"Here is something which will perhaps interest you," she said, pa.s.sing the paper to Juno who had come down late, and was looking cross and jaded from the effects of last night"s dissipation.
Taking the paper from her sister"s hand, Juno glanced carelessly at the paragraph indicated by Bell; then, as she caught Mark"s name, she glanced again with a startled, incredulous look, her cheeks and lips turning white as she read that Mark Ray was lost to her forever, and that in spite of the stolen letter Helen Lennox was his wife.
"What is it, Juno?" Mrs. Cameron asked, noticing her daughter"s agitation.
Juno told her what it was, handing her the paper and letting her read it for herself.
"Impossible! there is some mistake! How was it brought about?" she continued, darting a curious glance at Bell, whose face betrayed nothing as she leisurely sipped her coffee, and remarked: "I always thought it would come to this, for I knew he liked her. It is a splendid match."
Whatever Juno thought she kept it to herself, just as she kept her room the entire day, suffering from a racking headache, and ordering the curtains to be dropped, as the light hurt her eyes, she said to Bell, who, really pitying her now, never suggested that the darkened room was more to hide her tears than to save her eyes, and who sent away all callers with the message that Juno was sick--all but Sybil Grandon, who insisted so hard upon seeing her dear friend that she was admitted to Juno"s room, talking at once of the wedding, and making every one of Juno"s nerves quiver with pain as she descanted upon the splendid match it was for Helen, or indeed for any girl.
"I had given you to him," she said, "but I see I was mistaken. It was Helen he preferred, unless you jilted him, as perhaps you did."
Here was a temptation Juno could not resist, and she replied, haughtily:
"I am not one to boast of conquests, but ask Captain Ray himself if you wish to know why I did not marry him."
Sybil Grandon was not deceived, but she good-naturedly suffered that young lady to hope she was, and answered, laughingly: "I can"t say I honor your judgment in refusing him, but you know best. However, I trust that will not prevent your friendly advances toward his bride. Mrs.
Banker has gone after her, I understand, and I want you to call with me as soon as convenient. Mrs. Mark Ray will be the belle of the season, depend upon it," and gathering up her furs Mrs. Grandon kissed Juno affectionately and then swept from the room.
That Mrs. Cameron had hunted for and failed to find the stolen letter, and that she a.s.sociated its disappearance with Mark Ray"s sudden marriage, Bell was very sure, from the dark, anxious look upon her face when she came from her room, whither she had repaired immediately after breakfast, but whatever her suspicions were they did not find form in words. Mark was lost. It was too late to help that now, and as a politic woman of the world, Mrs. Cameron decided to let the matter rest, and by patronizing the young bride prove that she had never thought of Mark Ray for her son-in-law. Hence it was that the Cameron carriage and the Grandon carriage stood together before Mrs. Banker"s door, while the ladies who had come in the carriages paid their respects to Mrs. Ray, rallying her upon the march she had stolen upon them, telling her how delighted they were to have her back again, and hoping they should see a great deal of each other during the coming winter.
"You know we are related," Juno said, holding Helen"s hand a long time at parting, ostensibly to show how very friendly she felt, but really to examine and calculate the probable value of the superb diamond which shone on Helen"s finger, Mark"s first gift, left for her with his mother, who had presented it for him.
"As diamonds are now, that never cost less than four or five hundred dollars," Juno said, as she was discussing the matter with Bell, and telling her that Helen had the ring they had admired so much at Tiffany"s the last time they were there, and then her spiteful, envious nature found vent in the remark: "I wonder at Mark"s taste when only shoddy buy diamonds now."
"Why, then, did you torment father into buying that little pin for you the other day?" Bell asked, and Juno replied:
"I have always been accustomed to diamonds and that is a very different thing from Helen Lennox putting them on. Did you notice how red and fat her fingers were, and rough, too? Positively her hand felt like a nutmeg grater."
"You know the fable of the fox and the grapes," Bell said, her gray eyes flashing indignantly upon her sister, who, wisely forbore further remarks upon Helen"s hands and contented herself with wondering if people generally would take up Mrs. Ray and honor her as they once did Katy.
