Part 13

His dark eyes sought her face for a meaning.

"It's curious you didn't consult me," she went on. "I hope I know what's best for myself----"

"You mean that you don't care--my presence is unimportant. My absence will be even less important."

"I do care," she insisted. "What's the use of my telling you. I'll be very unhappy without you."

He shook his head and smiled. "Oh, I know--you'll miss me as you would your afternoon tea if it was denied you--but you'll do without it."

"I'm quite fond of afternoon tea, Cort." And then, more seriously, "Are you really resolved?"

"Yes," he muttered, "resolved--desperately resolved."

She threw herself away from him against the opposite end of the couch, facing him, and folded her arms, her lips closed in a hard line.

"Very well, then," she said cruelly, "go!" It seemed as if he hadn't heard her, for he leaned forward, his head in his hands, and went on in a voice without expression.

"I've felt for some time that I've been doing you a wrong. People are talking about us--coupling your name with mine--unpleasantly. Heaven knows what lies they're telling. Of course you don't hear--and I don't--but I know they're talking."

"How do you know?"

"My father----"

"Oh!"

"We quarreled--but the poison left its sting."

Camilla laughed nervously, the laughter of a woman of the world. It grated on him strangely.

"Don't you suppose _I_ know?" she said. "I'm not a baby. And now that you've ruined my reputation you're going to leave me. That's unkind of you. Oh, don't worry," she laughed again. "I'll get along. There are others, I suppose."

He straightened and turned toward her sternly.

"You mustn't talk like that," he said. "You're lying. I know your heart. It's clean as snow."

"Because _you_ haven't soiled it?" She clasped her hands over her knees and leaned toward him with wicked coquetry. "Really, Cort, you're a sweet boy--but you lack imagination. You know you're not the only man in the world. A woman in my position has much to gain--little to lose. I'm a derelict, a ship without a captain----"

He interrupted her by taking her in his arms and putting his fingers over her lips. "Stop!" he whispered, "I'll not listen to you."

"I mean it. I've learned something in your world. I thought life was a sacrament. I find it's only a game." She struggled away from him and went to the fireplace, but he rose and stood beside her.

"You're lying, Camilla," he repeated, "lying to me. Oh, I know--I've been a fool--a vicious--a selfish fool. I've let them talk because I couldn't bear to be without you--because I thought that some day you'd learn what a love like mine meant. And I wanted you--wanted you----"

"Don't you want me still, Cort?" she asked archly.

He put his elbows on the mantel and gazed into the flames, but would not reply, and the smile faded from her lips before the dignity of his silence.

"I've thought it all out, Camilla. I'm going away on business for my father, and I don't expect to come back. I thought I could go without seeing you again--just send you a note to say good-by. It was easier for me that way. I thought I had won out until I saw you to-day--but now it's harder than ever."

He looked up as he thought she might misconstrue his meaning. "Oh, I'm not afraid to leave on your account. Our set may make you a little careless, a little cynical, but you've got too much pride to lose your grip--and you'll never be anything else but what you are." He gazed into the fire again and went on in the same impersonal tone as if he had forgotten her existence. "I'll always love you, Camilla.... I love you more now than I ever did--only it's different somehow.... It used to be a madness--an obsession.... Your lips, your eyes, your soft fingers, the warm elusive tints of your skin--the petals of the bud--I would have taken them because of their beauty, crushed out, if I could, the soul that lived inside, as one crushes a shrub to make its sweetness sweeter." He sighed deeply and went on: "I told you I loved you then--back there in Mesa City--but I lied to you, Camilla. It wasn't love. Love is calmer, deeper, almost judicial, more mental than physical even.... I'm going away from you because I love you more than I love myself."

"Oh! you never loved me," she stammered. "You couldn't speak coldly like this if you did."

He raised his eyes calmly, but made no reply.

"Love--judicial!" she went on scornfully. "What do you know of love? Love is a storm in the heart; a battle--a torrent--it has no mind for anything but itself. Love is ruthless--self-seeking----"

"You make it hard for me," he said with an effort at calmness.

