Family Pride Or Purified by Suffering Part 41

Yes. Phillips remembered how sick Esther said she looked when she came home from his father's, where she spent the night.

"Oh, yes; she stayed at my father's then. It was very proper she should," Wilford replied, recollecting himself, and trying to appear natural, so that Phillips would not suspect him of any special purpose in questioning her.

If Katy spent the night at his father's then Tom's statement was not true, and dismissing Phillips he hastened to his mother, to whom he put the question:

"Did Katy stay here a night while I was gone, the night but one after that dinner when she heard of Genevra, I mean?"

"Why, no," Mrs. Cameron replied, in some surprise. "Katy has not stayed here since last October, just after she came from Silverton, and you were in Detroit. Why do you ask? What is the matter? What do you fear?"

Wilford would not tell his mother what he feared, but waived her question by bidding her repeat what she could remember of the day when she was first summoned to Katy, and to tell him also who was there.

"Dr. Grant was there, and Dr. Craig," she said. "The former, as I understood from Esther, had just come to the city and called on Katy, finding her so ill that he sent for me immediately."

"And you do not know that Katy was away from home at all?" was Wilford's next inquiry, to which his mother replied:

"Esther spoke of her looking very sick when she came in, from which I inferred she had been driving or shopping, but she was not here, sure."

Esther, it would seem, was the only one who could throw light upon the mystery, and as by this time the jealous man did not care whom he questioned, he left his mother without a word of explanation, and hurried home, where he found Esther, and in a voice which made her tremble, bade her answer his questions truthfully, without the slightest attempt at evasion.

"Yes, sir," Esther replied, and Wilford continued:

"Where was your mistress the night before Dr. Grant came here, and she was so very sick?"

"I don't know, sir. I had the impression that she at your mother's.

Wasn't she there?" and Esther looked very innocent, while Wilford replied:

"It is your business to answer questions, not to ask them. Tell me then the particulars of her going away, and what she said."

As nearly as she could remember Esther repeated what had pa.s.sed between herself and Katy that morning, but her manner was such as to convince Wilford she was keeping back something, and in a paroxysm of excitement he seized her arm, exclaiming:

"You know more than you admit. Tell me then the truth. Who came home with Mrs. Cameron, and when?"

Esther was afraid of Wilford, and at last between tears and sobs confessed that Mrs. Wilford said she had been out of town, but asked her not to tell, that she guessed it was Silverton where she had been, and also that when she opened the door to her, Dr. Morris was going down the steps; "not in a hurry--not like making off as if there was something wrong," she added, in her eagerness to exonerate her mistress.

"Who hinted there was anything wrong?" Wilford exclaimed, in tones which made poor Esther tremble, for now that he had heard all he cared to hear, he began to be ashamed of having gained his information in the way he had.

"n.o.body hinted," Esther sobbed, with her face hidden in her ap.r.o.n; "and if they did it's false. There never was a truer, sweeter lady."

"See that you stick to that whatever may occur, and, mind you, let there be no repeating this conversation in the kitchen or elsewhere," Wilford hurled at her savagely, going next to a telegraph office, and sending over the wires the following:

"NEW YORK, March --, 1862.

"To MR. EPHRAIM BARLOW, Silverton, Ma.s.s.

"Has Mrs. Wilford Cameron been in Silverton since last September?

W. CAMERON."

To this he was prompted by Esther's having suggested Silverton, as the place where her mistress had possibly been, and taking warning by his past experience with Genevra, he resolved to give Katy the benefit of every doubt, to investigate closely, before taking the decisive step, which even while Tom Tubbs was talking to him had flashed into his mind.

Perhaps Katy had been to Silverton in her excited state, and if so the case was not so bad, though he blamed her much for concealing it from him. At first he thought of telegraphing to Morris, but pride kept him from that, and Uncle Ephraim was made the recipient of the telegram, which startled him greatly, being the first of the kind sent directly to him.

As it chanced the deacon was in town that day, and at the store just across the street from the telegraph office. This the agent knew by old Whitey, who was standing meekly at the hitching-post, covered with his blanket, a faded woolen bedspread, which years before Aunt Betsy had spun and woven herself.

"A letter for me!" Uncle Ephraim said, when the message was put into his hands. "Who writ it?" and he turned it to the light trying to recognize the handwriting.

"I think it wants an answer," the boy said, as Uncle Ephraim thrust it into his pocket, and taking up his mola.s.ses jug and codfish started for the door.

"May be it does. I'll look again," and depositing his fish and jug safely under the wagon box, the old man adjusted his spectacles, and with the aid of the boy deciphered the dispatch.

"What does it mean?" he asked, but the boy volunteered no ideas, and the simple-hearted deacon asked next: "What shall I tell him?"

"Why, tell him whether she has been here or not since last September.

Write on the envelope what you want sent, so I can take it back; and come, hurry up your cakes, I can't wait all day," and young America, having thus a.s.serted its superiority over old, began to kick the melting snow, while Uncle Ephraim, greatly bewildered and perplexed, bent himself to the tremendous task of writing the four words:

"Not to my knowledge." To this he appended: "Yours, with regret, Ephraim Barlow," and handing it to the waiting boy, unhitched old Whitey, and stepping into his wagon, drove home as rapidly as the half-frozen March mud would allow.

