The Forbidden Way

"Camilla! Forgive me. I was only trying you. I will do whatever you say – I – "

She walked to the door rapidly, then paused uncertainly, leaning against the door-jamb and looking down the street.

"Will you go?" she murmured.

"I can't – not yet."

"You must – at once. Jeff Wray is coming here – now!"

"What have I to do with him?"

"Nothing – only if he guesses what you've been saying to me, I won't answer for him. That's all."

Bent looked up with a quick smile, and then sat on the nearest desk. "I suppose I ought to be frightened. What? Jeff is a kind of a 'bad man,' isn't he? But I can't go now, Camilla. Wouldn't be the sporting thing, you know. I think I'll stay. Do you mind if I smoke?"

She watched the approaching figure of Jeff for a moment irresolutely and then turned indoors. "Of course, I can't make you go," she said, "but I have always understood that when a woman expressed a wish to be alone, it was the custom of gentlemen – "

"You made my going impossible," he said coolly. "Don't forget that. I'll go after a while, but I won't run. You've got something to tell Jeff Wray. I prefer to be here when you do it."

"I didn't say I'd tell him," she put in quickly. "I'm not going to tell him. Now will you go?"

"No."

He sat on a desk, swinging one long leg to and fro and looking out of the open door, at which the figure of Jeff presently appeared. The newcomer took off his hat and shuffled in uneasily, but his wide stare and a nod to Bent showed neither surprise nor ill-humor. Indeed, his expression gave every sign of unusual content. He spoke to Bent, then gazed dubiously toward the teacher's desk, where Camilla, apparently absorbed in her letter, looked up with a fine air of abstraction, nodded, and then went on with her writing.

"Looks sort of coolish around here," said Jeff. "Hope I haven't butted into an Experience Meeting or anything." He laughed, but Bent only examined the ash of his cigarette and smiled. "I thought, Camilla," he went on, "maybe you'd like to take a ride – "

Miss Irwin looked up. She knew every modulation of Jeff's voice. His tone was quiet – as it had been yesterday – but in it was the same note of command – or was it triumph? She glanced at Cortland Bent.

"I'm not riding to-day," she said quietly.

"Not with Bent, either? That's funny. What will people think around here? We've sort of got used to the idea of seeing you two out together – kind of part of the afternoon scenery, so to speak. Nothing wrong, is there?"

Bent flushed with anger, and Camilla marveled at this new manifestation of Jeff's instinct. It almost seemed as though he knew what had happened between them as well as though she had told him. Jeff laughed softly and looked from one to the other with his mildest stare, as though delighted at the discovery.

Miss Irwin rose and put her letter in the drawer of the desk. "I wish you'd go – both of you," she said quietly. But Wray had made himself comfortable in a chair and showed no disposition to move.

"I thought you might like to ride out to the 'Lone Tree,'" he said. "You know Mr. Bent has leased it to me?"

"Yes, he told me."

"What else did he tell you?"

"Oh, I say, Wray," Bent broke in, "I don't see how that can be any affair of yours."

Jeff Wray wrapped his quirt around one knee and smiled indulgently. "Doesn't seem so, does it, Bent?" he said coolly. "But it really is. You see, Camilla – Miss Irwin – and I have been friends a long time – as a matter of fact, we're sort of engaged – "

"Jeff!" gasped the girl. The calmness of his effrontery almost, if not quite, deprived her of speech. "Even if it were true, you must see that it can hardly interest – "

"I thought that he might like to know. I haven't interfered much between you two, but I've been thinking about you some. I thought it might be just as well that Mr. Bent understood before he went away."

Camilla started up, stammered, began to speak, then sank in her chair again. Bent looked coolly from one to the other.

"There seems to be a slight difference of opinion," he said.

"Oh, we're engaged all right," Jeff went on. "That's why I thought I'd better tell you it wouldn't be any use for you to try to persuade Camilla – that is, Miss Irwin – to go to New York with you."

