Part 7

At the third fence, for some reason, Mackinaw refused, and, scarcely knowing how it had happened, Camilla slid forward over his ears to the ground. She was a little stunned, but managed to keep her hold on the reins, and before Cortland Bent could dismount she was on her feet again, her cheeks a little pale, but in nowise injured.

"Are you hurt, Camilla?"

"No. Help me up quickly, Cort." She had seen Jeff and Mrs. Cheyne draw rein a moment on the other side of the fence, but, when she rose, ride on together. Jeff shouted something to her, but she could not hear it.

"I didn't give him his head," Camilla stammered. "I'll know better now."

"For God's sake, be careful," whispered Bent.

If she heard him she gave no sign of it, for, with her face pale and her lips compressed, she made a wide turn, and, before the rest of the field came up, she had put Mackinaw at the jump again, giving him his head and the crop on his flank just before he rose to it. The frightened animal cleared the rails with two feet to spare and a good six feet on the farther side, and, when Jeff turned at the bank of the creek to look, he saw Mackinaw nobly clearing the last fence that remained between them.

Camilla, her color coming slowly back, kept her eyes fixed on the smart silk hat of Mrs. Cheyne. The memory of Mrs. Cheyne's smile infuriated her. Her manner was so superior, her equipment so immaculate, her seat such a fine pattern of English horsemanship. The run was to be long, they said. Perhaps there would still be time to show that she could ride--as the boys in the West rode, for every inch--for every pound.

Through the ford she dashed, with Cortland close at her heels, the water deluging them both, up the bank and over the rise of the hill, toward a patch of bushes where the fox doubled and went straight with the wind across the valley for the hills. The going was rougher here--boulders, stone walls, and ploughed fields. Camilla cut across the angle and in a moment was riding beside her husband and Mrs. Cheyne, who seemed to be setting the pace.

"Are you all right?" Jeff asked. But she only smiled at him and touched Mackinaw with her heel. She was riding confidently now, sure of herself and surer of her horse. They understood each other, and Mackinaw responded nobly, for when he found his place by the side of Rita Cheyne's bay mare he sensed the will of his rider that here was the horse that he must outstay. The pace was terrific, and once or twice Camilla felt the eyes of the other woman upon her, but she rode joyously, grimly, looking neither to left nor right, as she realized that Mrs. Cheyne's mount was tiring and that Mackinaw seemed to be gaining strength at every jump.

The old Chelten Fox gained immortality that day. Twice the foremost hounds were snapping at his very heels, when, from some hidden source of energy, he drew another store and ran away from them, doubling through the brush and throwing them off the scent, which they recovered only when he had put a safe distance between them. Camilla had lost her hat, her hair had fallen about her shoulders, and a thorn had gashed her cheek. The pace was telling on Mackinaw, whose stride was not so long or his jumps so powerful, but Mrs. Cheyne still rode beside her, her face a little paler than before, but her seat as firm--her hands as light as ever. If there were any other riders near them, both women were oblivious, seeing nothing but the blur of the flying turf beneath them, hearing nothing but the sharp note of the hounds in front, which told that the chase was nearly ended.

Before them was a lane with two fences of four rails, an "in and out," with a low "take off" from the meadow. Camilla rose in her stirrups to look and saw that Mrs. Cheyne had drawn rein. It was a jump which would tax the mettle of fresher animals. With a smile on her face which might have been a counterfeit of the one Mrs. Cheyne had worn earlier in the morning, Camilla turned in her saddle, catching the eye of her companion, and pointed with her crop straight before her to where the hounds had "killed" in the meadow just beyond, then set Mackinaw for the highest panel she could find.

"Come on, Mrs. Cheyne!" she cried hoarsely. "Come on!"

Mackinaw breasted the fence and reached the road--a pause of a second until Camilla's spurs sank into his flanks, when, mad with pain, he leaped forward into the air, just clearing the other fence and the ditch that lay on the farther side. Camilla pulled up sharply as the Huntsman dismounted and made his way among the dogs. Turning, she saw Mrs. Cheyne's horse rise awkwardly from the lane and go crashing through the fence, breaking the top rail and landing in the ditch. Its rider, thrown forward out of the saddle, landed heavily and then rolled to one side and lay quiet.

