“And she’s smart,” Jasper declared, “smart as a steel-trap; when she talked with me about takin’ Mary, and what she could do fer her, I could see that. She’s mighty good-lookin’, too; though I don’t think anybody can come up in looks to my Mary. I wisht you could have seen her with some of her new fixin’s on, which Mrs. Dudley bought fer her. She was certainly handsome. And she’s goin’ to enjoy herself there, I don’t doubt. I’ve already had a letter from her, tellin’ me how happy she is. I reckon I ought to be willin’ fer her to have things her mother never had, fer she’s fit fer it, and not have to slave as her mother did, and as I’ve always done. Yes, I reckon I’m glad she’s gone; though ’tis a bit lonesome here, fer I ain’t got anybody with me at all now, you see.”
Though Curtis Clayton had visited Sloan Jasper for the express purpose of uttering a warning against Sibyl, he permitted Jasper to talk on, and the warning words remained unsaid. Jasper was inexpressibily lonely, now that his daughter was gone; yet it was plain that he would not call her back, and equally plain that he knew she would not return if he called never so loudly. And he was trusting that the thing he could not help was the very best thing for the child he loved. Clayton felt that he could not stir up in the heart of this man a useless, peace-destroying, and perhaps a groundless, distrust.
So he rode away as the night shadows were falling, and gathered a great contempt for himself as he returned slowly homeward. He had no right to judge Sibyl, and possibly, very probably, misjudge her, he thought; yet he had a fear, amounting almost to conviction, that she was not a woman to whom should be given the charge and training of such a girl as Mary Jasper. That fear had sent him to Jasper; his retreat seemed a cowardly flight.
As for Mary, she was childishly happy in Denver. The only present cloud on the sky of her life was that her father had not really wished her to go. He had objected stoutly at first, but ever since her mother’s departure from the earthly Paradise, which had been full of all manner of hard labor, to that upper and better one where, her simple faith had assured her, she should toil no more, Mary had contrived to do pretty much as she pleased. Her head was filled with romantic ideas, garnered from Pearl Newcome’s much-read novels. In this matter, as in all others, she had taken her own way, like a high-headed young horse clamping the bit tightly between its teeth and choosing its road in defiance of the guiding rein. And her father had submitted, when he could do nothing else, had admired and praised her in the wonderful new clothing provided for her by Mrs. Dudley, and had driven her to the station with her little trunk packed with pretty trifles. He had kissed her good bye there, bravely enough, with hardly a quiver in his voice, and so she had gone away. She recalled him often now, standing, a pathetic figure, in his cheap clothing, waving his hand to her as she looked from the car window to throw a kiss as a final farewell.
But this picture seldom troubled her long. Denver was too attractive to the girl who had scarcely in her whole life seen a place larger than the little town at the base of the familiar flat-topped mountain. And what a gay, care-free life Denver led, as viewed by her through the eyes of Mrs. Dudley! This was Vanity Fair, though Mary had never even heard that name. Mrs. Dudley kept a carriage, which rolled with shining wheels through the Denver streets to the merry tattoo of trotting hoofs and the glint of silver-mounted harness. A driver sat on the box in blue livery, and the easy sway and jounce of the springs made her feel as if she were being lifted forward on velvet cushions.
Young men and old men turned about to admire her and the woman who sat by her side, as the carriage rolled along. Women looked at them, too, sometimes with shining eyes of envy; looked at the carriage, at the beautiful clothing, and the two bright faces. Mary wore jewels now, and Sibyl had roped her slender neck with a heavy gold thread which bore a neat little locket at its end. Into that locket Mary had put the gnarled wisp of hair which in a moment of devotion at home she had clipped from her father’s head. To wear it now was something of a penance for leaving him in his loneliness.
Sibyl had a “set,” which was very gay and overflowed with parties where cards were played for favors, and in little dances which were said to be very “select.” Gay debonair men and handsomely dressed women attended these dances and parties and made life one never-ending round of merriment. Mary thought she had never known what it was to really live until now. Sibyl delighted in her; the girl’s fresh flower-like face and inevitable gaucherie set off and added to Sibyl’s own attractiveness.
Mary wrote to her father with religious regularity every Sunday. Sunday was a religious day, and the writing of a letter to her father was performed almost as a sacred duty, so that Sunday seemed the appropriate day for it. She wrote also to Ben Davison, more fully than to her father, describing to him the joys of her new mode of life, and appealing to him not to be “savage” about her comments concerning some of the young men she met.
“Dear Ben,” she said in one of her letters, “Sibyl Dudley is a perfect darling. I am surprised that you didn’t know she had been married. I thought you knew all the time. She is divorced now, I think, though she never says anything to me about it. I’m sure there must be a beautiful romance in her life, as lovely as any of those Pearl reads, for sometimes when she thinks I’m busy she sits for a long time perfectly silent, as if thinking of something serious. But in spite of that she is as gay and happy as can be. Yes, she is a darling; and so are you, you old grumpy, grizzly bear! I wish you could send me a pony—not a broncho! It would be such fun to go galloping on my own pony through the streets. I ride a good deal, but these Denver horses are such big things. Mrs. Dudley is a superb horsewoman. Is that right, horsewoman?—it sounds funny, worse than cowboy. Sometimes when we meet people she introduces me as her niece, and the people smile and say how much we look alike. Isn’t that funny, too?”
Sibyl abounded in “charities,” and had numbers of feeble men and old women who devoutly, or otherwise, blest her shadow as she passed. Under her tutelage Mary also found it pleasant to play Lady Bountiful. It gave her quite as much comfort as the penning of that Sunday letter to her father. Her father had lived a saving and scrimping life and had never given anything to anybody, so that to Mary this was an entirely new and pleasing phase of life’s conduct. It made her feel so superior to bestow with unstinting hand, and be blest for the largess, as if the donor were a veritable gift-showering angel, or luxury-distributing fairy, with red gold on her wings.