"You know I--I need you--and yet you'd leave me at a word."

"I'm going--because it's best to go," he said hoarsely.

"You're going because you don't care what happens to me."

He flashed around, unable to endure more, and caught her in his arms. "Do I look like a man who doesn't care? Do I?" he whispered. "If you only hadn't said that--if you only hadn't said that----"

Now that she had won she was ready to end the battle, and drew timidly away. But with Cort the battle had just begun. And though she struggled to prevent it, he kissed her as he had never done before. Her resistance and the lips she denied him, the suppleness of her strong young body, the perfume of her hair brought back the spell of mid-summer madness which had first enchained him.

"You've got to listen to me now, Camilla. I don't care what happens to my promises--to you--or to any one else. I'm mad with love for you. I'll take the soul of you. It was mine by every right before it was his. I'll go away from here--but you'll go with me--somewhere, where we can start again----"

In that brief moment in his arms there came a startling revelation to Camilla. Cort's touch--his kisses--transformed him into a man she did not know.

"Oh, Cort! Let me go!" she whispered.

"Away from all this where the idle prattle of the world won't matter," he went on wildly. "You have no right to stay on here, using the money he sends you--my money--money he stole from me. He has thrown you over, dropped you like a faded leaf. You're clinging to a rotten tree, Camilla. He'll fall. He's going to fall soon. You'll be buried with him--and nothing between you and death but his neglect and brutality."

In his arms Camilla was sobbing hysterically. The excitement with which she had fed her heart for the last few months had suddenly stretched her nerves to too great a tension. She had been mad--cruel to tantalize him--and she had not realized what her intolerance meant for them both until it was too late.

He misunderstood the meaning of those tears and petted her as if she had been a child.

"Don't, Camilla--there's nothing to fear. I'll be so tender to you--so kind that you'll wonder you could ever have thought of being happy before. Look up at me, dear. Kiss me. You never have, Camilla. Kiss me and tell me you'll go with me--anywhere."

But as he tried to lift her head she put up her hands and with an effort repulsed--broke away from--him and fell on the couch in a passion of tears. She had not meant this--not this. It wasn't in her to love any one.

In the process of mental readjustment following her husband's desertion of her she had learned to think of Cort in a different way. It seemed as though the tragedy of her married life had dwarfed every other relation, minimized every emotion that remained to her. Cortland Bent was the lesser shadow within the greater shadow, a dimmer figure blurred in the bulk, a part of the tragedy, but not the tragedy itself. For a time he had seemed to understand, and of late had played the part of guide, philosopher, and friend, if not ungrudgingly, at least patiently, without those boyish outbursts of petulance and temper in which he had been so difficult to manage. She cared for him deeply, and lately he had been so considerate and so gentle that she had almost been ready to believe that the kind of devotion he gave her was the only thing in life worth while. He had learned to pass over the many opportunities she offered him to take advantage of her isolation, and she was thankful that at last their relation had found a happy path of communion free from danger or misunderstanding. While other people amused and distracted her, Cort had been her real refuge, his devotion the rock to which she tied. But this! She realized that what had gone before was only the calm before the storm--and she had brought it all on herself!

He watched her anxiously, waiting for the storm to pass, and at last came near and put his arms around her again.

"No--not that!" she said brokenly. "It wasn't that I wanted, Cort. You don't understand. I needed you--but not that way." He straightened slowly as her meaning came to him.

"You were only--fooling--only playing with me? I might have known----"

"No, I wasn't playing with you. I--couldn't bear to lose you--but," she stammered resolutely, "now--I _must_---- You've got to go. I don't know what has happened to me--I haven't any heart--I think--no heart--or soul----"

He had turned away from her, his gaze on the dying log.

"Why couldn't you have let me go--without this?" he groaned. "It would have been easier for both of us."

She sat up slowly, still struggling to suppress the nervous paroxysms which shook her shoulders.

