All these years she had kept Mary Jasper with her. Her attitude toward Mary may be thought singular. Yet to Sibyl it was entirely natural. She had plucked and worn this fair flower at first that it might add to her attractiveness, as she would have plucked a wild rose to tuck in her corsage on some gay evening when she desired to accentuate her physical attractions in the eyes of men. But the utter simplicity and guilelessness which Mary had worn through all as a protecting armor had touched some hidden spring in this woman’s heart, so that she came at last to cherish a brave desire to stand well in the opinion of this pure girl and maintain firmly her position on that pinnacle of supposed goodness and kindness where Mary had established her. Hence her charities were continued by and by, not to create that inner warmth of which she had spoken, but that Mary might believe her to be charitable. And if any good angel could have done so great a thing as to pull her from that miry clay in which her feet were set Mary Jasper would, all unconsciously, have accomplished even that. Sibyl Dudley, driven back upon herself, had to have some one who could love and respect her; for in spite of all she was a woman, and love was starving in her heart.
But she was not courageous enough to be honest; and, having read through the papers, she sat thinking and planning how she might win money enough to continue her present fight against adverse circumstances. She could not confess to Mary that she was not rich, that she was a pretender, and vile and degraded. No, she could not do that. But to keep up her pretensions she must have money. Fortune telling was an odious and precarious calling. She was sinking deeper into debt. She must have money.
Putting away the papers and going to her mirror she scanned her appearance. In spite of her strenuous fight, Time had the slow-moving years with him, and they bit into heart and face like acid. She brought forth her rouge and her pencils. They had long worked wonders and her slender fingers had not lost their cunning. She was an artist in paint though she never touched brush to canvas.
When Mary came in Sibyl was singing in a light-hearted way and thrusting bits of cake to her canary between the bars of its gilded cage.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOTH AND THE FLAME
Clayton was standing idly in front of his hotel. Sibyl Dudley and Mary Jasper were driving by in the cool bright sunshine of the late afternoon. Sibyl glanced keenly at the well-known figure. Clayton had lost much in trimness and neatness of appearance by his long sojourn in Paradise Valley. His clothing was ill-fitting, and his almost useless left arm appeared to swing more stiffly than ever, as the crowd jostled him. The contrast between the stylishly-dressed woman in the carriage and this man who had once been her husband was marked. Yet the handsome face of the man was still there, almost unseamed, and it revealed kindness and cultured intelligence, as of old.
“It is Doctor Clayton!” she said. “He looks so lonely and is such a stranger here that it will be a kindness if we speak to him. I knew him very well once, you know.”
The horses had trotted on, unnoticed by Clayton. Sibyl spoke now to the driver, and the carriage was turned and driven back to the hotel. The old desire to prove her power over this man possessed her. And she might be able to use him!
“Speak to him,” she said to Mary. “It will please him, I’m sure, to meet some one he knows. And it’s so long since I met him that he may have forgotten me entirely.”
The carriage with the well-groomed horses in their shining harness had drawn up at the curb. Even yet the abstracted doctor had not observed the occupants of the carriage. But now, when Mary addressed him, he looked up, almost startled to hear his name spoken there. He recognized Mary, and his face flushed a deep red when he recognized also the woman who sat smiling beside her.
“It is Doctor Clayton, is it not?” said Sibyl, speaking to him and using her utmost witchery. “It seems so strange to see you away from Paradise Valley. But it is a pleasure.”
He came up to the carriage, hesitating for words. He did not trust this woman, yet he could not forget what she had once been to him. And he had always liked Mary, as he liked her crabbed old father. He had justified himself for not speaking to Sloan Jasper, with the thought that he really knew nothing concerning the life that Sibyl was living. When a man cannot justify his actions he loses self-respect, and Clayton had never lost his self-respect. He had known nothing of Sibyl’s private life from the moment of his plunge into the world-forgotten valley of Paradise. He knew nothing now. As he looked into her eyes, the trepidation and confusion which had produced that hot flush was mingled with pity and a yearning touch of the old love. She had faded, she was garish, yet she was Sibyl, and to him still beautiful; Sibyl, whom he had loved and married, and from whom he had fled.