With a quick cry of dismay, Camilla dismounted, conscience-stricken, and ran to her fallen foe, just as the others rode up and caught the frightened horse.

"Dear Mrs. Cheyne," she heard herself saying, "I'm so sorry. Are you really badly hurt?" But the only reply she got was a feeble shake of the head. Curtis Janney brought out a brandy flask, and, after a sip or two, Mrs. Cheyne revived and looked about her.

"I'm all here, I think," she said. "That was a bad cropper--in my own barnyard, too--the Brush must be yours, Mrs. Wray. Give me a cigarette, somebody."

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE SHADOW*

Mrs. Cheyne's farmhands and stablemen came running and took the horses of those who dismounted; and Mrs. Cheyne, after examining herself to see that no bones were broken, led the way, stiffly but without assistance, to the house. Camilla, still a little bewildered, saw Mackinaw led off to the stable for a rub-down. The Master of the Hounds was the first to congratulate her.

"Here is your Brush, Mrs. Wray. You've filled every woman's heart with envy. To be in at the death of the old Chelten Fox is an achievement. You had a fall. Are you injured?"

"I believe not," she said. "Mackinaw is a darling. I hope he's sound?" she inquired anxiously.

"As a bell," he said generously. "He's got the heart of an ox. You know"--he laughed and whispered--"I bought him from Mrs. Cheyne, and to-day you've vindicated me."

Others came up, men of the Hunt Club, and asked to be presented, and Camilla, enjoying her triumph, followed the party to the house.

Mrs. Cheyne's house differed in character from that of the Janneys. It was snugly built in a pocket of the hills, facing to the south. The original building, square and massive, dated from the early eighteenth century, but two symmetrical wings at the sides had greatly increased its original size. Large pillars and a portico gave the graceful lines which the addition demanded. The wide stair hall which ran from front to back had not been altered, and the furniture and hangings rigidly preserved the ancient atmosphere.

The surprised butler and his assistant hurriedly prepared hot Scotches and toddy, and the halls and large rooms on the lower floor were soon filled with the swaggering company--all talking at once, each with his tale of luck or misfortune.

It was not until Camilla was gratefully enthroned in a big chair by the open fireplace that Cortland Bent found a chance to speak to her.

"What possessed you, Camilla? You rode like a demon. You've dragged poor Rita's pride in the mire. Riding is her long suit. She's not used to yielding her laurels as she did to-day. I fancy she's not at all happy about it."

"Why?" asked Camilla, wonderingly.

"You don't know Rita as I do. She runs things out here pretty much in her own way." He chuckled quietly. "Good Lord, but you did put it over her."

"I'm sorry if she feels badly about it," she put in mendaciously.

"There's nothing to be sorry about. You won out against odds on a horse she'd thrown into the discard. That doesn't make her feel any sweeter. She's a queer one. There's no telling how she'll take things. But she doesn't like being the under dog, and she won't forget this soon."

"Neither will I," said Camilla, smiling to herself. "She scored one on me yesterday, but I fancy our accounts are about even."

"Yes, they are. I suppose there's no use warning you."

"No, there isn't, Cort. I fancy I'll be able to look out for myself."

He examined her keenly and realized that she was looking at Jeff, who stood with some men at the end of the room toasting their hostess. He seemed to have forgotten Camilla's existence. In the field before they came into the house Jeff had spoken to her, and when Janney had given Camilla the Brush, Jeff had congratulated her noisily and with the heartiness and enthusiasm he always showed over things which reflected credit on himself. In their private life Jeff still stood a little in awe of Camilla. He realized that his many deficiencies put him at a disadvantage with a woman of her stamp, and, no matter what he felt, he had never asked more of her in the way of companionship than she had been willing to give him ungrudgingly; he was tolerant of her literary moods, her music, her love of pictures, and the many things he could not understand. She was the only cultured woman he had ever known, and his marriage had done little to change his way of thinking of her. Camilla had not meant to abide forever in the shrine in which Jeff had enthroned her.

