CHAPTER VI
THE MOTH AND THE FLAME
Clayton was standing idly in front of his hotel. Sibyl Dudley and MaryJasper were driving by in the cool bright sunshine of the lateafternoon. Sibyl glanced keenly at the well-known figure. Clayton hadlost much in trimness and neatness of appearance by his long sojournin Paradise Valley. His clothing was ill-fitting, and his almostuseless left arm appeared to swing more stiffly than ever, as thecrowd jostled him. The contrast between the stylishly-dressed woman inthe carriage and this man who had once been her husband was marked.Yet the handsome face of the man was still there, almost unseamed, andit revealed kindness and cultured intelligence, as of old.
"It is Doctor Clayton!" she said. "He looks so lonely and is such astranger here that it will be a kindness if we speak to him. I knewhim very well once, you know."
The horses had trotted on, unnoticed by Clayton. Sibyl spoke now tothe 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 shemight be able to use him!
"Speak to him," she said to Mary. "It will please him, I'm sure, tomeet some one he knows. And it's so long since I met him that he mayhave forgotten me entirely."
The carriage with the well-groomed horses in their shining harness haddrawn up at the curb. Even yet the abstracted doctor had not observedthe occupants of the carriage. But now, when Mary addressed him, helooked up, almost startled to hear his name spoken there. Herecognized Mary, and his face flushed a deep red when he recognizedalso the woman who sat smiling beside her.
"It is Doctor Clayton, is it not?" said Sibyl, speaking to him andusing her utmost witchery. "It seems so strange to see you away fromParadise Valley. But it is a pleasure."
He came up to the carriage, hesitating for words. He did not trustthis woman, yet he could not forget what she had once been to him. Andhe had always liked Mary, as he liked her crabbed old father. He hadjustified himself for not speaking to Sloan Jasper, with the thoughtthat he really knew nothing concerning the life that Sibyl was living.When a man cannot justify his actions he loses self-respect, andClayton had never lost his self-respect. He had known nothing ofSibyl's private life from the moment of his plunge into theworld-forgotten valley of Paradise. He knew nothing now. As he lookedinto her eyes, the trepidation and confusion which had produced thathot 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 stillbeautiful; Sibyl, whom he had loved and married, and from whom he hadfled.
"You are looking well," he said to Mary, though she was not lookingwell, 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 youhave actually forgotten my name!" She smiled amiably. "Won't you take aseat with us for a little spin about the streets? This crowd boresyou, 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. Hebegan to realize that in Paradise Valley he had lost something. Wherewas the neatly-dressed college student, filled with learning and adesire to please? Apparently only the learning and the desire toplease remained. And that desire to please, which often took the formof an inability to displease any one, made it impossible for him torefuse this invitation.
Clayton, entering the carriage, found himself by Sibyl's dexterousmanipulation placed in the seat at her side, with Mary in the seat infront of them. He looked at Mary as the carriage started, and hewondered, and his heart smote him. Then he looked at the woman who satwith him.
"She is very happy with me," said Sibyl, as the horses beat theirnoisy tattoo through the street, deadening the sound of her voice."And there isn't a better girl in the world!" There was a peculiaremphasis on the words. "If you thought differently, you have been muchmistaken. She has been as safe with me as that boy Justin has beenwith you; and I love her as much as you can possibly love him. She isa 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 sillyideas into your head, simply because you see this carriage and I weara few diamonds. The carriage may be hired and the diamonds paste. Itwas one of your dogmas, you know, that people should always holdcharitable opinions."
"And I do. I have always thought kindly of you and had charitableopinions of you. One never knows what he would do if put in theposition of another. I was hurt, crushed; but I never could have it inmy heart to blame you for anything. Sometimes I felt bitter, but eventhe bitterness has long since worn away."
Mary turned in her seat and began to speak to them, and theconversation was not taken up until Clayton and Sibyl were alonetogether in her home, to which they were driven after they hadtraversed a few streets. Sibyl was anxious to get Clayton to herself,and she therefore cut the drive short, complaining of the chill ofapproaching night.
Mary, fluttering about the rooms, came into the parlor and went outagain at intervals. Sibyl had kindly relieved her of the task ofentertaining Clayton. Remembering the story of his broken arm, Maryfelt a deep sympathy for him, yet she had never been able to conversewith him at length. He was so learned and wise, and at times sostrange and silent, that he oppressed her. She revered him, but shecould 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 thinkabout Ben and what she should say to him in that letter. Thecomposition of a letter even to Ben was not always an easy thing; andthough she still wrote to her father each Sunday, what she said to himwas so brief, sometimes, that for all the space required to contain itshe might have sprawled it on a postal card.
