The year was nearly up now. It had but three months to run and Gene’s record had been exemplary. He had come to the city only twice, when his father noticed with a jealously-watchful eye that he had been resolutely abstemious in the matter of liquor and that his interest in the great property he managed had been the strongest he had so far evinced in anything. The thought that Gene might possibly live up to his side of the bargain and win the ranch caused the old man to experience that feeling of blank chagrin which is the state of mind of the unexpectedly swindled. He felt like a king who has been daringly and successfully robbed by a slave.
At dinner that evening Gene was very talkative. He told of his life on the ranch, of its methodical monotony, of its seclusion, for he saw little of his neighbors and seldom went in to the town. Rose listened with eager interest, and the old man with a sulky, glowering attention. At intervals he shot a piercing look at his boy, eying him sidewise with a cogitating intentness of observation. His remarks were few, but Gene was so loquacious that there was little opportunity for another voice to be heard. He prattled on like a happy child, recounting the minutest details of his life after the fashion of those who live much alone.
In the light of the crystal lamp that spread a ruffled shade of yellow silk over the center of the table, he was seen to be quite unlike his father or sister. His jet-black hair and uniformly pale skin resembled his mother’s, but his face in its full, rounded contours, slightly turned-up nose, and eyebrows as thick as strips of fur, had a heaviness hers had lacked. Some people thought him good-looking, and there was a sort of unusual, Latin picturesqueness in the combination of his curly black hair, which he wore rising up in a bulwark of waves from his forehead, his white skin, and the small, dark mustache, delicate as an eyebrow, that shaded his upper lip. It was one of his father’s grievances against him that he would have made a pretty girl, and that his soft, affectionate character would have been quite charming in a woman. Now, listening to him, it seemed to the older man as if it were just the kind of talk one might expect from Gene. The father had difficulty in suppressing a snort of derision when he heard the young man recounting to Rose his troubles with his Chinese cook.
Before dinner was over Gene excused himself on the plea that he was going to the theater.
“I’m such a hayseed now,” he said as he rose, “that I don’t want to miss a thing. Haven’t seen a play for six months and I’m just crazy to see anything, Monte Cristo, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne. I’m not proud, anything’ll suit me.”
“Don’t you ever go into San Luis?” growled his father sulkily. “They have plays there sometimes, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, but I’m keeping out of harm’s way. The boys in San Luis don’t know how it is with me. They don’t understand and I’m not going to put myself in the way of temptation. You know, father, I want that ranch.”
He turned a laughing glance on his father; and the old man, with a sheepishly-discomfited expression, grunted an unintelligible reply and bent over his plate.
He did not raise his head till Gene had left the room, when, looking up, he leaned back in his chair and said with a plaintive sigh,
“What a damned fool that boy is!”