THE FIRST WIFE.
Katy was very unhappy in her city home, and the world, as she looked
upon it, seemed utterly cheerless. For much of this unhappiness Wilford
was himself to blame. After the first few days, during which he was all
kindness and devotion, he did not try to comfort her, but seemed
irritated that she should mourn so deeply for the child which, but for
her indiscretion, might have been living still. He did not like staying
at home, and their evenings, when they were alone, passed in gloomy
silence. At last Mrs. Cameron brought her influence to bear upon her
daughter-in-law, trying to rouse her to something like her olden
interest in the world; but all to no effect, and matters grew constantly
worse, as Wilford thought Katy unreasonable and selfish, while Katy
tried hard not to think him harsh in his judgment of her, and exacting
in his requirements. “Perhaps she was the one most in fault; it could
not be pleasant for him to see her so entirely changed from what she
used to be,” she thought, one morning late in November, when, her
husband had just left her with an angry frown upon his face and
reproachful words upon his lips.
Father Cameron and his daughters were out of town, and Mrs. Cameron had
asked Wilford and Katy to dine with her. But Katy did not wish to go,
and Wilford had left her in anger, saying “she could suit herself, but
he should go at all events.”
Left alone, Katy began to feel that she had done wrong in declining the
invitation. Surely she could go there, and the echo of the _bang_ with
which Wilford had closed the street door was still vibrating in her ear,
when her resolution began to give way, and while Wilford was riding
moodily down town, thinking harsh things against her, she was meditating
what she thought might be an agreeable surprise. She would go round and
meet him at dinner, trying to appear as much like her old self as she
could, and so atone for anything which had hitherto been wrong in her
demeanor.
Later in the day Esther was sent for to arrange her mistress’s hair, as
she had not arranged it since baby died. Wilford had been annoyed by the
smooth bands combed so plainly back, and at the blackness of the dress,
but now there was a change, and graceful curls fell about the face,
giving it the girlish expression which Wilford liked. The soberness of
the dark dress was relieved by simple folds of white crape at the throat
and wrists, while the handsome jet ornaments, the gift of Wilford’s
father, added to the style and beauty of the childish figure, which had
seldom looked lovelier than when ready and waiting for the carriage. At
the door there was a ring, and Esther brought a note to Katy, who read
as follows:
DEAR KATY:—I have been suddenly called to leave the city on business,
which will probably detain me for three days or more, and as I must go
on the night train, I wish Esther to have my portmanteau ready with
whatever I may need for the journey. As I proposed this morning, I
shall dine with mother, but come home immediately after dinner.
W. CAMERON.
Katy was glad now that she had decided to meet him at his mother’s, as
the knowing she had pleased him would make the time of his absence more
endurable, and after seeing that everything was ready for him she
stepped with a comparatively light heart into her carriage, and was
driven to No.—— Fifth Avenue.
Mrs. Cameron was out, the servant said, but was expected every minute
with Mr. Wilford.
“Never mind,” Katy answered; “I want to surprise them, so please don’t
tell them I am here when you let them in,” and going into the library
she sat down before the grate, waiting rather impatiently until the
door-bell rang and she heard both Wilford’s and Mrs. Cameron’s voices in
the hall.
Contrary to her expectations, they did not come into the library, but
went into the parlor, the door of which was partially ajar, so that
every word they said could be distinctly heard where Katy sat. It would
seem that they were continuing a conversation which had been interrupted
by their arriving home, for Mrs. Cameron said, with the tone she always
assumed when sympathizing with her son. “Is she never more cheerful than
when I have seen her?”
“Never,” and Katy could feel just how Wilford’s lips shut over his teeth
as he said it; “never more cheerful, but worse if anything. Why,
positively the house seems so like a funeral that I hate to leave the
office and go back to it at night, knowing how mopish and gloomy Katy
will be.”
“My poor boy, it is worse than I feared,” Mrs. Cameron said, with a
little sigh, while Katy, with a great gasping sob, tried to rise and go
to them, to tell them she was there—the mopish Katy, who made her home
so like a funeral to her husband.
