“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.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
WHAT FOLLOWED.
When Wilford left Katy so abruptly he had no definite purpose in his mind. He was very sore with the remembrance of all that had passed since baby’s death, and very angry at his wife, who he believed preferred another to himself, or who would have done so had she known in time what she did now. Like most angry people, he forgot wherein he had been in fault, but charged it all to Katy as he went down Broadway that spring morning, finding on his table a letter from an old classmate, who was then in Washington getting up a company, and who wrote urging his friend to join him at once, and offering him the rank of First Lieutenant. Here was a temptation,—here an opportunity to revenge himself on Katy, against whom he wrote a sad list of errors, making it sadder by brooding over and magnifying it until he reached a point from which he would not swerve.
“I shall do it,” he said, and his lips were pressed firmly together, as in his private office he sat revolving the past, and then turning to the future, opening so darkly before him, and making him shudder as he thought of what it might bring. “I will spare Katy as much as possible,” he said, “for hers is a different nature from Genevra’s. She cannot bear as well,” and a bitter groan broke the silence of the room as Katy came up before him just as she had looked that very morning standing by the window, with tears in her eyes, and a wistful, sorry look on her white face.
But Wilford was not one to retract when a decision was reached, and so he arranged his business matters as well as his limited time would allow; then, after the brief note to his father, wrote the letter to Katy, and then followed to the Jersey ferry a regiment of soldiers who were going on to Washington that night. Four days more and Lieutenant Wilford Cameron, with no regret as yet for the past, marched away to swell the ranks of men who, led by General McClellan, were pressing on, as they believed, to Richmond and victory. A week of terrible suspense went by, and then there came a letter to Mr. Cameron from his son, requesting him to care for Katy, but asking no forgiveness for himself. There were no apologies, no explanations, no kind words for Katy, whose eyes moved slowly over the short letter, and then were lifted sadly to her father’s face as she said,