Part 7 (1/2)
Why don't you divorce me? G.o.d knows I never see anything of you. You have your part of the house and I have mine; all we share in common is meal-hours, and--and a mail address. You're about as much my wife as Dolores is.”
Alaire turned upon him eyes dark with misery. ”You know why I don't divorce you. No, Ed, we're going to live out our agreement, and these Brownsville episodes are going to cease.” Her lips whitened. ”So are your visits to the pumping-station.”
”What do you mean by that?”
”You transferred Panfilo because he was growing jealous of you and Rosa.”
Ed burst into sudden laughter. ”Good Lord! There's no harm in a little flirtation. Rosa's a pretty girl.”
His wife uttered a breathless, smothered exclamation; her hands, as they lay on the table-cloth, were tightly clenched. ”She's your tenant--almost your servant. What kind of a man are you? Haven't you any decency left?”
”Say! Go easy! I guess I'm no different to most men.” Austin's unpleasant laughter had been succeeded by a still more unpleasant scowl. ”I have to do SOMETHING. It's dead enough around here--”
”You must stop going there.”
”Humph! I notice YOU go where YOU please. Rosa and I never spent a night together in the chaparral--”
”Ed!” Alaire's exclamation was like the snap of a whip. She rose and faced her husband, quivering as if the lash had stung her flesh.
”That went home, eh? Well, I'm no fool! I've seen something of the world, and I've found that women are about like men. I'd like to have a look at this David Law, this gunman, this Handsome Harry who waits at water-holes for ladies in distress.” Ed ignored his wife's outflung hand, and continued, mockingly: ”I'll bet he's all that's manly and splendid, everything that I'm NOT.”
”You'd--better stop,” gasped the woman. ”I can't stand everything.”
”So? Well, neither can I.”
”After--this, I think you'd better go--to San Antonio. Maybe I'll forget before you come back.”
To this ”Young Ed” agreed quickly enough. ”Good!” said he. ”That suits me. It's h.e.l.l around Las Palmas, anyhow, and I'll at least get a little peace at my club.” He glowered after his wife as she left the room.
Then, still scowling, he lurched out to the gallery where the breeze was blowing, and flung himself into a chair.
V
SOMETHING ABOUT HEREDITY
It had required but one generation to ripen the fruits of ”Old Ed”
Austin's lawlessness, and upon his son heredity had played one of her grimmest pranks. The father had had faults, but they were those of his virtues; he had been a strong man, at least, and had ”ridden herd” upon his unruly pa.s.sions with the same thoroughness as over his wild cattle.
The result was that he had been universally respected. At first the son seemed destined to be like his father. It was not until ”Young Ed” had reached his full manhood that his defects had become recognizable evil tendencies, that his infirmity had developed into a disease. Like sleeping cancers, the Austin vices had lain dormant in him during boyhood; it had required the mutation from youth to manhood, and the alterative effect of marriage, to rouse them; but, once awakened, their ravages had been swift and destructive. Ed's marriage to Alaire had been inevitable. They had been playmates, and their parents had considered the union a consummation of their own lifelong friends.h.i.+p.
Upon her mother's death, Alaire had been sent abroad, and there she remained while ”Young Ed” attended an Eastern college. For any child the experience would have been a lonesome one, and through it the motherless Texas girl had grown into an imaginative, sentimental person, living in a make-believe world, peopled, for the most part, with the best-remembered figures of romance and fiction. There were, of course, some few flesh-and-blood heroes among the rest, and of these the finest and the n.o.blest had been ”Young Ed” Austin.
When she came home to marry, Alaire was still very much of a child, and she still considered Ed her knight. As for him, he was captivated by this splendid, handsome girl, whom he remembered only as a shy, red-headed little comrade.
Never was a marriage more propitious, never were two young people more happily situated than these two, for they were madly in love, and each had ample means with which to make the most of life.
As Las Palmas had been the elder Austin's wedding-gift to his son, so Alaire's dowry from her father had been La Feria, a grant of lands across the Rio Grande beyond the twenty-league belt by which Mexico fatuously strives to guard her border. And to Las Palmas had come the bride and groom to live, to love, and to rear their children.
But rarely has there been a shorter honeymoon, seldom a swifter awakening. Within six months ”Young Ed” had killed his wife's love and had himself become an alcoholic. Others of his father's vices revived, and so multiplied that what few virtues the young man had inherited were soon choked. The change was utterly unforeseen; its cause was rooted too deeply in the past to be remedied. Maturity had marked an epoch with ”Young Ed”; marriage had been the mile-post where his whole course veered abruptly.
To the bride the truth had come as a stunning tragedy. She was desperately frightened, too, and lived a nightmare life, the while she tried in every way to check the progress of that disintegration which was eating up her happiness. The wreck of her hopes and glad imaginings left her sick, bewildered, in the face of ”the thing that couldn't.”