But her limbs refused to move, and she sank back powerless in her chair,
compelled to listen to things which no true husband would ever say to a
mother of his wife, especially when that wife’s error consisted
principally in mourning for the child “which but for her imprudence
might have been living then.” These were Wilford’s very words, and
though Katy had once expected him to say them, they came upon her now
with a dreadful shock, making her view herself as the murderer of her
child, and thus blunting the pain she might otherwise have felt as he
went on to speak of Silverton and its inhabitants just as he would not
have spoken had he known she was so near. Then, encouraged by his
mother, he talked again of her in a way which made her poor aching heart
throb as she whispered, sadly, “He is disappointed in me. I do not come
up to all that he expected. I do very well, considering my low origin,
but I am not what his wife should be.”
Wilford had not said all this, but Katy inferred it, and every nerve
quivered with anguish as the wild wish came over her that she had died
on that day when she sat in the summer grass at home waiting for Wilford
Cameron. Poor Katy! she thought her cup of sorrow full, when, alas! only
a drop had as yet been poured into it. But it was filling fast, and Mrs.
Cameron’s words, “It might have been better with Genevra,” was the first
outpouring of the overwhelming torrent which for a moment bore her life
and sense away. She thought they meant her baby—the little Genevra
sleeping under the snow in Silverton—and her white lips answered, “Yes,
it would be better,” before Wilford’s voice was heard, saying, as he
always said, “No, I have never wished Genevra in Katy’s place; though I
have sometimes wondered what the result would have been had I learned in
season how much I wronged her.”
Was heaven and earth coming together, or what made Katy’s brain so dizzy
and the room so dark, as, with head bent forward and lips apart, she
strained her ear to catch every word of the conversation which followed,
and in which she saw glimpses of that _leaf_ offered her once to read,
and from which she had promised not to shrink should it ever be thrust
upon her? But she did shrink, oh! so shudderingly, holding up her hands
and striking them through the empty air as if she would thrust aside the
terrible spectre risen so suddenly before her. She had heard all that
she cared to hear then. Another word and she should surely die where she
was, within hearing of the voices still talking of _Genevra_. Stopping
her ears to shut out the dreadful sound, she tried to think what she
should do. To gain the door and reach the street was her desire, and
throwing on her wrappings she went noiselessly into the hall, and
carefully turning the lock and closing the door behind her, she found
herself alone in the street in the dusk of a November night. But Katy
was not afraid, and drawing her hood closely over her face she sped on
until her own house was reached, alarming Esther with her frightened
face, but explaining that she had been taken suddenly ill and returned
before dinner
“Mr. Cameron will be here soon,” she said. “I do not need anything
to-night, so you can leave me alone and go where you like—to the
theatre, if you choose. I heard you say you wished to go. Here is the
money for you and Phillips,” and handing a bill to the puzzled Esther,
she dismissed her from the room.
Meanwhile, at the elder Cameron’s, no one had a suspicion of Katy’s
recent presence, for the girl who had admitted her had gone to visit a
sick sister, with whom she was to spend the night. Thus Katy’s secret
was safe, and Wilford, when at last he bade his mother good-bye and
started for home, was not prepared for the livid face, the bloodshot
eyes, and the strange, unnatural look which met him at the threshold.
Katy answered his ring herself, her hands grasping his fiercely,
dragging him up the stairs to her own room, where, more like a maniac
than Katy Cameron, she confronted him with the startling question,
“Who is _Genevra Lambert_? It is time I knew before committing greater
sin. Tell me, Wilford, who _is_ she?”
She was standing before him, her slight figure seeming to expand into a
greater height, the features glowing with strong excitement, and her hot
breath coming hurriedly through her dilated nostrils, but never opening
the pale lips set so firmly together. There was something terrible in
her look and attitude, and it startled Wilford, who recoiled a moment
from her, scarcely able to recognize the Katy hitherto so gentle and
quiet. She had learned his secret, but the facts must have been
distorted, he knew, or she had never been so agitated. From beneath his
hair the great sweat-drops came pouring, as he tried to approach her and
take the uplifted hands, motioning him aside with the words, “Not touch
me; no, not touch me till you have told me _who_ is _Genevra Lambert_.”
