DISAPPEARED.
All the next day Wilford was very busy arranging his affairs, and a
casual looker-on would have seen nothing unusual in the face always so
grave and cold. But to Tom Tubbs, casting furtive glances over his book
and wondering at his employer's sudden activity, it was terrible in its
dark, hard, unrelenting expression, while even his mother, upon whom he
called that evening, looked at him anxiously, asking what was the
matter, but not mentioning the conversation held with her the previous
day respecting Katy.
She was still at Yonkers, Wilford said, and his voice was very natural
as he added: "I am expected to go out there to-morrow night with
Beverley and Lincoln, whose wives are also at Mrs. Mills'; quite a gay
party we shall make," and he tried to smile, but it was a sickly effort
and made his face look still more ghastly and strange.
"What ails you, Wilford?" his mother asked, but he answered pettishly:
"Nothing, so pray don't look at me so curiously as if I was hiding some
terrible secret."
He was hiding a secret, and it almost betrayed itself, when at last he
said good-by to his mother, who followed him to the door and stood
looking after him in the darkness until the sound of his footsteps died
away upon the pavement. There was a fire in his room and Wilford sat
down to write the brief note he would leave, for when the night shut
down again he would not be there. He could not feel that the parting
from Katy would be final, because he did not believe she had sinned as
he counted sin, but she certainly preferred another to himself; she had
deceived him and played the successful hypocrite. This was Wilford's
accusation against his wife; this for what she must be punished, until
such time as his royal clemency saw fit to forgive and take her back as
he meant to. He had no fear of her going to Morris, or to the farmhouse
either, for much as she was attached to her family, he believed she
would shrink from a return to poverty, choosing rather the luxuries of
her city home. And he would put no impediment in the way of her staying
there as long as she liked; he would arrange that for her, feeling
himself very magnanimous as he thought of giving her permission to
invite her mother to New York as a kind of protection against scandalous
remarks. Mrs. Lennox and Helen too should come. That certainly was
generous, and lest his goodness should abate he seized his pen and
wrote:
"DEAR KATY: Your own conscience will tell you whether you are worthy of
being addressed as 'Dear,' but I have called you thus so often that I
cannot bring myself to any other form. Do my words startle you, and 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, the husband 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. You are 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, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof
of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer,
or if you do not, ask your smooth-tongued saint, your companion in the
New Haven train; he will enlighten you; he will not wonder at my going,
and 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 here in this
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. And now, good-by. I am very calm as I
write this, because I know you have deceived me. Not as I did you with
regard to Genevra, but in a deeper sense, which touches a tenderer point
and makes me willing to brave the talk my sudden departure will create.
No one knows I am going, no one will know until you have waited and
looked in vain for me with the gay young men who to-morrow night-will
join their wives as I hoped yesterday morning to join mine. But that is
over now. I cannot come to you. I am going away, where--it matters not
to you. So farewell.
"Your deceived and disappointed husband."
Had Wilford read this letter over, he might not have left it, but he did
not read it, and in recalling its contents he gave himself great credit
for his forbearance when speaking of Morris, whom he hated so cordially.
Sealing the letter, and laying it in Katy's drawer just above where she
had left his, he tried to sleep; but the morning found him haggard and
tired, and Esther, as she poured his coffee, asked if he was sick.
"No," he answered, and then as he pushed back his chair, he said: "I
shall not be home again to-day, as Mrs. Cameron expects me to spend
Sunday at Yonkers."
And so all that day and the next, the doors were locked, the shutters
closed, the curtains dropped, while an ominous silence reigned
throughout the house; but when Monday came, and was halfway gone there
were inquiries made for Mr. Cameron by young Beverley and Lincoln, whose
faces looked anxious and disturbed at Esther's answer:
"He went to Yonkers, Saturday. I have not seen him since."
* * * * *
Out at Yonkers on Saturday night, three young wives had waited for their
husbands, and none more eagerly than Katy, who, fair as a lily, in her
dark dress, with her soft hair curling about her face, sat by the window
watching for the carriage from the station, hers the first ear to catch
the sound of wheels, and here the first form upon the piazza.
"Where's Wilford?" she asked, as only two alighted, and neither of them
her husband.
But no one could answer that question. The gentlemen had looked for him
at Chambers Street, expecting him every moment to join them. Perhaps he
was detained, he might come yet at twelve, they said, trying to comfort
Katy, who, with a sad foreboding, went back into the parlor, and tried
to join in the laugh and jest which seemed almost like mockery.
Something had happened to Wilford she was sure when the night train did
not bring him; and all the next day, while the Sunday bells pealed their
music in her ears, and the sounds of thoughtless mirth came up from the
room below, where the elaborate dinner was in progress, she lay upon her
pillow, her head almost bursting with pain, and her heart aching so
sadly as she tried to pray that no harm had befallen her husband. She
never dreamed of his desertion, even when about noon of the next day a
telegram came from Father Cameron, bidding her hasten to the city.
Wilford was sick or dead, probably the latter, was the feeling uppermost
in her mind, as she was borne rapidly to New York, where Mr. Cameron met
her, his face confirming her fears, but not preparing her for the great
shock awaiting her.
"Wilford is not dead," he said, when at last she was in the carriage.