"Forgive me, Cort. You--you'll get along best without me. I've only brought you suffering. I'm a bird of ill-omen--which turns on the hand that feeds it. I was--was thinking only of myself. I wish I could make you happy--you deserve it, Cort. But I can't," she finished miserably, "I can't."

He did not move. It almost seemed as though he had not heard her. His voice came to her at last as though from a distance.

"I know," he groaned. "God help you, you love _him_." She started up as though in dismay, and then, leaning forward, buried her face in her hands in silent acquiescence. When she looked up a moment later he was gone.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*OLD ROSE LEAVES*

Camilla wrote nothing to Jeff about her illness. It was nothing very serious, the doctor said--only a fashionable case of nerves. The type was common, the medicine rest and quiet. He commended his own sanitarium, where he could assure her luxury and the very best society, but Camilla refused. She wanted to be alone, and so she denied herself to callers, canceled all her engagements, and took the rest cure in her own way. She slept late in the mornings, took her medicine conscientiously, put herself on a diet, and in the afternoon, with her maid only for company, took long motor rides in the country to out-of-the-way places on roads where she would not be likely to meet her acquaintances.

She knew what it was that she needed. It wasn't the strychnia tonic the doctor had prescribed, or even the rest cure. The more she was alone, the more time she had to think. It was in moments like the present, in the morning hours in her own rooms, that she felt that she could not forget. There was no longer the hum of well-bred voices about her, no music, the glamor of lowered lights, or the odor of embowered roses to distract her mind or soothe her senses. In the morning hours Jeff was present with her in the flesh. Everything about her reminded her of him; the desk at which he had worked, with its pigeon-holes full of papers in the reckless disorder which was characteristic of him; the corncob pipe which he had refused to discard; the Durham tobacco in its cotton bag beside a government report on mining; the specimens of ore from the "Lone Tree," which he had always used as paper weights; the brass bowl into which he had knocked his ashes; and the photograph, in its jeweled frame, of herself in sombrero and kerchief, taken at Myers's Photograph Gallery in Mesa City at the time when she had taught school, before Jeff's dreams had come true.

She took the picture up and examined it closely. It was the picture of a girl sitting on a table, a lariat in one hand and a quirt in the other, and the background presented Mesa City's idea of an Italian villa, with fluted columns, backed by some palms and a vista of lake. How well she remembered that gray painted screen and the ornate wicker chair and table which were its inevitable accompaniment. They had served as a background for Pete Mulrennan in a Prince Albert coat, when he was elected mayor; for Jack Williams, the foreman of the "Lazy L" ranch, and his bride from Kinney; for Mrs. Brennan in her new black silk dress; for the Harbison twins and their cherubic mother. She put the photograph down, and her head sank forward on her arms in mute rebellion. In her sleep she had murmured Cort's name, and Jeff had heard her. But she knew that in itself this was not enough to have caused the breach. What else had he heard? Jeff had tired of her--that was all--had tired of being married to a graven image, to a mere semblance of the woman he had thought she was. She could not blame him for that. It was his right to be tired of her if he chose.

