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?"