"It is worse than that, I fear. We have traced him to the Philadelphia
train, which he took on Saturday. His manner all that day and the
previous one was very strange, while from some words he dropped 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:
"No, oh, no; he never was kinder to me than when we parted last Friday
morning at Mrs. Mills'. There is some mistake. He would not leave me,
though he has not been quite the same since--"
Katy was interrupted by the carriage stopping before her home; but when
they had been admitted to the parlor where a fire was lighted, 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, kicking at the
hearth rug, 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,
forgetting 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;
though I knew he was a fool in some things, I did trust Wilford."
The old man's voice shook now, and Katy felt his tears dropping on her
hair as he stooped down 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, as Father Cameron commenced his
walking again. "He may have left some word, some line," he said.
"Suppose you look. It would probably be upstairs."
Katy had not thought of this, but it seemed reasonable that it should be
so, and going to her room, followed by Father Cameron, she went, as by
some instinct, to the very drawer where the letter lay.
There was perfect silence while she read it through, Mr. Cameron never
taking his eyes from the 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 gone to Dr. Grant, who had brought her back, as a
brother might have done, and this was the result.
"Why did you say you went to him--that is, what was the special reason?"
Mr. Cameron asked, and after a moment's hesitancy, Katy told him her
belief that Genevra was living--that it was she who made the bridal
trousseau for Wilford's second wife, who nursed his child until it died,
giving to it her own name, arraying it for the grave, and then leaving,
as she always did, 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 would come back if he knew just how it was," the father said,
"but the trouble is where to find him. He speaks of writing to me, as I
presume he will in a day or so, and perhaps it will be as well to wait
till then. 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 asking if Mrs. Cameron had returned. "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 halfway down the stairs, and in a
moment more was with his wife, who had come around armed and equipped to
censure Katy as the cause of Wilford's disappearance, and to demand of
her where she was the night she pretended to spend at No. ---- Fifth
Avenue. 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, mingled 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
noon. 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. "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
moment finding voice to say: "What will you do with Phillips and Esther?
He must have questioned them."
"The deuce he did! I'll see to that I'll throttle them if they venture
to speak!" and summoning both the females to his presence, Mr. Cameron
demanded if either had reported what Wilford had said to them.
Except to each other they had not, though Phillips confessed to a great
desire to do so when a cousin was in the previous night.
"Hang the cousin, and you, too, if you do!" Mr. Cameron replied, and
giving them some very strong advice, couched in very strong language, he
dismissed the servants to the kitchen, satisfied that so far Katy was
safe. "But who is the villain who first informed? If I had him by the
neck!" the enraged man continued, just as there came a second ring--a
timid, hesitating ring, as if the new arrival were half afraid to
present himself and his errand.
"Speak of angels and you hear the rustle of their wings," is a proverb
as true and much pleasanter of thought than its opposite, and whether
Tom Tubbs were an angel or not, it was he who stood twirling his cap in
the hall, asking for Mrs. Cameron.
"She can't see you, but I'll take the message. Is it about my son?"
Father Cameron said, striding up to the boy, who began to wish himself
away.
Ever since inquiries had been made at the office for Wilford's
whereabouts, Tom had been uneasy, for he could not forget the savage
look in Wilford's face when he first told him of Katy and Dr. Grant; and
when he heard that instead of going to Yonkers Wilford had taken the
cars for Philadelphia, he was certain something was wrong, and longed to
confess to Katy what he knew of the matter. He had no idea of meddling,
but came with the kindest intentions, thinking he should feel better
when the load was off his mind. He was then poorly prepared for his
fierce reception from Mr. Cameron, who asked so energetically what he
had to say.
"It wasn't much," Tom began. "I only wanted to tell her maybe I was to
blame for repeating what I saw."
"What did you see?" and Mr. Cameron laid his hand on Tom's coat collar
as if to shake the information out of him.
But there was no need of this, for the frightened youth told quickly
what he had come to tell, seeming so sorry and appearing so hurt withal
that the elder Cameron grew very gracious, and dismissed him with the
conviction that Katy had nothing to fear from Tom Tubbs. Mrs. Cameron
was with her now, giving her kisses and words of sympathy, telling her
Wilford would come back, and adding that in any event no one could or
should blame her.
"I have heard the whole from husband; it was a misunderstanding, that is
all. 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 on
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 should 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.
The sudden disappearance of a man like Wilford Cameron could not fail
even in New York to cause some excitement, especially in his own
immediate circle of acquaintances, 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 conduct. Insanity! how many sins
it is made to cover, and how often is it pleaded for an excuse when no
other can be found. This is especially true in the higher walks of life,
and so in Wilford's case it was put forward, cautiously at first by Mrs.
Cameron herself, who wondered at the avidity with which the suggestion
was seized and handed from one to another, some remembering little
things which tended to confirm the belief, others slyly shrugging their
shoulders as they responded: "Very probable," but all tacitly allowing
the understanding to prevail that insanity had made Wilford Cameron a
voluntary wanderer from home. 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" until such time as Wilford could be heard from or
more definite arrangements be made; Mrs. Cameron driving around each day
to see her; Bell always speaking of her with genuine affection, while
the father clung to her like a hero, the quartet forming a barrier
across which the shafts of scandal could not reach.