“I’ll come for you in my car,” he told her.
“Oh! will you?” and she paid no more attention to him until he started to go, when she gave him a broad smile, showing a couple of gold teeth.
At nine o’clock he was waiting for her at the [pg 216] door, and she went with him. He took her for a drive on the mesa, heading for the only road house which the vicinity boasted. It was a great stone house, which had been built long ago by a rich man, and had later fallen into the hands of an Italian named Salvini, who installed a bar, and had both private dining rooms and bed rooms, these latter available only to patrons in whom he had the utmost confidence. This resort was informally known as the “chicken ranch.”
When Ramon tried to take his fair partner there, on the plea that they must have a bite to eat, she objected.
“I don’t believe that place is respectable,” she told him very primly. “I don’t think you ought to ask me to go there.”
“O Hell!” said Ramon to himself. But aloud he proposed that they should drive to an adjacent hill-top from which the lights of the town could be seen. When he had parked the car on this vantage point and lit a cigarette, Dora began a narrative of a kind with which he was thoroughly familiar. She was of that well-known type of woman who is found in a dubious position, but explains that she has known better days. Her father had been a judge in Kansas, the family had been wealthy, she had never known what work was until she got married, her marriage had been a tragedy, her husband had drank, there had been a [pg 217] smash-up, the family had met with reverses. On and on went the story, its very tone and character and the grammar she used testifying eloquently to the fact that she was no such crushed violet as she claimed to be. Ramon was bored. A year ago he would have been more tolerant, but now he had experienced feminine charm of a really high order, and all the vulgarity and hypocrisy of this woman was apparent to him. And yet as he sat beside her he was keenly, almost morbidly conscious of the physical attraction of her fine young body. For all her commonness and coarseness, he wanted her with a peculiarly urgent desire. Here was the heat of love without the flame and light, desire with no more exaltation than accompanies a good appetite for dinner. He was puzzled and a little disgusted.… He did not understand that this was his defeated love, seeking, as such a love almost inevitably does, a vicarious satisfaction.
Repugnance and desire struggled strangely within him. He was half-minded to take her home and leave her alone. At any rate he was not going to sit there and listen to her insane babble all night. To put his fortunes to the test, he abruptly took her in his arms. She made a futile pretence of resistance. When their lips touched, desire flashed up in him strongly, banishing all his hesitations. He talked hot foolishness to which [pg 218] she listened greedily, but when he tried to take her to Salvini’s again, she insisted on going home. Before he left her he had made another appointment.
Now began an absurd contest between the two in which Ramon was always manœuvring to get her alone somewhere so that he might complete his conquest if possible, while her sole object was to have him gratify her vanity by appearing in public with her. This he knew he could not afford to do. He could not even drive down the street with her in daylight without all gossips being soon aware he had done so. No one knew much about her, of course, but she was “one of those eating house girls” and to treat her as a social equal was to court social ostracism. He would win the enmity of the respectable women of the town, and he knew very well that respectable women rule their husbands. His prospects in business and politics, already suffering, would be further damaged.
Here again was a struggle within him. He was of a breed that follows instinct without fear, that has little capacity for enduring restraints. And he knew well that the other young lawyers, the gringos, were no more moral than he. But they were careful. Night was their friend and they were banded together in a league of obscene secrecy. He despised this code and yet he feared [pg 219] it. For the gringos held the whip; he must either cringe or suffer.
So he was careful and made compromises. Dora wanted him to take her to dinner in the main dining room of the hotel, and he evaded and compromised by taking her there late at night when not many people were present. She wanted him to take her to a movie and he pleaded that he had already seen the bill, and asked her if she wanted to bore him. And when she pouted he made her a present of a pair of silk stockings. She accepted all sorts of presents, so that he felt he was making progress. She was making vague promises now of “sometime” and “maybe,” and his desire was whipped up with anticipation, making him always more reckless.