"I wonder what he sent me that word for?" he kept repeating to himself.

"We had a letter from Katy yesterday, and there can't be nothing wrong.

I won't tell the folks yet a while anyway till I see what comes of it, Lucy is so fidgety."

It was this resolution, whether wise or unwise, which kept from Morris and the deacon's family a knowledge of the telegram, the answer to which was read by Wilford within half an hour after the deacon's arrival home.

"She has not been to Silverton," Wilford said. "The case then is very clear."

Indeed, it had been growing clear to the suspicious man ever since Tom Tubbs' unfortunate remark. There are no gla.s.ses as perfect as those which jealousy wears, no magnifying lens as powerful, and Wilford was "fully convinced." Had he been asked of what he was convinced he could hardly have told unless it were that in some way he had been deceived, that Morris had spoken falsely when he said his love for Katy was not returned or even suspected, that Katy had acted the hypocrite, and that both had been guilty of a great indiscretion, at least, by being seen as they were in the New Haven train, and then keeping the occurrences of that night a secret from him. Wilford did not believe Katy had fallen, but she had surely stepped upon forbidden ground, and it was not in his nature to forgive the error--at least, not then, when he was so sore with past remembrances which had come so fast upon him. First, the baby's death, just when he was learning to love it so much, then the Genevra affair about which Katy had acted so foolishly, then the talk with Dr. Grant, and then his last offense, so much worse than all the rest.

It was a sad catalogue of grievances, and Wilford made 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 before his lonely fire he sat that chill March night, 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.

Could she be false to him and wear that look? The question staggered Wilford for a moment, but when he remembered the proof, he steeled his heart against her and prepared to act.

CHAPTER XLII.

DISAPPEARED.

All the next day Wilford was very busy arranging his affairs, and a casual looker-on would have seen nothing unusual in the face always so grave and cold. But to Tom Tubbs, casting furtive glances over his book and wondering at his employer's sudden activity, it was terrible in its dark, hard, unrelenting expression, while even his mother, upon whom he called that evening, looked at him anxiously, asking what was the matter, but not mentioning the conversation held with her the previous day respecting Katy.

She was still at Yonkers, Wilford said, and his voice was very natural as he added: "I am expected to go out there to-morrow night with Beverley and Lincoln, whose wives are also at Mrs. Mills'; quite a gay party we shall make," and he tried to smile, but it was a sickly effort and made his face look still more ghastly and strange.

"What ails you, Wilford?" his mother asked, but he answered pettishly: "Nothing, so pray don't look at me so curiously as if I was hiding some terrible secret."

He was hiding a secret, and it almost betrayed itself, when at last he said good-by to his mother, who followed him to the door and stood looking after him in the darkness until the sound of his footsteps died away upon the pavement. There was a fire in his room and Wilford sat down to write the brief note he would leave, for when the night shut down again he would not be there. He could not feel that the parting from Katy would be final, because he did not believe she had sinned as he counted sin, but she certainly preferred another to himself; she had deceived him and played the successful hypocrite. This was Wilford's accusation against his wife; this for what she must be punished, until such time as his royal clemency saw fit to forgive and take her back as he meant to. He had no fear of her going to Morris, or to the farmhouse either, for much as she was attached to her family, he believed she would shrink from a return to poverty, choosing rather the luxuries of her city home. And he would put no impediment in the way of her staying there as long as she liked; he would arrange that for her, feeling himself very magnanimous as he thought of giving her permission to invite her mother to New York as a kind of protection against scandalous remarks. Mrs. Lennox and Helen too should come. That certainly was generous, and lest his goodness should abate he seized his pen and wrote:

"DEAR KATY: Your own conscience will tell you whether you are worthy of being addressed as 'Dear,' but I have called you thus so often that I cannot bring myself to any other form. Do my words startle you, and will you be sorry when you read this and find that I am gone, that you are free from the husband you do not love, the husband whom perhaps you never loved, though I thought you did? I trusted you once, and now I do not blame you as much as I ought, for you are young. You are easily influenced. You are very susceptible to flattery, as was proven by your career at Saratoga and Newport. I had no suspicion of you then, but now that I know you better, I see that it was not all childish simplicity which made you smile so graciously upon those who sought your favor. You are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer, or if you do not, ask your smooth-tongued saint, your companion in the New Haven train; he will enlighten you; he will not wonder at my going, and perhaps he will offer you comfort, both religious and otherwise; but if you ever wish me to return, avoid him as you would shun a deadly poison. Until I countermand the order I wish you to remain here in this house, which I bought for you. Helen and your mother both may live with you, while father will have a general oversight of your affairs; I shall send him a line to that effect. And now, good-by. I am very calm as I write this, because I know you have deceived me. Not as I did you with regard to Genevra, but in a deeper sense, which touches a tenderer point and makes me willing to brave the talk my sudden departure will create.

No one knows I am going, no one will know until you have waited and looked in vain for me with the gay young men who to-morrow night-will join their wives as I hoped yesterday morning to join mine. But that is over now. I cannot come to you. I am going away, where--it matters not to you. So farewell.