University of Virginia Library

45. CHAPTER XLV.
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 hearthstone
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 grey, 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 excuted 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.”