While Mary thought of Ben and studied for words and sentences beforesecluding herself to begin the actual work of writing, she gavethought also to Clayton and Sibyl, and was quite sure that Sibyl waskind and charitable in thus seeking to give pleasure to the lonelydoctor who had been apparently at a loss in the Denver streets. Andthen, it came like a flash--what if Clayton should fall in love withSibyl, and they should marry? It seemed to her that much strangerthings had happened. And in contemplating this new and brightsuggestion she built up a very pretty little romance, which had amarked resemblance to some of those which Pearl used to read. Romanticideas fluttered in Mary's pretty head as thickly as butterflies amidJapanese cherry blossoms.
When she began the composition of her letter, dipping her gold pen inthe blue ink which Ben liked, Sibyl was at the piano and singing in away to disturb the flow of her thoughts.
"But she has a beautiful voice!" thought Mary, laying down the pen andlistening with admiration. "Wouldn't it be strange if they should takea fancy to each other and marry?"
It appeared entirely possible, now that Mr. Plimpton had departed fromDenver.
Sibyl was singing one of the old songs that touched the deep springsof the past, and Clayton with inexpressible yearning was wishing thatthe years between could drop away and he could be her willing slaveagain. The love that had been dead, though it came forth now boundabout with grave-clothes, lived again, and spoke to his heart afamiliar language.
"You remember the song?" she said, looking up into his face andsmiling. He had come forward to the piano.
"Yes," he confessed. "I shall never forget it. You sang it the eveningyou told me you loved me and would be my wife. I wish you had chosenanother."
"Why?"
She looked steadily into his eyes, half veiling her own with theirdark lashes.
"There is no need to ask," he said, and retreated to his chair. "Thechange since then is too great. I am not the same, and you are not thesame." 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. Certainplans were no longer fluid, and she believed she could use him.
"That doesn't sound like you, Curtis."
"Sibyl," he threw out his stif
f arm with a protesting gesture, "I hopeyou are not trying to play with me, as a cat with a mouse. You knowhow I have always felt toward you. You know that even after you soldyourself to that man Plimpton, I----"
She commanded silence by putting her fingers to her lips; andtip-toeing to the door she closed it, that Mary might not by anychance hear his unguarded words.
"Even after that I would have taken you back gladly, and could haveforgiven you and loved you, for I was always a fool about you. Youwill pardon me for speaking so plainly? I don't want to hurt yourfeelings. I went away, as you know, and have tried to find peace byburying myself from the world. And I have found peace, of a certainkind. But I am not the same as I was. I hope I am not as weak as Iwas."
Yet he knew he had at that moment no more stability than water. If hecould have believed any protestation she might make, he would havedone 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 nota bigger fool than the man who pitches himself headlong out of theliving world into a desert simply because he and his wife have agreedto a separation. But as you say, all that is past, and there is noneed to talk about it. Now I want to forget it and be your friend, ifI 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. Wehave been enemies a good while. Let us forget that, and be friendsagain."
"Mere friendship with you would never satisfy me, Sibyl. You know thatas well as I do. Unless I could be your husband, and hold youheart-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 inhim. 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 thatshe was approaching him from the wrong side.
"Yet mere friendship, as you call it, is a good thing. The friendshipbetween Mary and myself, for instance, and that between you andJustin--you will not say they are worthless. You even came up toDenver, I think, to see Justin, because you could not bear to beseparated 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 thefavor of your friendship. I thought we might be friends, good friends.You could establish yourself here in the city, and we could see eachother occasionally, if nothing else. I am a better woman than I usedto be, a very much better woman than you will believe me to be. Maryhas done that for me. And I suppose you thought I would ruin her? Thatshows 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 Icould believe you!"
Her words, which he knew to be lies, were still sweet. His heart wasfilled with unutterable longing, not for "the touch of a vanishedhand," but for a vanished past.
"I will be your friend," he said earnestly, after a moment. "I havenever been anything else, except when I was your devoted lover andfoolish 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 toforget. I shall be glad to be your friend, Sibyl. As to establishingmyself in Denver, to be near you, I will think about it. If--if therewere no such thing as memory, we might still be very happy."
His under-current of common sense told him that he had again entered afool's paradise.
"We can be happy, Curtis. You shall not leave Denver. I need more thanyour friendship. I need your love. I tossed it away, but I didn't knowwhat 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 hisvalise, in a state of delirious uncertainty. In the mirror he beheldhis face, ghastly as that of a dead man. But, slowly, his philosophycame to his aid,
"Lies, and I know it! And I am a coward! The thing for me to do is toget back into the wilderness."
The next morning he was gone. The letter which came shortly urgedJustin, in a shaky hand, to stand for principle, no matter whathappened, and explained that the writer felt that he must hurry home.
Justin Wingate, Ranchman Page 22