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 for _Dr. Grant_ to 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 and lived. 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 see _that 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. _You_ never 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 with
_this_.”
Wilford had goaded her on to say that which roused him to a pitch of
frenzy.
“You can go to your _rest_ at 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, but asking 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. He _had_ stayed 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 there besides 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, occasioned by 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 has_ been 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 the _fools_, 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, my _oldest_
boy, 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 was proven 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.”
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 when
the 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.
“_Why_ did you say you sent for him—that is, _what_ was 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’ll_ give 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,
“And _who_ think 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; “people _will_ talk 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’ll _bla-at_ out 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.