotted, and finally took a leaden hue as Katy ran over the lines, comprehending the truth as she read, and whenthe letter was finished, lifting her dry, tearless eyes to Father Cameron, and whispering to herself,
“Deserted!”
She let him read the letter, and when he had finished, explained the parts he did not understand, telling him now what Morris had confessed—telling him too that in her first sorrow, when life and sense seemed reeling, she had sent for Dr. Grant, knowing she could trust him and be right in doing whatever he advised.
“Whydid you say you sent for him—that is,whatwas the special reason?” Mr. Cameron asked, and Katy told him her belief that Genevra was living—that it was she who made the bridal trousseau for Wilford’s second wife, she who nursed his child until it died, giving to it her own name, arraying it for the grave, and then leaving before the father came.
“I never told Wilford,” Katy said. “I felt as if I would rather he should not know it yet. Perhaps I was wrong, but if so, I have been terribly punished.”
Mr. Cameron could not look upon the woman who stood before him, so helpless and stricken in her desolation, and believe her wrong in anything. The guilt lay in another direction, and when, as the terrible reality that she was indeed a deserted wife came rushing over Katy, she tottered toward him for help; he stretched his arms out for her, and taking the sinking figure in them, laid it upon the sofa as gently, as kindly, as Wilford had ever touched it in his most loving days.
Katy did not faint nor weep. She was past all that; but her face was like a piece of marble, and her eyes were like those of the hunted fawn when the chase is at its height, and escape impossible.
“Wilford will come back, of course,” the father said, “but that does not help us now. What the plague—who is ringing that bell enough to break the wire?” he added, as a sharp, rapid ring echoed through the house, and was answered by Esther. “It’s my wife,” he continued, as he caught the sound of her voice in the hall.
“You stay here while I meet her first alone.I’llgive it to her for cheating me so long, and raising thunder generally!”
Katy tried to protest, but he was half way down the stairs, and in a moment more was with his wife, who, impatient at his long delay, had come herself, armed and equipped, to censure Katy as the cause of Wilford’s disappearance, and to demand of her what she had done. But the lady who came in so haughty and indignant was a very different personage from the lady who, after listening for fifteen minutes to a fearful storm of oaths and reproaches, mingling with startling truths and bitter denunciations against herself and her boy, sank into a chair, pale and trembling, and overwhelmed with the harvest she was reaping.
But her husband was not through with her yet. He had reserved the bitterest drop for the last, and coming close to her he said,
“Andwhothink you the woman is—this Genevra, Wilford’s and your divorced wife? You were too proud to acknowledge an apothecary’s daughter! See if you like better a dressmaker, a nurse to Katy’s baby,Marian Hazelton!”
He whispered the last name, and with a shriek the lady fainted. Mr. Cameron would not summon a servant; and as there was no water in the room, he walked to the window, and lifting the sash scraped from the sill a handful of the light spring snow which had been falling since morning. With this he brought his wife back to consciousness, and then marked out her future course.
“I know what is in your mind,” he said; “peoplewilltalk about Wilford’s going off so suddenly, and you would like to have all the blame rest on Katy; but, madam, hear me: Just so sure as through your means one breath of suspicion falls on her, I’llbla-atout the whole story of Genevra. Then see who is censured. On the other hand, if you hold your tongue, and make Juno hold hers, and stick to Katy through thick and thin, acting as if you would like to swallow her whole, I’ll say nothing of this Genevra. Is it a bargain?”
“Yes,” came faintly from the sofa cushions, where Mrs. Cameron had buried her face, sobbing in a confused, frightened way, and after a few moments asking to see Katy, whom she kissed and caressed with unwonted tenderness,telling her Wilford would come back, and adding, that in any event no one could or should blame her. “Wilford was wrong to deceive you about Genevra. I was wrong to let him; but we will have no more concealments. You think she is living still—that she is Marian Hazelton?” and Mrs. Cameron smoothed Katy’s hair as she talked, trying to be motherly and kind, while her heart beat more painfully at thoughts of a Genevra living, than it ever had at thoughts of a Genevra dead.
She did not doubt the story, although it seemed so strange, and it made her faint as she wondered if the world would ever know, and what it would say if it did. That her husband would tell, if she failed in a single point, she was sure; but she would not fail. She would swear Katy was innocent of everything, if necessary, while Juno and Bell should swear too. Of course, they must know, and she should tell them that very night, she said to herself; and hence it was that in the gossip which followed Wilford’s disappearance, not a word was breathed against Katy, whose cause the family espoused so warmly,—Bell and the father because they really loved and pitied her, and Mrs. Cameron and Juno because it saved them from the disgrace which would have fallen on Wilford, had the fashionable world known then of Genevra.
Wilford’s leaving home so suddenly to join the army, could not fail, even in New York, to cause some excitement, especially in his own immediate circle of acquaintance, and for several days the matter was discussed in all its phases, and every possible opinion and conjecture offered, as to the cause of his strange freak. They could not believe in domestic troubles when they saw how his family clung to and defended Katy from the least approach of censure, Juno taking up her abode with her “afflicted sister,” Mrs. Cameron driving round each day to see her; Bell always speaking of her with genuine affection, while the father clung to her like a hero, the quartette forming a barrier across which the shafts of scandal could not reach.