It was the sudden revelation of the actual state of her mind with regard to Cortland which had given her the first suggestion of her true bearings--that and the careless chatter of the people of their set in which Mrs. Cheyne was leading. Cortland had guessed the truth which she had been so resolutely hiding from herself. She loved Jeff--had always loved him--and would until the end of time. Like the chemist who for months has been seeking the solution of a problem, she had found the acid which had magically liberated the desired element; the acid was Jealousy, and, after all dangerous vapors had passed, Love remained in the retort, elemental and undefiled. The simplicity of the revelation was as beautiful as it was mystifying. Had she by some fortuitous accident succeeded in transmuting some baser metal into gold, she could not have been more bewildered. Of course, Jeff could not know. To him she was still the Graven Image, the pretty Idol, the symbol of what might have been. How could he guess that his Idol had been made flesh and blood--that now she waited for him, no longer a symbol of lost illusions, but just a woman--his wife. She raised her head at last, sighed deeply, and put the photograph in the drawer of the desk. As she did so, the end of a small battered tin box protruded. She remembered it at once--for in it Jeff had always kept the letters and papers which referred to his birth and babyhood. She had looked them over before with Jeff, but it was almost with a feeling of timidity at an intrusion that she took the box out and opened it now. The papers were ragged, soiled, and stained with dampness and age, and the torn edges had been joined with strips of court-plaster. There were two small portraits taken by a photographer in Denver. Camilla took the photographs in her fingers and looked at them with a new interest. One of the pictures was of a young woman of about Camilla's age, in a black beaded Jersey waist and a full overskirt. Her front hair was done in what was known as a "bang," and the coils were twisted high on top of her head. But even these disfigurements--according to the lights of a later generation--could not diminish the attractiveness of her personality. There was no denying the beauty of the face, the wistful eyes, the straight, rather short nose, the sensitive lips, and the deeply indented, well-made chin--none of the features in the least like Jeff's except the last, which, though narrower than his, had the same firm lines at the angle of the jaw. It was not a weak face, nor a strong one, for whatever it gained at brows and chin it lost at the eyes and mouth.

But Jeff's resemblance to his father was remarkable. Except for the old-fashioned collar and "string" tie, the queerly cut coat, and something in the brushing of the hair, the figure in the other photograph was that of her husband in the life. She had discovered this when she and Jeff had looked into the tin box just after they were married, and had commented on it, but Jeff had said nothing in reply. He had only looked at the picture steadily for a moment, then rather abruptly taken it from her and put it away. From this Camilla knew that the thoughts of his mother were the only ones which Jeff had cared to select from the book of memory and tradition. Of his father he had never spoken, nor would speak. He would not even read again these letters which his mother had kept, wept over, and handed down to her son that the record of a man's ignominy might be kept intact for the generations to follow her.

It was, therefore, with a sense of awe, of intrusion upon the mystery of a sister's tragedy, that Camilla opened the letters again and read them. There were eight of them in all, under dates from May until October, 1875, all with the same superscription "Ned." As she read, Camilla remembered the whole sad story, and, with the face of the woman before her, was able to supply almost word for word the tender, passionate, bitter, forgiving letters which must have come between. She had pleaded with him in May to return to her, but in June, from New York, he had written her that he could not tell when he would go West again. In July he was sure he would not go West until the following year, if then. In August he sent her money--which she must have returned--for the next letter referred to it. In September his manner was indifferent--in October it was heartless. It had taken only six months for this man madly to love and then as madly to forget.

Camilla remembered the rest of the story as Jeff had told it to her, haltingly, shamedly, one night at Mrs. Brennan's, as it had been told to him when he was a boy by one of the nurses who had taken him away from the hospital where his mother had died--of her persistent refusal to speak of Jeff's father or to reveal his identity, of Jeff's birth without a name, and of his mother's death a few weeks later, unrepentant and unforgiving. With her last words she had blessed the child and prayed that they would not name it after her. At first he had been playfully called "Thomas Jefferson," and so Thomas Jefferson he remained until later another of his guardians had added the "Wray" after a character in a book she was reading and "because it sounded pretty." That was Jeff's christening.

Camilla put the letters aside with the faded blue ribbon which had always accompanied them and gazed at the photograph of Jeff's father. Yes, it was a cruel face--a handsome, cruel face--and it looked like Jeff. She had never thought of Jeff as being cruel. Did she really know her husband, after all? Until they had come to New York Jeff had always been forbearing, kindly, and tender. Before their marriage he had sometimes been impatient with her--but since that time, often when he had every right to be angry, he had contented himself with a baby-like stare and had then turned away and left her. Flashes of cruelty sometimes had shown in his treatment of the Mexicans on the railroad or at the mines, but it was not the kind of cruelty this man in the photograph had shown--not the enduring cruelty of heartlessness which would let a woman die for the love of him. The night Jeff had left her the worst in him was dominant, and yet she had not thought of him as cruel. It was to the future alone which she must look for an answer to the troubled question that rose in her mind.

