The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering : $b A novelHolmes, Mary Jane
General
The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering : $b A novel
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction -- 19th century
She was talking to herself rather than to Morris, who, smoothing back
her hair and chafing her cold hands, said,
“My poor child, you have passed through some agitating scene. Are you
able now to tell me all about it, and what you mean by another wife?”
There was a shiver, and the white lips grew still whiter as Katy began
her story, going back to St. Mary’s churchyard and then coming to her
first night in New York, when Juno had told her of a picture and asked
her whose it was. Then she told of Wilford’s admission of an earlier
love, who, he said, was dead; of the trouble about the baby’s name, and
his aversion to Genevra; but when she approached the dinner at the elder
Cameron’s, her lip quivered in a grieved kind of way as she remembered
what Wilford had said of _her_ to his mother, but she would not tell
this to Morris,—it was not necessary to her story,—and so she said,
“They were talking of what I ought never to have heard, and it seemed as
if the walls were closing me in so I could not move to let them know I
was there. I said to myself, ‘I shall go mad after this,’ and I thought
of you all coming to see me in the mad-house, your kind face, Morris,
coming up distinctly before me, just as it would look at me if I were
really crazed. But all this was swept away like a hurricane when I heard
the rest, the part about _Genevra_, Wilford’s other wife.”
Katy was panting for breath, but she went on with the story, which made
Morris clench his hands as he comprehended the deceit which had been
practiced so long. Of course he did not look at it as Katy did, for he
knew that according to all civil law she was as really Wilford’s wife as
if no other had existed, and he told her so, but Katy shook her head.
“He can’t have two wives living. And I tell you I knew the
picture—_Genevra is not dead_, I have seen her; I have talked with
her,—Genevra is not dead.”
“Granted that she is not,” Morris answered, “the divorce remains the
same.”
“I do not believe in divorces. Whom God hath joined together let not man
put asunder,” Katy said with an air which implied that from this
argument there could be no appeal.
“That is the Scripture, I know,” Morris replied, “but you must know that
for one sin our Saviour permitted a man to put away his wife, thus
making it perfectly right.”
“But in Genevra’s case the sin did not exist. She was as innocent as I
am, and that must make a difference.”
She was very earnest in her attempts to prove that Genevra was still a
lawful wife, so earnest that a dark suspicion entered Morris’s mind,
finding vent in the question, “Katy, don’t you love your husband, that
you try so hard to prove he is not yours?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account