In the earlier days of their married life she had been willing to sit enshrined because it had been the easiest way to conceal the actual state of her own mind; because it had come to be a habit with her--and with him to behold her there. Their pilgrimage to New York had made a difference. It was not easy for Camilla to define it just yet. He was a little easier in his ways with her, regarded her inaccessibility a little less seriously, and questioned by his demeanor rather than by any spoken words matters which had long been taken for granted by them both. He had made no overt declaration of independence and, in his way, gave her opinions the same respect he had always given them. The difference, if anything, had been in the different way in which they viewed from the very same angle the great world of affairs. Men, as Jeff had always known, were much the same all the world over, but, curiously enough, he had never seen fit to apply any rule to its women. It was flattery, indeed, for him to have believed for so long that, because Camilla was cultured, all cultured women must be like Camilla. His wife realized that Jeff's discovery of Mrs. Cheyne was requiring a readjustment of all his early ideas. And so, while she spoke lightly of Mrs. Cheyne to Cortland Bent, in her heart she was aware that if the lady took it into her pretty head to use Jeff as a weapon she might herself be put upon the defensive.

It seemed as though Cortland had an intuition of what was passing in her mind.

"If there's any way in which I can be of service," he ventured.

"Oh, yes, Cort," she laughed. "I'll call on you. The only thing I ask of you now is--not to fall in love with Mrs. Cheyne."

"Rita? I'd as soon think of falling in love with a kaleidoscope. Besides----"

But she laid restraining fingers on his arm.

"Tell me about Gretchen," she interrupted quickly.

"There's nothing to tell, except," he said with a sigh, "that she's quite gone on Larry."

"You can't mean it?"

"Really--she told me so."

Camilla glanced toward the hall where the two young people were sitting in the big haircloth sofa engaged in a harmless investigation of the science of palmistry.

Camilla laughed. "It really looks so, doesn't it? I am sorry, though. I had begun to look on Miss Janney as one of the solutions of our difficulty."

"There isn't any solution of it--not that way--you must take my word for it. Gretchen and I understand each other perfectly. If I can do anything to help Lawrence Berkely with her, I'll do it."

"Oh, you're quite hopeless, Cort," she sighed, "and I have no patience with Larry. I can't see why he doesn't mind his own business."

Bent glanced at the young couple in the hall. "He seems to me to be doing _that_ tolerably well." He leaned forward so that his tone, though lowered, could be heard distinctly.

"There is another solution. Perhaps you had not thought of it." She turned her head quickly and searched his face for a meaning. For reply he coolly turned his gaze in the direction of Jeff and Mrs. Cheyne, who had withdrawn into an embrasure of one of the windows.

"A solution----" she stammered.

"Yes, a way out--for both of us."

"You mean Jeff--and Mrs. Cheyne?" she whispered.

"I do."

The poison of his suggestion flowed slowly through her mind, like a drug which stimulates and stupefies at the same time.

"You mean that I should allow Jeff--that I should connive in his----" She stopped, horror-stricken. "Oh, Cort, that was unworthy of you," she whispered.

"I mean it. They're well met--those two," he finished viciously.

Camilla held up her fingers pleadingly. "Don't speak. I forbid you." And, rising, she took up her gloves and crop from the table. "Besides," she said more lightly, "I have a suspicion that you are trying to stir up a tempest in a teapot."

"Do you mean you haven't noticed?" he insisted. "At my father's? At the Warringtons'? Last night at the Janneys'?"

"No," she replied carelessly, "I hadn't noticed."

Curtis Janney, who had been moving fussily from one group to another, came forward as he saw Camilla rise.

"I was hoping we might still get another short run, but I suppose you're too tired, Mrs. Wray?"

"A little--but don't let me interfere. I think I can find my way back."

He looked at his watch. "Hello! It's time we were off anyway. The other guests will be eating all our breakfast. Come, Cort, Gretchen, Mrs. Cheyne--you know you're my guest still," strolling from group to group and ruthlessly breaking up the tete-a-tetes so successfully that Rita Cheyne rebelled.