At this moment her maid entered--a welcome interruption.

"Will you see Mrs. Rumsen, Madame?"

"Oh, yes, Celeste. Ask her if she won't come in here."

Of all the friendships she had made in New York, that of Mrs. Rumsen was the one Camilla most deeply prized. There was a tincture of old-world simplicity in her grandeur. Only those persons were snobbish, Mrs. Rumsen always averred, whose social position was insecure. It was she who had helped Camilla to see society as it really was, laid bare to her its shams, its inconsistencies, and its follies; who had shown her the true society of old New York; taken her to unfamiliar heights among the "cliff-dwellers" of the old regime who lived in the quiet elegance of social security with and for their friends, unmoved by the glitter of modern gew-gaws, who resisted innovations and fought hard for old traditions which the newer generation was seeking to destroy, a mild-eyed, incurious race of people who were sure that what they had and were was good, and viewed the social extravagances as the inhabitants of another planet might do, from afar, who went into the world when they chose, and returned to their "cliffs" when they chose, sure of their welcome at either place. They were the people Rita Cheyne called "frumps," and Cortland Bent, "bores," but to Camilla, who had often found herself wondering what was the end and aim of all things, they were a symbol of completion.

Mrs. Rumsen laid aside her wraps with the deliberation of a person who is sure of her welcome.

"You'll forgive my appearance?" asked Camilla. "I didn't think you'd mind."

"I'm flattered, child. It has taken longer than I supposed it would to teach you not to be punctilious with me. Well, you're better, of course. This long rest has done wonders for you."

"Oh, yes. But I'm afraid I wouldn't last long here. I'm used to air and sunshine and bed at ten o'clock at night." She paused a moment. "I've been thinking of going West for a while."

"Really? When?"

"I--I haven't decided. I thought that Jeff would have returned by this time, but his business still keeps him."

"And you miss him? That's very improper. I'm afraid I haven't schooled you carefully enough." She smiled and sighed. "That is a vulgar weakness your woman of society must never confess to. We may love our husbands as much as we like, but we mustn't let people know it. It offends their conceit and reminds them unpleasantly of their own deficiencies."

"People aren't really as bad as you're trying to paint then," laughed Camilla. "Even you, Mrs. Rumsen! Why, I thought the habit of cynicism was only for the very young and inexperienced."

"Thanks, child. Perhaps it's my second childhood. I don't want to be cynical--but I must. One reason I came to you is because I want you to refresh my point of view. I wonder what air and sunshine and bed at ten o'clock would do for me. Would you like to prescribe it for me? I wonder if you wouldn't take me West with you."

Camilla laughed again.

"Are you really in earnest? Of course I'd be delighted--but I'm afraid you wouldn't be. The accommodations are abominable except, of course, in Denver, and you wouldn't want to stay there. You know our--our house isn't finished yet. It would be fine if we could camp--but that isn't very comfortable. I love it. But you know there are no porcelain tubs----"

"Oh, I know. I've camped in the West, dear, a good many years ago--before you were born. I wonder how I should like it now----"

She paused, her wandering gaze resting on the desk, which Camilla had left in disorder, the letters scattered, the photographs at which she had been looking propped upright against the tin document-box. It was on the photographs that Mrs. Rumsen's gaze had stopped. Slowly she rose from her chair, with an air of arrested attention, adjusted her lorgnon, and examined it at close range.

"I thought I might have been mistaken at first," she said quickly. "I see I'm not. Camilla, dear, where on earth did you get that photograph of the General?"

Camilla had risen. "The General?" she faltered. "I don't understand."

"Of my brother--Cornelius Bent--that is his photograph. I have one like it in the family album at home."

"That can't be."

"I was looking over them only the other day--why do you look so strangely?"

"Are you sure? You can't be sure----"