Family Pride Or Purified by Suffering Part 48

He was terribly excited, and in her fright Bell ran for Dr. Grant. But Wilford motioned him back, hurling after him words which kept him from the room the entire day, while the sick man rolled, and tossed, and raved in the delirium, which had returned, and which wore him out so fast. No one had the least influence over him except Marian Hazelton, who, without a glance at Mr. Cameron or Bell, glided to his side, and with her presence and gentle words soothed him into comparative quiet, so that the bitter denunciations against the saint who wanted him to die, ceased, and he fell into a troubled sleep.

Smoothing his pillow, and arranging the bedclothes tidily about him, Marian turned to meet the eyes of both Mr. Cameron and Bell fixed curiously upon her. With a strange feeling of interest they had watched her, both feeling an aversion to addressing her, and both wondering if she were indeed Genevra, as Katy had affirmed. They would not ask her, and both breathed more freely when, with a bow in acknowledgment of Mr.

Cameron's compliment to her skill in quieting his son, she left the room.

Neither said what they thought of her, nor was her name once mentioned, but she was not for a moment absent from their minds as they from choice sat that night with Wilford, who slept off his delirium, and lay with his face turned from them, so that they could not guess by its expression what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

All the next day he maintained the most frigid silence, answering only in monosyllables, while Bell kept wiping away the great drops of sweat constantly oozing out upon his forehead and about the pallid lips.

Just at nightfall he startled Bell by asking that Dr. Grant be sent for.

"Please leave me alone with him," he said, when Dr. Morris came; then turning to Morris, as the door closed upon his father and his sister, he said, abruptly:

"Pray for me, if you can pray for one who yesterday hated you so for saying he must die."

Earnestly, fervently, Morris prayed, as for a dear brother, and when he finished Wilford's faint "amen" sounded through the room.

"I am not right yet," the pale lips whispered, as Morris sat down beside him. "Not right with G.o.d, I mean. I've sometimes said there was no G.o.d, but I did not believe it, and now I know there is. He has been moving upon me all the day, driving out my bitterness toward you, and causing me to send for you at last. Do you think there is hope for me? I have much to be forgiven."

"Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow," Morris replied; and then, oh, how earnestly he tried to point that erring man to the Lamb of G.o.d, who taketh away the sins of the world, convincing him that there was hope even for him, and leaving him with the conviction that G.o.d would surely finish the good work begun, nor suffer this soul to be lost which had turned to Him even at the eleventh hour.

Wilford knew his days were numbered, and he talked freely of it to his father and sister the next morning when they came to him. He did not say that he was ready or willing to die, only that he must, and he asked them to forget, when he was gone, all that had ever been amiss in him as a son and brother.

"I was too proud, too selfish, to make others happy," he said. "I thought it all over yesterday, and the past came back again so vividly, especially the part connected with Katy. Oh, Katy, I did abuse her!" and a bitter sob attested the genuineness of Wilford's grief for his treatment of Katy. "I thought because I took her from a lower walk of life than mine, that she was bound by every tie of grat.i.tude to do just what I said, and I set myself at work to crush her every feeling and impulse which savored of her early home. I despised her family, I treated them with contempt. I broke Katy's heart, and now I must die without telling her I am sorry. But you'll tell her, father, and you, too, Bell, how, dying, I tried to pray, but could not for thought of my sin to her. She will not be glad that I am dead. I know her better than to think that; and I believe she loves me. But, after I am gone, and the duties of the world have closed up the gap I shall leave, I see a brighter future for her than her past has been; and you may tell her I am--" He could not then say "I am willing."

Few husbands could have done so then, and he was not an exception.

Wholly exhausted he lay quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again it was of Genevra. Even here he did not try to screen himself. He was the one to blame, he said. Genevra was true, was innocent, as he ascertained too late.

"Would you like to see her if she were living?" came to Bell's lips, but the fear that it would be too great a shock prevented their utterance.

He had no suspicion of her presence, and it was best he should not. Katy was the one uppermost in his mind, and in the letter Bell sent to her the next day, he tried to write: "Good-by, my darling," but the words were scarcely legible, and his nerveless hand fell helpless at his side as he said:

"She will never know the effort it cost me, nor hear me say that I hope I am forgiven. It came to me last night, the peace for which I've sought so long, and Dr. Grant has prayed, and now the way is not so dark, but Katy will not know."

CHAPTER XLVIII.

LAST HOURS.

Katy would know, for she was coming to him on the morrow, as a brief telegram announced, and Wilford's face grew brighter with thoughts of seeing her. He knew when the train was due, and with nervous restlessness he asked repeatedly what time it was, reducing the hours to minutes, and counting his own pulses to see if he would last so long.

"Save me, doctor," he whispered to Morris. "Keep me alive till Katy comes. I must see Katy again."

And Morris, tenderer than a brother, did all he could to keep the feeble breath from going out ere Katy came.