“You are looking well,” he said to Mary, though she was not looking well, for trouble with Ben had set shadows in her dark eyes. “And you, too Mrs.–”
He hesitated.
“Dudley,” Sibyl supplemented. “We haven’t met for so long that you have actually forgotten my name!” She smiled amiably. “Won’t you take a seat with us for a little spin about the streets? This crowd bores you, I know.”
He still hesitated, hunting for words. He had never felt so awkward, nor had his clothing ever seemed to set so badly or look so mean. He began to realize that in Paradise Valley he had lost something. Where was the neatly-dressed college student, filled with learning and a desire to please? Apparently only the learning and the desire to please remained. And that desire to please, which often took the form of an inability to displease any one, made it impossible for him to refuse this invitation.
Clayton, entering the carriage, found himself by Sibyl’s dexterous manipulation placed in the seat at her side, with Mary in the seat in front of them. He looked at Mary as the carriage started, and he wondered, and his heart smote him. Then he looked at the woman who sat with him.
“She is very happy with me,” said Sibyl, as the horses beat their noisy tattoo through the street, deadening the sound of her voice. “And there isn’t a better girl in the world!” There was a peculiar emphasis on the words. “If you thought differently, you have been much mistaken. She has been as safe with me as that boy Justin has been with you; and I love her as much as you can possibly love him. She is a dear, true, simple-hearted girl, and she thinks everything of me. And I am much better than you have ever thought. So don’t get silly ideas into your head, simply because you see this carriage and I wear a few diamonds. The carriage may be hired and the diamonds paste. It was one of your dogmas, you know, that people should always hold charitable opinions.”
“And I do. I have always thought kindly of you and had charitable opinions of you. One never knows what he would do if put in the position of another. I was hurt, crushed; but I never could have it in my heart to blame you for anything. Sometimes I felt bitter, but even the bitterness has long since worn away.”
Mary turned in her seat and began to speak to them, and the conversation was not taken up until Clayton and Sibyl were alone together in her home, to which they were driven after they had traversed a few streets. Sibyl was anxious to get Clayton to herself, and she therefore cut the drive short, complaining of the chill of approaching night.
Mary, fluttering about the rooms, came into the parlor and went out again at intervals. Sibyl had kindly relieved her of the task of entertaining Clayton. Remembering the story of his broken arm, Mary felt a deep sympathy for him, yet she had never been able to converse with him at length. He was so learned and wise, and at times so strange and silent, that he oppressed her. She revered him, but she could not talk with him. Besides, she had a letter to write to Ben, who was coming to Denver in a day or two, and she wanted to think about Ben and what she should say to him in that letter. The composition of a letter even to Ben was not always an easy thing; and though she still wrote to her father each Sunday, what she said to him was so brief, sometimes, that for all the space required to contain it she might have sprawled it on a postal card.
While Mary thought of Ben and studied for words and sentences before secluding herself to begin the actual work of writing, she gave thought also to Clayton and Sibyl, and was quite sure that Sibyl was kind and charitable in thus seeking to give pleasure to the lonely doctor who had been apparently at a loss in the Denver streets. And then, it came like a flash—what if Clayton should fall in love with Sibyl, and they should marry? It seemed to her that much stranger things had happened. And in contemplating this new and bright suggestion she built up a very pretty little romance, which had a marked resemblance to some of those which Pearl used to read. Romantic ideas fluttered in Mary’s pretty head as thickly as butterflies amid Japanese cherry blossoms.
When she began the composition of her letter, dipping her gold pen in the blue ink which Ben liked, Sibyl was at the piano and singing in a way to disturb the flow of her thoughts.
“But she has a beautiful voice!” thought Mary, laying down the pen and listening with admiration. “Wouldn’t it be strange if they should take a fancy to each other and marry?”
It appeared entirely possible, now that Mr. Plimpton had departed from Denver.
Sibyl was singing one of the old songs that touched the deep springs of the past, and Clayton with inexpressible yearning was wishing that the years between could drop away and he could be her willing slave again. The love that had been dead, though it came forth now bound about with grave-clothes, lived again, and spoke to his heart a familiar language.
“You remember the song?” she said, looking up into his face and smiling. He had come forward to the piano.
