The several days following Dave's unexpected call at Las Palmas Alaire
spent in a delightful reverie. She had so often wrestled with the
question of divorce that she had begun to weary of it; and now, when
she tried to summon energy to consider it anew, she found herself, as
usual, reasoning in a circle and arriving at no decision. She gave up
trying, at length, and for the time being rested content in the
knowledge that she loved and was loved. In her heart she knew well
enough what her ultimate course would be: sooner or later events would
force her action. Yielding to a natural cowardice, therefore, she
resigned herself to dreamy meditations and left the future to take care
of itself. A week passed while she hugged her thoughts to her breast,
and then one evening she rode home to learn that Ed had returned from
San Antonio.
But Ed was ill, and he did not appear at dinner. It had been years
since either had dared invade the other's privacy, and now, inasmuch as
her husband did not send for her, Alaire did not presume to offer her
services as nurse. As a matter of fact, she considered this quite
unnecessary, for she felt sure that he was either suffering the
customary after-effects of a visit to the city or else that he lacked
the moral courage to undertake an explanation of his hurried flight
from the ranch. In either event she was glad he kept to his room.
Heretofore their formal relations had made life at least tolerable to
Alaire, but now she experienced a feeling of guilt at finding herself
under the same roof with him. Oddly enough, it seemed to her that in
this she wronged Dave and not her husband; for she reasoned that,
having given her love to one man, her presence in the same house with
another outraged that love.
When Austin made his appearance, on the day following his return, his
bleared eyes, his puffy, pasty cheeks, his shattered nerves, showed
plainly enough how he had spent his time. Although he was jumpy and
irritable, he seemed determined by an assumption of high spirits and
exaggerated friendliness to avert criticism. Since Alaire spared him
all reproaches, his efforts seemed to meet with admirable success. Now
Ed's opinion of women was not high, for those with whom he habitually
associated were of small intelligence; and, seeing that his wife
continued to manifest a complete indifference to his past actions, he
decided that his apprehensions had been groundless. If Alaire
remembered the Guzman affair at all, or if she had suspected him of
complicity in it, time had evidently dulled her suspicions, and he was
a little sorry he had taken pains to stay away so long.
Before many days, however, he discovered that this indifference of hers
was not assumed, and that in some way or other she had changed. Ed was
accustomed, when he returned exhausted from a debauch, to seeing in his
wife's eyes a strained misery; he had learned to expect in her bearing
a sort of pitying, hopeless resignation. But this time she was not in
the least depressed. On the contrary, she appeared happier, fresher,
and younger than he had seen her for a long time. It was mystifying.
When, one morning, he overheard her singing in her room, he was
shocked. Over this phenomenon he meditated with growing amazement and a
faint stir of resentment in his breast, for he lived a self-centered
life, considering himself the pivot upon which revolved all the affairs
of his little world. To feel that he had lost even the power to make
his wife unhappy argued that he had overestimated his importance.
At length, having sufficiently recovered his health to begin drinking
again, he yielded one evening to an alcoholic impulse and, just as
Alaire bade him good night, clumsily sought to force an explanation.
"See here!" he shot at her. "What's the matter with you lately?" He saw
that he had startled her and that she made an effort to collect her
wandering thoughts. "You're about as warm and wifely as a stone idol."
"Am I any different to what I have always been?"
"Humph! You haven't been exactly sympathetic of late. Here I come home
sick, and you treat me like one of the help. Don't you think I have
feelings? Jove! I'm lonesome."
Alaire regarded him speculatively, then shook her head as if in answer
to some thought.
In an obvious and somewhat too mellow effort to be friendly, Ed
continued: "Don't let's go on like this, Alaire. You blame me for going
away so much, but, good Lord! when I'm home I feel like an interloper.
You treat me like a cow-thief."
"I'm sorry. I've tried to be everything I should. I'm the interloper."
"Nonsense! If we only got along together as well as we seem to from the
outside it wouldn't be bad at all. But you're too severe. You seem to
think a man should be perfect. Well, none of us are, and I'm no worse
than the majority. Why, I know lots of fellows who forget themselves
and do things they shouldn't, but they don't mean anything by it. They
have wives and homes to go to when it's all over. But have I? You're as
glad to see me as if I had smallpox. Maybe we've made a mess of things,
but married life isn't what young girls think it is, A wife must learn
to give and take."
"I've given. What have I taken?" she asked him in a voice that quivered.
Ed made an impatient gesture. "Oh, don't be so literal! I mean that,
since we're man and wife, it's up to you to be a little
more--broad-gauge in your views."
"In other words, you want me to ignore your conduct. Is that it? I'm
afraid we can't argue that, Ed."
Within the last few days Austin's mind had registered a number of new
impressions, and at this moment he realized that his wife was
undoubtedly the most attractive woman physically he had ever known. Of
course she was cold, but she had not always been so. He had chilled
her; he had seen the fire die year by year, but now the memory of her
as she had once been swept over him, bringing a renewed appreciation of
her charms. His recent dissipation had told upon him as heavily as a
siege of sickness, and this evening he was in that fatuous, sentimental
mood which comes with convalescence, Having no fault to find with
himself, and feeling merely a selfish desire to make more pleasant his
life at Las Palmas, he undertook to bend Alaire to his will.
"All right; don't let's try to argue it," he laughed, with what he
considered an admirable show of magnanimity. "I hate arguments, anyhow;
I'd much rather have a goodnight kiss."
But when he stooped over her Alaire held him off and turned her head.
"No!" she said.
"You haven't kissed me for--"
"I don't wish to kiss you."
"Don't be silly," he insisted. This suggestion of physical resistance
excited his love of conquest and awoke something like the mood of a
lover--such a lover as a man like Ed could be. For a moment he felt as
if Alaire were some other woman than his wife, a woman who refused and
yet half expected to be overcome; therefore he laughed self-consciously
and repeated, "Come now, I want a kiss."
Alaire thrust him back strongly, and he saw that her face had whitened.
Oddly enough, her stubbornness angered him out of all reason, and he
began a harsh remonstrance. But he halted when she cried:
"Wait! I must tell you something, Ed. It's all over, and has been for a
long time. We're going to end it."
"End it?"
"We can't go on living together. Why should we?"
"So? Divorce? Is that it?"
Alaire nodded.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Ed was dumfounded. "Isn't this rather sudden?"
he managed to inquire.
"Oh no. You've suggested it more than once."
"I thought you didn't believe in divorces--couldn't stomach 'em? What's
happened?"
"I have changed my mind."
"Humph! People don't change their minds in a minute," he cried,
angrily. "Is there some other man?"
Now Ed Austin had no faintest idea that his wife would answer in the
affirmative, for he had long ago learned to put implicit confidence in
her, and her life had been so open that he could not imagine that it
held a double interest. Therefore her reply struck him speechless.
"Yes, Ed," she said, quietly, "there is another man."
It was like her not to evade. She had never lied to him.
Ed's mouth opened; his reddened eyes protruded. "Well--" he stammered.
"Well, by God!" Then after a moment: "Who is it, the Greaser or the
cowboy?" He laughed loudly, disagreeably. "It must be one or the other,
for you haven't seen any men except them. Another man! Well, you're
cool about it."
"I am glad you know the truth."
Muttering to himself, Ed made a short excursion around the room, then
paused before his wife with a sneer on his lips. "Did it ever occur to
you that I might object?" he demanded.