MOURNING.
The grand funeral which Mrs. Cameron once had planned for Katy was a
reality at last, but the breathless form lying so cold and still in the
darkened room at No. — Fifth Avenue, was that of a soldier embalmed—an
only son brought back to his father’s house amid sadness and tears. They
had taken him there rather than to his own house, because it was the
wish of his mother, who, however hard and selfish she might be to
others, had idolized her son, and mourned for him truly, forgetting in
her grief to care how grand the funeral was, and feeling only a passing
twinge when told that _Mrs. Lennox_ had come from Silverton to pay the
last tribute of respect to her late son-in-law. Some little comfort it
was to have her boy lauded as a faithful soldier, and to hear the
commendations lavished upon him during the time he lay in state, with
his uniform around him; but when the whole was over, and in the gray of
the wintry afternoon her husband returned from Greenwood, there came
over her a feeling of such desolation as she had never known—a feeling
which drove her at last to the little room upstairs, where sat a lonely
man, his head bowed upon his hands, and his tears dropping silently upon
the hearth-stone as he, too, thought of the vacant parlor below and the
new grave at Greenwood.
“Oh, husband, comfort me!” fell from her lips as she tottered to her
husband, who opened his arms to receive her, forgetting all the years
which had made her the cold, proud woman, who needed no sympathy, and
remembering only that bright green summer when she was first his bride,
and came to him for comfort in every little grievance, just as now she
came in this great, crushing sorrow.
He did not tell her she was reaping what she had sown, that but for her
pride and deception concerning Genevra, Wilford might never have gone to
the war, or they been without a son. He did not reproach her at all, but
soothed her tenderly, calling her by her maiden name, and awkwardly
smoothing her hair, silvered now with gray, and feeling for a moment
that Wilford had not died in vain, if by his dying he gave back to his
father the wife so lost during the many years since fashion and folly
had been the idols she worshiped. But the habits of years could not be
lightly broken, and Mrs. Cameron’s mind soon became absorbed in the
richness of her mourning, and the strict etiquette of her mourning days.
To Katy she was very kind, caressing her with unwonted affection, and
scarcely suffering her to leave her sight, much less to stay for a day
at Mrs. Banker’s, where Katy secretly preferred to be. Of Genevra, too,
she talked with Katy, and at her instigation wrote a friendly letter,
thanking _Mrs. Lambert_ for all her kindness to her son, expressing her
sorrow that she had ever been so unjust to her, and sending her a
handsome locket, containing on one side a lock of Wilford’s hair, and on
the other his picture, taken from a large sized photograph. Mrs. Cameron
felt herself a very good woman after she had done all this, together
with receiving Mrs. Lennox at her own house, and entertaining her for
one whole day; but at heart there was no real change, and as time passed
on she gradually fell back into her old ways of thinking, and went no
more for comfort to her husband as she had on that first night after the
burial.
With Mr. Cameron the blow struck deeper, and his Wall Street friends
talked together of the old man he had grown since Wilford died, while
Katy often found him bending over his long-neglected Bible, as he sat
alone in his room at night. And when at last she ventured to speak to
him upon the all-important subject, he put his hand in hers, and bade
her teach him the narrow way which she had found, and wherein Wilford
too had walked at the very last, they hoped.
For many weeks Katy lingered in New York, and the June roses were
blooming when she went back to Silverton, a widow and the rightful owner
of all Wilford’s ample fortune. They had found among his papers a will,
drawn up and executed not long before his illness, and in which Katy was
made his heir, without condition or stipulation. All was hers to do with
as she pleased, and Katy wept passionately when she heard how generous
Wilford had been. Then, as she thought of Marian and the life of poverty
before her, she crept to Father Cameron’s side, and said to him,
pleadingly,
“Let _Genevra_ share it with me. She needs it quite as much.”
Father Cameron would not permit Katy to divide equally with Marian. It
was not just, he said; but he did not object to a few thousands going to
her, and before Katy left New York for Silverton, she wrote a long, kind
letter to Marian, presenting her with ten thousand dollars, which she
begged her to accept, not so much as a gift, but as her rightful due.
There was a moment’s hesitancy on the part of Marian when she read the
letter, a feeling that she could not take so much from Katy; but when
she looked at the pale sufferers around her, and remembered how many
wretched hearts that money would help to cheer, she said,
“I will keep it.”