Jeff made this surprising statement with the same ease with which he might have dissuaded a client in an unprofitable deal. Miss Irwin became a shade paler, Bent a shade darker. Such intuition was rather too precise to be pleasant. Neither of them replied. Bent, because he feared to trust himself to speak – Camilla, because her tongue refused obedience.

"Oh, I'm a pretty good guesser. Camilla told you she wasn't going, didn't she? I thought so. You see, that wouldn't have done at all, because I'd have had to go all the way East to bring her back again. When we're married of course – "

"Jeff!" The girl's voice, found at last, echoed so shrilly in the bare room that even Wray was startled into silence. He had not seemed aware of any indelicacy in his revelation, but each moment added to the bitterness of Miss Irwin's awakening. Bent's indignity had made her hate herself and despise the man who had offered it. She thought she saw what kind of wood had been hidden under his handsome veneer – she had always known what Jeff was made of. The fibre was there, tough, strong, and ugly as ever, but it was not rotten. And in that hour she learned a new definition of chivalry.

"Jeff, will you be quiet?" But she went over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, and her words came slowly and very distinctly, as she looked over Wray's head into Cortland Bent's eyes. "What Mr. Wray says is true. I intend to marry him when he asks me to."

Bent bowed his head, as Jeff rose, the girl's hand in his.

"I reckon that about winds up all your loose ends around Mesa, don't it, Bent?" said Jeff cheerfully. "When are you leaving town?"

But Bent by this time had taken up his cap, and was gone.

CHAPTER III

NEW YORK

Wonderful things happened in the year which followed. The "Lone Tree" was a bonanza. Every month added to the value of the discovery. The incredulous came, saw, and were conquered, and Mesa City was a "boom town" again. Jeff Wray hadn't a great deal to say in those days. His brain was working overtime upon the great interlocking scheme of financial enterprises which was to make him one of the richest men in the West. He spoke little, but his face wore a smile that never came off, and his baby-blue stare was more vacuous than ever.

And yet, as month followed month and the things happened which he had so long predicted for himself and for the town, something of his old arrogance slipped away from him. If balked ambition and injured pride had made him boast before, it was success that tamed him. There was no time to swagger. Weighty problems gave him an air of seriousness which lent him a dignity he had never possessed. And if sometimes he blustered now, people listened. There was a difference.

As the time for her wedding approached, for the first time in her life Camilla felt the personality of the man. Why was it that she could not love him? Since that hour at the schoolhouse when Cortland Bent had shown her how near – and how fearful – could be the spiritual relation between a woman and a man, life had taken a different meaning to her.

Jeff's was a curious courtship. He made love to her bunglingly, and she realized that his diffidence was the expression of a kind of rustic humility which set her in a shrine at which he distantly worshipped. He seemed most like the Jeff of other days when he was talking of himself, and she allowed him to do this by the hour, listening, questioning, and encouraging. If this was to make the most of her life, perhaps it might be as well to get used to the idea. She could not deny that she was interested. Jeff's schemes seemed like a page out of a fairy book, and, whether she would or not, she went along with him. There seemed no limit to his invention, and there was little doubt in his mind, or, indeed, in hers, that the world was to be made to provide very generously for them both.

It was on the eve of their wedding day that Jeff first spoke of his childhood.

"I suppose you know, Camilla, I never had a father. That is," he corrected, "not one to brag about. My mother was a waitress in the Frontier Hotel at Fort Dodge. She died when I was born. That's my family tree. You knew it, I guess, but I thought maybe you'd like to change your mind."

He looked away from her. The words came slowly, and there was a note of heaviness in his voice. She realized how hard it was for him to speak of these things, and put her hand confidently in his.

"Yes, I knew," she said softly. "But I never weighed that against you, Jeff. It only makes me prouder of what you have become." And then, after a pause, "Did you never hear anything about him?"

"There were some letters written before I was born. I'll show them to you some day. He was from New York, that's all I know. Maybe you can guess now why I didn't like Cort Bent."

Camilla withdrew her hands from his and buried her face in them, while Wray sat gloomily gazing at the opposite wall. In a moment she raised her head, her cheeks burning.

"Yes, I understand now," she muttered. "He was not worth bothering about."

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