She repeated the question twice, and rallying all his strength Wilford
answered her at last, “_Genevra Lambert was my wife!_”
“I thought so,” and the next moment Katy lay in Wilford’s arms, dead, as
he feared, for there was no motion about the eyelids, no motion that he
could perceive about the pulse or heart, as he laid the rigid form upon
the bed and then bent every energy to restore her, even though he feared
that it was hopeless.
If possible he would prefer that no one should intrude upon them now,
and he chafed her icy hands and bathed her face until the eyes unclosed
again, but with a shudder turned away as they met his. Then, as she grew
stronger and remembered the past, she started up, exclaiming, “If
Genevra Lambert is your wife, what then _am I_? Oh, Wilford, how could
you make me _not_ a wife, when I trusted and loved you so much?”
He knew she was laboring under a mistake, and he did not wonder at the
violence of her emotions if she believed he had wronged her so cruelly,
and coming nearer to her he said, “Genevra Lambert _was_ my wife once,
but is not now, for she is dead. Do you hear me, Katy? Genevra died
years ago, when you were a little girl playing in the fields at home.”
By mentioning Silverton, he hoped to bring back something of her olden
look, in place of the expression which troubled and frightened him. The
experiment was successful, and great tears gathered in Katy’s eyes,
washing out the wild, unnatural gleam, while the lips whispered, “And it
was her picture Juno saw. She told me the night I came, and I tried to
question you. You remember?”
Wilford did remember it, and he replied, “Yes, but I did not suppose you
knew I had a picture. You have been a good wife, Katy, never to mention
it since then;” and he tried to kiss her forehead, but she covered it
with her hands, saying sadly, “Not yet, Wilford, I cannot bear it now. I
must know the whole about Genevra. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why
have you deceived me so?”
“Katy,” and Wilford grew very earnest in his attempts to defend himself,
“do you remember that day we sat under the buttonwood tree, and you
promised to be mine? Try and recall the incidents of that hour and see
if I did not hint at some things in the past which I wished had been
otherwise, and did not offer to show you the blackest page of my whole
life, but you would not see it. Was that so, Katy?”
“Yes,” she answered, and he continued: “You said you were satisfied to
take me as I was. You would not hear evil against me, and so I
acquiesced, bidding you not shrink back if ever the time should come
when you must read that page. I was to blame, I know, but there were
many extenuating circumstances, much to excuse me for withholding what
you would not hear.”
Wilford did not like to be censured, neither did he like to censure
himself, and now that Katy was out of danger and comparatively calm, he
began to build about himself a fortress of excuses for having kept from
her the secret of his life.
“When did you hear of Genevra?” he asked.
Katy told him when and how she heard the story, and then added, “Oh,
Wilford, why did you keep it from me? What was there about it wrong, and
where is she buried?”
“In Alnwick, at St. Mary’s,” Wilford answered, determining now to hold
nothing back, and by his abruptness wounding Katy afresh.
“In Alnwick, at St. Mary’s,” Katy cried. “Then I have seen her grave,
and that is why you were so anxious to get there—so unwilling to go
away. Oh, if I were lying there instead of Genevra, it would be so much
better, so much better.”
Katy was sobbing now, in a moaning, plaintive way, which touched Wilford
tenderly, and smoothing her tangled hair, he said, “I would not exchange
my Katy for all the Genevras in the world. She was never as dear to me
as you. I was but a boy, and did not know my mind, when I met her. Shall
I tell you about her now? Can you bear to hear the story of Genevra?”
There was a nod of assent, and Katy turned her face to the wall,
clasping her hands tightly together, while Wilford drew his chair to her
side and began to read the page he should have read to her long before.