“Me.” With grim sarcasm he added, “And you know that it is against the law of both God and man for a married man to fall in love.”
Feeling dimly that something was expected of him, but debarred from congratulations by the other’s irony, Billy floundered, bringing several attempts at speech to a lame conclusion. “When—when did it—happen?”
“Happen? That’s it.” Seyd jumped at the word. “It happened in New Mexico three years ago when I was down there ‘experting’ the Calumet group. She was the daughter of a mine foreman, pretty and neat as a grouse in the fall, but of the hopelessly common type. I don’t have to describe her. You’ve seen them, in pairs, swinging their skirts along the boardwalks of any small town, their eyes on every man and a burst of giggles always on tap. I should never have paid her any serious attention if several of her admirers hadn’t done me the honor of getting jealous. Until one big lout warned me to leave her alone under penalty of broken bones it was never more than a mild flirtation, but after that I went deeper—so deep that it was soon impossible for me to withdraw. At least, I thought it was then, though I have since come to regard my marriage with her almost as a crime. You see, I thought it would break her heart, but in less than a week after the marriage I discovered that she was nothing but a bundle of small vanities bound up in a pretty skin, that she hadn’t a thought above the money and position she expected to gain through me. And how she changed! As a girl she was soft, fluffy, and innocent as a kitten, but one by one her small vanities and frivolities developed into appetites and passions, and I awoke to the fact that she was altogether animal—a beautiful animal, prettier than ever in her young wifehood, but without the slightest capacity for intellectual or spiritual development.
“If that had been all—one can love a handsome horse or a dog, and I have seen women of as low a type to be lifted out of themselves by the strength of their love. But she was absolutely selfish—loved only herself. What made it even more unbearable, she was conceited with the supreme conceit of absolute ignorance that scorns all that is unknown to itself. She would try to impose her own inch-and-a-half notions of things upon me, and she did not hesitate to pit the scraps of knowledge she had picked up around the mines against my professional training. She was bound to remold me on her own crude model. Actual wickedness would have been easier to bear, and I can assure you that the third month of our married life found me absolutely miserable. Fortunately, I received a commission just then to ‘expert’ a group of Mexican mines, and, as she preferred civilization as it goes in New Mexico to the hardships of a trip through the Sonora desert, I left her behind. Later I came south on a prospecting trip through the Sierra Madres, and have never seen her since.”
All through he had spoken with the furious vehemence of a man easing a load off his mind. Thrusting a letter into Billy’s hand, he finished, walking away: “Read that—I got it at the station yesterday. It reveals more than I could tell you in the next twenty-four hours.”
And it surely did. The stiff round hand, as much as the bald statement of want and desires, revealed a nature blind to all but its own ends. Every phrase was a cry or complaint. He had no business to go off and leave her alone! All her friends agreed that it was a “shame and a disgrace.” But he needn’t think that she would stand such treatment forever! He had better come home, and that at once! So far she hadn’t tried to “better herself.” But it wasn’t for lack of the chance! There was a gentleman—no fresh dude or college guy, but a rich mining man, eminently respectable, who had shown a decided interest! He (Seyd) had better look out. Thus and so did the awkward hand run over many pages, and, while Billy’s eye followed, his expression gradually settled in complete disgust.
“Hopelessly common! You poor chap,” he muttered, looking after Seyd, who was now helping Caliban to arrange the goods as he carried them from the mules into the adobe. “To think that you have had this on your mind all this time!” After a moment’s reflection he added, “But—married or unmarried, you are still in love.”
Unaware of this frank opinion, Seyd went on arranging the stores. While working, the eager vehemence of his manner settled into heavy brooding, and it was not for some time that a cheerful flash indicated his arrival at some conclusion.
“I’ve got it!” he murmured. And turning so suddenly that Caliban dropped the package he was carrying in, he asked, “Hast thou any acquaintance at San Nicolas?”
Reassured that the strange gringo madness was not to be vented on him, the hunchback nodded. “One of the kitchen women is daughter to my sister.”