“Yes,” he confessed. “I shall never forget it. You sang it the evening you told me you loved me and would be my wife. I wish you had chosen another.”
“Why?”
She looked steadily into his eyes, half veiling her own with their dark lashes.
“There is no need to ask,” he said, and retreated to his chair. “The change since then is too great. I am not the same, and you are not the same.” He glanced at his stiff arm and his ill-fitting clothing. “Nothing can ever be the same again.”
She was studying how she might win him, if only temporarily. Certain plans were no longer fluid, and she believed she could use him.
“That doesn’t sound like you, Curtis.”
“Sibyl,” he threw out his stiff arm with a protesting gesture, “I hope you are not trying to play with me, as a cat with a mouse. You know how I have always felt toward you. You know that even after you sold yourself to that man Plimpton, I–”
She commanded silence by putting her fingers to her lips; and tip-toeing to the door she closed it, that Mary might not by any chance hear his unguarded words.
“Even after that I would have taken you back gladly, and could have forgiven you and loved you, for I was always a fool about you. You will pardon me for speaking so plainly? I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I went away, as you know, and have tried to find peace by burying myself from the world. And I have found peace, of a certain kind. But I am not the same as I was. I hope I am not as weak as I was.”
Yet he knew he had at that moment no more stability than water. If he could have believed any protestation she might make, he would have done so joyfully, and would have gone far to purchase such a belief.
“I have been a great fool in many ways,” she admitted. “But I hope not a bigger fool than the man who pitches himself headlong out of the living world into a desert simply because he and his wife have agreed to a separation. But as you say, all that is past, and there is no need to talk about it. Now I want to forget it and be your friend, if I can’t be anything else.”
“What else would you be?”
He spoke in a hoarse voice.
“At present, just your friend. You need a friend, and I need one. We have been enemies a good while. Let us forget that, and be friends again.”
“Mere friendship with you would never satisfy me, Sibyl. You know that as well as I do. Unless I could be your husband, and hold you heart-true to me as my wife, I could never be anything to you.”
Though shaken by his emotions he spoke with unusual determination. Thoughts of Plimpton aroused whatever militant manhood there was in him. For the instant he felt that he ought to have killed Plimpton, and that his flight had been the flight of a coward. Sibyl saw that she was approaching him from the wrong side.
“Yet mere friendship, as you call it, is a good thing. The friendship between Mary and myself, for instance, and that between you and Justin—you will not say they are worthless. You even came up to Denver, I think, to see Justin, because you could not bear to be separated long from him.”
He looked at her earnestly, with a mental question.
“Don’t put your hands on him!”
“Don’t be a fool!” she said. “Why should I? But I won’t beg for the favor of your friendship. I thought we might be friends, good friends. You could establish yourself here in the city, and we could see each other occasionally, if nothing else. I am a better woman than I used to be, a very much better woman than you will believe me to be. Mary has done that for me. And I suppose you thought I would ruin her? That shows that you never understood me.”
“I couldn’t stay here in Denver!” he protested.
“We might be even more than friends, some time,” she urged sweetly.
“Sibyl,” he seemed about to rise from his chair, but sank back, “if I could believe you!”
Her words, which he knew to be lies, were still sweet. His heart was filled with unutterable longing, not for “the touch of a vanished hand,” but for a vanished past.
“I will be your friend,” he said earnestly, after a moment. “I have never been anything else, except when I was your devoted lover and foolish husband. I should like to be both again, if I could.”
“Even that might be. There is such a thing as forgetting, you know.”
“Not for me.”
“Then a forgiving.”
“Yes. Until to-night I thought I had forgiven, and I was trying to forget. I shall be glad to be your friend, Sibyl. As to establishing myself in Denver, to be near you, I will think about it. If—if there were no such thing as memory, we might still be very happy.”
His under-current of common sense told him that he had again entered a fool’s paradise.
“We can be happy, Curtis. You shall not leave Denver. I need more than your friendship. I need your love. I tossed it away, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I need your love, and I know you will not refuse it. You never refused me anything; whatever I asked, you gave me.”
He had already given her his life!
In his room at the hotel that night Clayton packed and unpacked his valise, in a state of delirious uncertainty. In the mirror he beheld his face, ghastly as that of a dead man. But, slowly, his philosophy came to his aid,
“Lies, and I know it! And I am a coward! The thing for me to do is to get back into the wilderness.”
