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 rooms at No. ---- Fifth Avenue was not Katy's, but 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 loved and idolized her son, mourning
for him truly, and 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 burying his son, 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 hearthstone as he,
too, thought of the vacant parlor below and the new-made grave at
Greenwood.
"Oh, husband, comfort me, for our only boy is dead," 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 even by her maiden name, and awkwardly
smoothing her hair, silvered now with gray, 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 even 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 Miss 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, like a little child, 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 heiress, without condition or stipulation. All was hers to do
with as she pleased, and the bitterest tears she ever shed were those
which fell like rain 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 thousand 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."