"I must have clean linen on my bed and on my person, too," Wilford said, "for Katy is coming, and I must not look repulsive."

The clean white linen was brought, and when it was arranged a smile of childish satisfaction crept around the lips, as Wilford said:

"Katy can kiss me now. She is not accustomed to hospital fare, you know."

His mind seemed slightly to wander; but when the hour came for the arrival of the train he knew it, asking, eagerly:

"Do you suppose she's come?" and straining his ear to catch the sound of the distant whistle. Dr, Morris had gone to meet her, and the time fled on apace until at last his step was heard, and Wilford, lifting up his head, listened for that other step, which, alas! was not there.

"The train is behind time several hours," was Morris' report, and with a moan Wilford turned away and wept, thinking by some strange chance of that day when at the farmhouse others had waited for Katy as he was doing, and waited, too, in vain.

Truly, they of the farmhouse were avenged, for never had they felt so bitter a pang as Wilford did when he knew Katy had not come.

"It's right," he said, when he could trust himself to speak; "but I did want to see her. Tell her I am willing."

The last seemed wrung from him almost against his will, and drops of sweat stood thickly upon his brow. Only Bell and her father guessed what he meant by being willing. Morris had no idea, but he wiped the death-sweat away, and said, soothingly:

"Be quiet, and you may see her yet. She will surely come by and by."

Thus rea.s.sured, Wilford grew calm and fell asleep, while the watchers by his side waited anxiously for the first sound which should herald the arrival of the train.

It was dark in the hospital, and from every window a light was s.h.i.+ning, when Morris carried rather than led a quivering figure up the stairs and through the hall, where, in a corner, Marian Hazelton's white face looked out upon him, her hands clasped over her heart, and working nervously as she watched Katy going where she must not go--going to the room where the Camerons were, the father standing at the foot of Wilford's bed, and Bell bending over his pillow, administering the stimulants which kept her brother alive. When Katy came in, she moved away, as did her father, while Morris, too, stepped back into the hall, and thus the husband and wife were left alone in this their first meeting since the parting at Yonkers nearly one year ago.

"Katy, precious Katy, you have forgiven me?" he whispered, and the rain of tears and kisses on his face was Katy's answer as she hung over him.

She had forgiven him like a true, faithful wife, and she told him so, when she found voice to talk, wondering to find him so changed from the proud, exacting, self-wors.h.i.+ping man, to the humble, repentant and self-accusing person, who took all blame of the past to himself, and exonerated her from every fault. But when he drew her close to him, and whispered something in her ear, she knew whence came the change, and a reverent "Thank the Good Father," dropped from her lips.

"The way was dark and th.o.r.n.y," Wilford said, making her sit down where he could see her as he talked, "and only for G.o.d's goodness I should have lost the path. But he sent one Morris Grant to point the road, and I trust I am in it now. I wanted to see you before I died, to tell you with my own lips how sorry I am for what I have made you suffer; but sorriest of all for sending Baby away. Oh, Katy, you do not know how that rested upon my conscience, or how often in my sleep upon the tented plain or hillside I have felt again the touch of Baby's arms and Baby's cheek against my own as I felt it that day when I came home and took her from you. Forgive me, Katy, that I robbed you of your child."

He was growing very weak, and he looked so white and ghastly that Katy called for Bell, who came at once, as did her father, and the three stood together around the bedside of the dying, Katy with his cold hand in hers, and occasionally bending down to hear his whispered words of love and deep contrition.

"You will remember me, Katy," he said, "but you cannot mourn for me always, and some time in the future you will cease to be my widow, and, Katy, I am willing. I wanted to tell you this so that no thought of me should keep you from a life where you will be happier than I have made you."

Wholly bewildered, Katy made no reply, and Wilford was silent a few moments, in which he seemed partially asleep. Then rousing up, he said:

"You wrote me once that Genevra was not dead. Did you mean it, Katy?"

Frightened and bewildered, Katy turned appealingly to her father-in-law, who answered for her; "She meant it--Genevra is not dead," while a blood-red flush stained Wilford's face, and his thin fingers beat the bedspread thoughtfully.

"I fancied once that she was here--that she was the nurse the boys praise so much. But that was a delusion," he said, and without a thought of the result, Katy asked, impetuously: "If she were here would you care to see her?"

There was a startled look on Wilford's face, and he grasped Katy's hand nervously, his frame trembling with a dread of the great shock which he felt impending over him.

"Is she here? Was the nurse Genevra?" he asked, then as his mind went back to the past, he answered his own question by a.s.serting: "Marian Hazelton is Genevra."

They did not contradict him, nor did he ask to see her. With Katy there, he felt he had better not, but after a moment he continued: "It is all so strange; I do not comprehend how it can be. She has been kind to me.

Tell her I thank her for it. I was unjust to her. I have much to answer for."