The next morning he was gone. The letter which came shortly urged Justin, in a shaky hand, to stand for principle, no matter what happened, and explained that the writer felt that he must hurry home.
CHAPTER VII
THE COMPACT
Lemuel Fogg was very much astonished when he received a call from Sibyl Dudley, who invaded the privacy of his room without taking the trouble to announce her coming. Fogg did not know much about Mrs. Dudley, except that she was a friend and patron of Sloan Jasper’s pretty daughter, and lived in Denver. He had once remarked to an acquaintance, as she passed, that she was “a stunning woman.” And he was not ready to withdraw that opinion now, when he saw her before him. Having sallied forth to conquer, she had not neglected anything that would add to her attractiveness in masculine eyes.
It did not take Sibyl long to acquaint Fogg with the nature of her errand. She was tactfully frank, for she knew how to reach such a man.
“Mr. Fogg, I’m horribly in debt,” she announced, looking him in the face without the quiver of an eyelash. “I must have money, five thousand dollars, to be paid to me if I prevent Justin Wingate from giving his vote to the man the irrigationists want for United States senator.”
He stared at her. How handsome she was! And what nerve she displayed! Not one woman in a thousand would have made such a confession, or come at him in that manner. Her idea appealed to him, if there was anything in it.
“Why, what can you do?” he asked. He smoothed his limp mustache, and wondered if his collar set just right; he knew he had forgotten to turn his reversible cuffs that morning! “What can you do, Mrs. Dudley? Everything has been done that can be done already. I’ve begged him, argued with him, prayed with him; and every man on our side who is supposed to have the least influence with him has done the same thing. We have even threatened him. Promises, threats, bribes, nothing will move him.”
Sibyl smiled at him across the little table. She had beautiful teeth.
“It can be done,” she said, with sweet conviction.
So singular and confident was her expression that he was almost tempted to look into her ungloved right hand to see if she clasped a poniard. He saw only the flash of her rings.
“Why, what would you do;” he cried, in sudden amazement; “knife him?”
She gave him a glance of scorn, which melted at once into a captivating smile.
“How absurd you are! Who ever dreamed of such a thing? This isn’t the Back of Beyond.”
“What would you do?”
“Is it worth five thousand dollars to you if Justin Wingate does not vote against the cattlemen’s candidate for senator?”
He regarded her thoughtfully, and jingled the watch chain that lay across his round stomach.
“Yes,” he admitted, “it’s worth every cent of it.”
“Will you agree to pay me that sum if I do keep him from casting that vote? I am in debt and must have money; five thousand dollars is little enough; but if you will satisfy me that you will give me that much money I will prevent that vote.”
“Tell me how you’re going to do it.”
“If I told you I should render my services valueless. You will have to trust everything to me.”
“You want me to sign a note, or promise; I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be good politics.”
“Then you will have to pay me something in advance. I must be secured in some manner.”
Lemuel Fogg had never yet bought a pig in a poke, and he did not intend to begin that doubtful practice now. He questioned Sibyl Dudley’s ability to do what she said. She was a very charming woman; he admired her very much; but beautiful women had never the power to make Lemuel Fogg cut his purse-strings. So he refused, very tactfully and graciously, as becomes a man who has to refuse anything to a pretty woman. She saw that it was a refusal, and final.
“What will you do, then?” she asked. “If Justin casts that vote you lose your senator. I can keep him from casting it.”
“If you will be quite frank with me, we’ll get on faster, Mrs. Dudley,” Fogg urged. “You could perhaps tell me something of your plans; I don’t ask to know too much. But five thousand dollars is a big sum of money.”
“It’s a small sum, Mr. Fogg, for what I propose to do. You don’t believe I can prevent Justin from voting against your man. I can see you don’t.”
“Well, I’ll say this much—nobody else could! Everything has been tried that could be thought of. The fellow is a fool, and it’s impossible to reason with a fool.”
“Justin is anything but a fool, but he has an uncomfortable lot of queer notions. I think he must have obtained them from that doctor he has been living with down in Paradise Valley. I chance to know something of the character of Doctor Clayton; and while he is, I suppose, one of the best men in the world, so far as pure goodness goes, he is as foolish and illogical as a cat, or a woman.”