"Of course they will," she said. "It"s like heaps of them to do it," and in this conclusion she was not wrong, for those who had liked Helen Lennox did not find her less desirable now that she was Helen Ray, and numberless were the attentions bestowed upon her and the invitations she received.
But with few exceptions Helen declined the latter, feeling that, circ.u.mstanced as she was, with her husband in so much danger, it was better not to mingle much in gay society. She was very happy with Mrs.
Banker, who petted and caressed and loved her almost as much as if she had been an own daughter. Mark"s letters, too, which came nearly every day, were bright sun spots in her existence, so full were they of tender love and kind thoughtfulness for her. He was very happy, he wrote, in knowing that at home there was a dear little brown-haired wife, waiting and praying for him, and but for the separation from her was well content now with a soldier"s life. Once when he was stationed for a longer time than usual at some point Helen thought seriously of going to him for a week or more, but the project was prevented by the sudden arrival in New York of Katy, who came one night to Mrs. Banker"s, her face as white as ashes, and a strange, wild expression in her eyes as she said to Helen:
"I am going to Wilford. He is dying. He has sent for me. I ought to go on to-night, but cannot, my head aches so," and pressing both her hands upon her head Katy sank fainting into Helen"s arms.
CHAPTER XLVII.
GEORGETOWN HOSPITAL.
"GEORGETOWN, February --, 1862.
"MRS. WILFORD CAMERON:
"Your husband cannot live long. Come immediately.
"M. HAZELTON."
So read the telegram received by Katy one winter morning, when her eyes were swollen with weeping over Morris" letter, which had come the previous night, telling her how circ.u.mstances which seemed providential had led him to the hospital where her husband was, and where, too, was Marian Hazelton.
"I did not think it advisable to visit your husband at first," he wrote, "while Miss Hazelton, who had recently been transferred to this hospital, also kept out of the way. Nor was it necessary that either of us should minister to him there, for he was not thought very ill. "Only a slight touch of rheumatism, and a low, nervous fever," said the attending physician, of whom I inquired. Latterly, however, the fever has increased to a fearful extent, seating itself upon the brain, so that he knows neither myself nor Miss Hazelton, both of whom are with him. She, because she would be here where she heard of danger, and I because his case was given into my charge. So I am with him now, writing by his side, while he lies sleeping quietly, and Miss Hazelton bends over him, bathing his burning head. He does not know her, but he talks of Katy, who he says is dead and buried across the sea. Will you come to him, Katy? Your presence may save his life. Telegraph when you leave New York, and I will meet you at the depot."
It is not strange that this letter, followed so soon by the telegram from Marian, should crush one as delicate as Katy, or that for a few minutes she should have been stunned with the shock, so as neither to feel nor think. But the reaction came soon enough, bringing with it only the remembrance of Wilford"s love. All the wrong, the harshness, was forgotten, and only the desire remained to fly at once to Wilford, talking of her in his delirium. Bravely she kept up until New York was reached, but once where Helen was, the tension of her nerves gave way, and she fainted, so we have seen.
At Father Cameron"s that night there were troubled, anxious faces, for they, too, had heard of Wilford"s danger. But the mother could not go to him. A lung difficulty, to which she was subject, had confined her to the house for many days, and so it was the father and Bell who made their hasty preparations for the hurried journey to Georgetown. They heard of Katy"s arrival and Bell came at once to see her.
"She will not be able to join us to-morrow," was the report Bell carried home, for she saw more than mere exhaustion from fatigue and fainting in the white face lying so motionless on Helen"s pillow, with the dark rings about the eyes, and the quiver of the muscles about the mouth.
The morrow found that Bell was right, for Katy could not rise, but lay like some crushed flower still on Helen"s bed, moaning softly:
"It is very hard, but G.o.d knows best."
"Yes, darling, G.o.d knows best," Helen answered, smoothing the bright hair, and thinking sadly of the young officer sitting by his camp-fire, and waiting so eagerly for the bride who could not go to him now. "G.o.d knows what is best, and does all for the best."
