University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
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
someththing 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
staid 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
grey eyes rested earnestly on the white, frightned
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:

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.