“Yet you are a woman!”
Fogg was beginning to be comfortable again. He would not have to advance money to Mrs. Dudley, and having safely weathered that dangerous cape he felt better.
“All women are not cats or fools. For instance, I am not so foolish as not to know the value of money, and the value of the ability I happen to have. You say you won’t advance me anything; what will you do?”
Fogg looked at her and jingled his watch chain.
“Mrs. Dudley, I’m willing to be as generous as you can expect, conditionally. If that money should be paid I’d have to take a big part of it out of my own pocket. The rest I could probably raise among my friends. I will promise you, as faithfully as a promise can be made that is not put in writing, that if by any means you can induce or force Justin Wingate to vote for our man for United States senator, or even to withhold his vote from the opposition, you shall have the five thousand dollars you named. We could win with his vote, and if he refused to vote at all I think we still could win. Will that promise do?”
“Five thousand dollars is not enough, if I am to have no money in advance. I shall charge you interest; a thousand dollars in interest.” She laughed lightly. “Give me your promise that if Justin refuses to cast his vote for United States senator, or votes for your man, I may draw on you for six thousand dollars through any bank if you do not pay the money at once, and I will demonstrate my ability to control him. Six thousand dollars if I succeed, and not a cent if I fail. That is fair.”
Fogg twisted uneasily in his chair, which was almost too small for his big body.
“You’re trying to drive a hard bargain. Remember that I shall probably have to pay the most of that money myself, if you succeed.”
“If you’re as shrewd as I think you are you will not have to pay a cent of it; you can twist it out of men who are interested in this matter. I feel sure that your candidate for senator, together with his friends and the cattlemen, would raise ten thousand dollars, and not say a word against it, if this thing could be guaranteed. I’ve studied the papers, Mr. Fogg.”
She laughed again lightly.
“Yes, if it could be guaranteed.”
“This is the same; the money can be raised conditionally; you can get it together in some bank, with the understanding that it is to be returned to those who contribute, every cent, if the thing is not accomplished. And another thing, Mr. Fogg; it will be as well not to mention my name in the matter. Political secrets must be kept close, when so many newspaper men are around. If Justin should once get the idea into his head that a deliberate attempt is being made to control him everything would be lost.”
“Yes, I agree with you there.” He put his fat hands on the arms of his chair and settled back heavily. He was running over the list of men from whom money might be secured. “And I think I can raise the money, if necessary. Six thousand dollars to you if Justin Wingate does not vote, or votes for our man; and you can draw on me for it the day after a United States senator is elected, if I fail to pay it. It’s a bargain; and I hope I shall have to pay it.”
“You will have to pay it. Pardon me if I say to you that I didn’t come here on a fool’s errand. I have your promise, and I shall consider it as binding as a note.”
She arose, still looking at him. For a moment she hesitated, then put out her ungloved hand. He had scrambled out of his chair, and he took the hand, giving it a warm pressure.
“Mr. Fogg, now that we know each other, we can help each other!” She fixed her clear dark eyes upon his. On her upturned face he observed a single rouge spot, hastily applied, but it did not trouble him; his thought was that she was very beautiful. The touch of her warm hand tingled in his large one. “And I hope,” she hesitated in a most attractive manner, “that we can be very good friends!”
“I should like to, Mrs. Dudley, I should like to; and I’ll get you that money. You needn’t be afraid that I’ll fail in that. You shall have the whole of it, if I have to pay it myself. I’m very glad that you came to see me in this manner, privately. You’re a woman to know.”
He laughed coarsely.
But when she was gone, when her personality no longer enthralled, and he sat down to think of her visit in cold blood, Lemuel Fogg began to feel that it might not be a good thing for his bank account if he knew Mrs. Dudley too intimately.
“But I’m glad she came,” he thought, as he settled back in his chair, put his feet on the table for comfort, and struck a match to light his cigar; “we must have that note; or at least we must get it away from the opposition, if it can be done. I’ll begin a hustle for that money to-morrow. But I wonder how she expects to control him? By smiling on him, as she did on me?”