University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
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 interst 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:

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, and 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.