"You're a very disagreeable person, Mr. Janney--Ivywild resents it. You're trying to form the hospitality of the county into one of those horrid trusts. Every time accident throws the hunt my way you insist on dragging it off to Braebank. It isn't fair. Of course, if you insist----"

And then, crossing to Camilla, "_Dear_ Mrs. Wray, I'm borrowing your husband for a while. I feel a little tired, so he promised to lunch with me here and go on to Braebank later. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not in the least, my _dear_ Mrs. Cheyne. I'm _so_ sorry you feel badly." And then to her husband, "Remember, Jeff, Mr. Janney expects you later." Each spoke effusively, the tips of their fingers just touching. Then Mrs. Cheyne followed her visitors to the door.

Outside a coach-horn was blowing, and, as they emerged upon the porch the Janney brake arrived, tooled by the coachman and bearing aloft Mrs. Rumsen, General Bent, and Gladys, who had arrived from town on the morning train. But they would not get down, and the cavalcade soon wound its way along the drive, leaving Jeff and Mrs. Cheyne waving them a good-by from the steps.

Camilla took the road thoughtfully. It was the first time in their brief social career that Jeff had not consulted her before he made his own plans. She did not blame him altogether, for she knew that Jeff's inexperience made him singularly vulnerable to the arts of a woman of the type of Mrs. Cheyne, who, for want of any better occupation in life, had come to consider all men her lawful prey. Camilla knew that mild flirtations were the rule rather than the exception in this gay world where idle people caught at anything which put to flight the insistent demon of weariness and boredom. And she discovered that it was a part of the diversion of the younger married couples to loan husbands and wives to satisfy the light fancy of the hour. All this was a part of the fabric in which she and Jeff were living and endangered society only when the women were weak and the men vicious. But Jeff somehow didn't seem to fit into the picture. His personality she had learned to associate with significant achievements. His faults, as well as his virtues, were big, and he had a habit of scorning lesser sins. The pleasure of a mild flirtation such as his brothers of the city might indulge in for the mere delight of the society of a woman would offer nothing to Jeff, who was not in the habit of doing anything mildly or by halves. Camilla knew him better than Mrs. Cheyne did.

Of course, no one thought anything of his new interest in Mrs. Cheyne. All of the younger men were interested in Mrs. Cheyne at one time or another, and it was doubtful if people had even noticed his attentions. Cortland had, but there was a reason for that. Anything that could discredit Jeff in her eyes was meat and drink to him. But it was cruel of Cortland to take advantage of her isolation, but how could she cut herself off from Cort, when her husband, by the nature of the situation, had thrown her so completely on his mercies? It seemed as though all the world was conspiring to throw her with the one man whose image she had promised her conscience she would wipe from her heart. He rode beside her now remorselessly, proving by his silence more eloquently the measure of his appreciation of the situation. She felt that he, too, was entering the Valley of Indecision, with the surer step of a dawning Hope, while she faltered on the brink of the Slough of Despond.

They had fallen well behind the others, and followed a quiet lane bordered by a row of birch trees which still clung tenaciously to the remnants of their autumn finery. At one side gushed a stream, fed by the early snows, which sang musically of the secrets of earth and sky. There was no indecision here. Every twig, every painted stone, the sky and breeze, spoke a message of blithe optimism. All was right with the world, and if doubt crept into the hearts of men it was because they were deaf to the messages of Nature. The spell of its beauty fell on Camilla, too, and she found herself smiling up at Cortland Bent. There were many things to be thankful for.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

"One can't be anything else on a day like this."

"You don't care then?"

"For what? Oh, yes. I have a natural interest in the welfare of my husband. But I think Mrs. Cheyne is wasting her time."

"I think perhaps you underrate her," he muttered.

"I'd rather underrate Mrs. Cheyne than underrate myself," proudly.

He was silent for a moment, flicking at the weeds with his riding-crop.