Katy said it many times that long, long week, during which she stayed an invalid in Helen"s room, living from day to day upon the letters sent by Bell, who had gone on to Georgetown with her father, and who gave but little hope that Wilford would recover. Not a word did she say of Marian, and only twice did she mention Morris, so that when at last Katy was strong enough to venture on the journey, she had but little idea of what had transpired in Wilford"s sickroom.
Those were sad, weary days which Wilford first pa.s.sed upon his hospital cot, and as he was not sick but crippled, he had ample time for reviewing the past, which came up before his mind as vividly as if he had been living again the scenes of bygone days. Of Katy he thought continually, blaming himself much, but so strong was his pride and selfishness, blaming her more for the trouble which had come upon them.
Why need she have taken the Genevra matter so to heart, going with it to Morris and so bringing him into his present disagreeable situation. He did not mean to be unjust or unkind toward Katy, but he looked upon her as the direct cause of his being where he was. Had she never been seen in the cars with Morris, he should not have left home as he did, and might antic.i.p.ate going back without a flush of shame and a dread of meeting old friends, who would think less of him than they used to do. A thousand times Wilford had repented of his rashness, but never by a word had he admitted such repentance to any living being, and when on the dark, rainy afternoon which first saw him in the hospital, he turned his face to the wall and wept, he replied to one who said to him soothingly:
"Don"t feel badly, my young friend. We will take as good care of you here as if you were at home."
"It"s the pain which brings the tears. I"d as soon be here as at home."
Gradually, however, there came a change, and Wilford grew softer in his feelings, longing for home, or for the sight of a familiar face, and half resolving more than once to send for Katy, who had offered to come, and to whom he had replied: "It is not necessary." But as often as he resolved his evil genius whispered: "She does not care to come here,"
and so the message was never sent, while the longing for home faces brought on a nervous fever, which made him so irritable that his attendants sometimes turned from him in disgust, thinking him the most unreasonable man they had ever met. Once he dreamed Genevra was there--that she came to him just as she was in her beautiful girlhood--that her fingers threaded his hair as they used to do in their happy days at Brighton--that her hand was on his brow, her breath upon his face, and with a start he awoke just as the rustle of female garments died away in the hall.
"The new nurse in the second ward has been in here," a comrade said.
"She seemed specially interested in you, and if she had not been a stranger I should have said she was crying over you."
With a quick, sudden movement Wilford put his hand to his cheek, where there was a tear, either his own or that of the "new nurse," who had so recently bent over him. Retaining the same proud reserve which had characterized his whole life, he asked no questions, but listened intently to what his sick companions were saying of the beauty and tenderness of the young girl, they called her, who had glided for a few moments into their presence, winning their hearts in that short s.p.a.ce of time, and making them wish she would come back again. Wilford wished so too, conjuring up all sorts of conjectures about the unknown nurse, and once going so far as to fancy it was Katy herself. But this idea was soon dismissed. Katy would hardly venture there as a nurse, and if she did she would not keep aloof from him. It was not Katy, and if not, who was it that twice when he was sleeping came and looked at him, his comrades said, rallying him upon the conquest he had made, and so exciting his imagination that the fever which at first was hardly observable began to increase, and the blood throbbed hotly through his veins, while his brows were knit together with thoughts of the mysterious stranger. Then with a great shock it occurred to him that Katy had affirmed:
"Genevra is alive, I have seen her. I recognized the picture at once."
What if it were so, and this nurse was Genevra? The very thought fired Wilford"s brain, and when next his physician came he looked with some alarm upon the great change for the worse exhibited by his patient. That surgeon"s forte was more in dressing ghastly wounds than in subduing fever, and as he held Wilford"s hand, he said:
"You have a fever, my friend, and it is increasing fast. Perhaps you would like to see our new physician, Dr. Grant. He is great on fevers."
"Dr. Grant--Dr. Morris Grant?" Wilford exclaimed, starting up in bed with a fierce energy which surprised the surgeon.