SIBYL AND CLAYTON
Returning that afternoon from a long and somewhat wearing journey, and
being distressed and troubled, Clayton encountered Sibyl, as he turned
into the Paradise trail.
She was mounted on a spirited bay horse, which she had obtained in the
town, and was riding out to make a call on Mary Jasper. She drew her
horse in, when she beheld Clayton, and sat awaiting him. He would have
fled, when he saw her there, but that such an act savored of
ungallantry and cowardice. So he continued on until he reached her
side. She looked into his troubled face with a smile, pushing back her
veil with a jeweled white hand from which she had drawn the glove. He
had always admired the beauty of her hands.
“I thought it was you,” she said in her sweetest manner. “So I waited
for you to come up.”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“I have friends in the town, you know, and I came down to visit them;
just now I am on my way to call on Mary. But it’s such a pleasure to
see you, Curtis, that if you don’t object I’ll ride with you a short
distance.”
The blood came into his face under that winning smile. He knew he
ought to hate this woman, and he had a sense of self-contempt when he
could not.
“I thought yesterday of calling on you,” she went on.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he contrived to say.
“Now, don’t be foolish and unreasonable, Curtis. I know what you’ve
thought, and all the horrid things that have been said about me since
Ben Davison’s death, but they weren’t true. It isn’t any pleasanter
for me to be lied about and misunderstood than it is for you and
Justin. Mary’s mind has been poisoned against me, but I’ll make her
see even yet that I’m not the woman she thinks I am.”
He sat looking at her in hesitation, the strange light which Justin
had noticed again in his eyes; he hardly heard her words, but he could
not fail to hear the music of her voice. It had not lost its charm.
“Good God, Sibyl,” he burst out, “if you could only have been true to
me, and we could have lived happily together!”
There was agony and yearning in his tone.
“You have thought many foolish things, which you had no right to
think, just like other people. Shall we ride along? There is a good
path leading by those bushes.”
“Yes, the trail past the Black Cañon.”
The fence hedging the mesa from the valley had been lately removed. He
turned his horse toward the path, and they rode along together. At
first he did not speak, but listened to her, with a glance at her now
and then as she sat, firmly erect and beautiful, on that handsome bay.
Her gray veil fluttered above her face. It was an attractive face,
even a beautiful one, after all the years, and the strain and turmoil
of them. There were a few fine hair-like wrinkles about the dark eyes,
but she knew how to conceal them. The rouge which Lemuel Fogg had
noticed in Denver was absent, or, having been deftly applied, was
unnoticed by Clayton. Her blue close-fitting riding habit, with a dash
of bright color at the throat, became her and heightened her charm.
And it was her beauty, unchanged, it seemed to him, which Clayton
devoured when he glanced at her; it was her beauty which had won his
boyish heart, and it had not lost its power.
“Good God, Sibyl, if you could only have been true to me!” he
exclaimed again.
She showed no irritation.
“You have thought many things that weren’t true; for you were never
willing to believe anything but the worst. This is a lovely country
here, isn’t it? And that cañon; it’s a horrid-looking hole, but
fascinating.”
“As fascinating as sin, or a beautiful woman.”
She laughed lightly.
“You always had a way of saying startling things. If you had set your
mind to it you might have been a great and successful flatterer.”
“I might have been many things, if other things had been different.”
“I suppose that is true of all of us. The trouble is that there seems
to be no forgiveness for mistakes.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her dark eyes looked into his. As they were withdrawn they took in
every detail of his face and figure.
“I really didn’t know you were so good looking, Curtis! You’re really
stunning on a horse, in that dark suit and those tan riding boots. I
think you must have prospered down here?”
“I have lived.”
“What I meant was that you never have been able to forgive any of my
mistakes.”
“Your sins, you mean.”
“Believing evil of me, you say sins. But I have been lied about,
Curtis, cruelly lied about; I’m not perfect, any more than you are,
but I’m not as bad as you think. You said a while ago, in one of your
dramatic ways, that if I could only have been true to you, and we
could have lived happily together! If I went wrong once, is that any
reason why I couldn’t be true to you now?”
His hand shook on the rein.
“I don’t believe you could be true to any man or any thing.”
“Now is that quite fair?”
“Perhaps it is not quite fair, but you know I have had good cause for
saying it.”
“Judge me by the present, not by the past. Do as you would be done by.
That’s been one of the tenets of your creed, I believe.”
“Judge you by the present?”