"Mrs. Cheyne and you have nothing in common, Camilla," he said. "I'm afraid it isn't in you to understand this crowd. The set in which she and I were brought up is a little world in itself. The things which happen outside of it are none of its concern. It doesn't care. It has its own rules and its own code of decency to which it makes its members subscribe. It is New York in miniature, the essence, the cream of its vices, its virtues, and its follies. It lives like that poison-ivy along the fence, stretching out its tendrils luxuriously in the direction of the sun, moving along the line of least resistance. It does not care what newer growth it stunts, what blossom learns to grow beneath its shade, to fade and droop, perhaps to wither for lack of air and sunlight----"

"And yet--there's Gretchen," she said, "and you."

He smiled almost gaily. "Yes, there are many Gretchens, thank God. Girls with the clean, sound vision of their sturdy forbears, whose mothers were young when the city still felt the impress of its early austerities."

"And you?" she repeated.

His brow darkened and he looked straight before him.

"What I am doesn't matter. I was born and bred in this atmosphere. Isn't that enough?"

"It's enough that you survived--that you, too, have a clean vision."

"No, that is not true," he said sharply. "I can't see clearly--I'm not sure that I want to see clearly--not now."

"I won't believe that, Cort. Back there at _her_ house you said something that was unworthy of you, that showed me another side of your nature, the dark side, like the shadowy places under the ivy. I want you to forget that you ever said them--that you ever thought them even."

"I can't," he muttered savagely. "I _want_ some one to come between you--to make him suffer what I am suffering--to place a distance between you which nothing can ever repair."

"Some one has already come between us," she said, gently. "The one I have in mind is the Cort Bent of Mesa City, who used to help me gather columbines; who rode with me far up the trail to get the last ray of the sunset when the valley below was already asleep in the shadow; who shouted my name in the gorge because he said it was sweet to hear the mountains send back its echoes all silvered over with the mystery of the Infinite; who told me of palaces and gardens in lands which I had never seen, and of the talented men and women who had lived in them; who sang to me in the moonlight and taught me to dream----"

"Don't, Camilla----"

"That was a boy I remember, who lived years and years ago when I was rich--rich in innocent visions which he did nothing to destroy. It was he who gave me an idea that there were men who differed from those I had known before--men in whose hearts was tenderness and in whose minds one might find a mirror for one's harmless aspirations toward a life that wasn't all material and commonplace. He was my knight, that boy, thoughtful, considerate, and gentle. He was foolish sometimes, but I loved him because his ideals had not been destroyed."

"I lied to you. Life is a cinder."

She shook her head. "No, you did not lie to me--not then. Later you did when you asked me to come to New York. Oh, I know. I can see more clearly now. Suppose that even now I chose what you call your solution of the tangle we've made of things. You'd like to see Jeff desert me for Rita Cheyne so that you could have your own way with me now."

"Camilla! I was mad then. I thought you understood. Gretchen and I----"

"I understand many things better than I did," she interrupted. "You were no more mad then than you are now. I think I have always been willing to forgive you for that. I wanted to forgive you because I thought perhaps you didn't know what you were saying. But you make it harder for me now. The boy I knew in the West is dead, Cortland. In his place rides a man I do not know, a man with a shadow in his eyes, a man of the gay world, which moves along the line of least resistance, with little room in his heart for the troubles of the woman he once offered to protect with his life."

"I would still protect you--that is what I am offering."

"How? By making me a woman like Rita Cheyne, who changes her husbands as though they were fashions in parasols. You offer me protection from Jeff. I refuse it." And then she added a little haughtily, "I'm not sure that I need any protection."

He glowered toward her, searching her face sullenly.

"You love him?" he muttered.

She smiled a little proudly. "I can't love you both. Jeff is my husband."

"You love him?" he repeated. "Answer me!"

"Not when you take that tone. I'll answer you nothing. Come, we had better ride forward." And, before he could restrain her, she had urged her horse into a canter.

"Camilla!" he called.

But before he could reach her she had joined the others, outside the gates of Braebank.

*CHAPTER X*

*TRITON OF THE MINNOWS*

Mr. Janney's breakfast guests had gone, and, having seen the last of the country wagons depart, he went into the office next to the smoking room, where Cornelius Bent sat awaiting him. Curtis Janney brought a sheaf of telegrams and letters which he laid on the desk. Then he opened a humidor, offered his guest a cigar, took one himself, and sat down.