“Yes; give me a chance to show that I can be true to you.”
“You mean live with me again as my wife?”
“Why not?”
Again her dark eyes were scanning his face and figure. Plimpton was
gone, Ben Davison was dead, and the years were passing. Even Mary had
deserted her. She had no money, and soon might not have even so much
as a shelter to which she could turn. Mary’s desertion and loss of
faith in her had been the heaviest blow of all. It uprooted violently
a genuine affection.
Sibyl Dudley, in spite of a brave outward show, was beginning to feel
the terrifying loneliness of isolation; the protection of even that
broken arm of Curtis Clayton, which she had scorned in other days,
would be a comfort now. She knew that he had never ceased to love her,
and she might win and hold him again. That would at least forefend the
terrors of poverty and loneliness which threatened her in the shadows
of the gathering years.
Clayton did not reply to her question instantly. He looked off into
space with dark eyes that were troubled. Sibyl, glancing at him, saw
the stiff left arm swinging heavily, and thought of the flower in that
cañon long ago and of the foolish girl who stood on the cañon wall and
called to her devoted lover to get it for her. Afterward, that foolish
girl had trampled in the dust even the beautiful flower of his perfect
love. It began to seem that she would live to regret it, if she were
not regretting it already. The mills of the gods are still turned by
the river of Time, and they still grind exceeding fine.
“If I could but trust you!” he said, after a while, with a sigh.
They went on, past the granite wall of the cañon, and out upon the
high mesa beyond. Behind them lay Paradise Valley, smiling in the
sunshine of the warm afternoon. Before them was a dust of moving
cattle. Harkness, having received his instructions from Justin, was
bunching the mesa herd, with the assistance of cowboys, preparatory to
cutting out the cattle that had been sold and driving them to the
station for shipment.
“If I could but trust you!” Clayton repeated, when she made further
protest. “Perfect love casteth out fear, but I haven’t that perfect
love any longer.”
He turned on her an anguished face.
“Yet, even while I say that, I know that I have never stopped loving
you a single minute in all these years. Such love should have had a
better reward.”
“I was foolish, Curtis. And I have paid for my foolishness.”
The dark eyes turned to his were half veiled by the dark lashes, in
the old fascinating way. Cleopatra must have looked thus upon Antony.
“For all the heart-ache I have caused you I beg forgiveness. Kindness
has always been your hobby, kindness to everything, even the dumb
brutes; and now I think you ought to be a little bit kind to me, when
I come to you and tell you that I am sorry for everything, for all
that has been and all that you have believed.”
“I forgive you,” he said, breathing hard. “I forgave you from the
first.”
“But I want your love again. It isn’t often that a woman comes to a
man begging in this way.”
“You have always had my love, and you have it now; I never loved any
one else. I have never looked on any woman with thought of love since
I left you and came to this valley.”
The dust cloud had thickened, and from the mesa before them came
shouts and confused cries. Then from the right, out of the deep
trough-like depression which the cowboys called “the draw,” there
heaved suddenly a line of moving backs and clicking horns.
Sibyl was putting on the glove she had carried in her jeweled hand and
was arranging her veil. She had kept the hand ungloved that its beauty
might be displayed, but had begun to feel that both face and hand
needed protection from the hot sunshine. Clayton drew rein, when that
heaving line rose before him, apparently out of the earth. Until then
he had forgotten where he was, had forgotten everything but the woman
beside him.
Sibyl’s face whitened when she saw those tossing horns; and the veil,
escaping in her agitation, was blown toward the cattle. Startled by
having come so suddenly on these riders, the cattle were halting in
confusion. The fluttering veil, whirled into their midst by the wind,
completed the work of fear.
The rustle of a leaf as it scrapes and bobs over the ground, a flash
of sunlight from a bit of broken glass, the scampering of a coyote to
his covert, or the tumbling to earth of an unhorsed cowboy, will
sometimes throw a moving herd into a panic of fright and bring on a
wild stampede, though at other times all these things combined would
not have the slightest effect. The reason must be sought in the
psychology of fear.
The cattle in front whirled to race away from that fluttering object
of terror, while those behind crowded them on. In the midst of the
confusion, the larger herd plunged into view out of the dust cloud,
hurried along by the cowboys. A quiver of fright ran through the
entire heaving mass, and in an instant the stampede madness was born.
“We must get out of this!” Clayton shifted the reins to his stiff left
hand and turned her horse about. “You used to be a good horsewoman,
and we may have to do some sharp riding.”