Part 40

"It was you and the kiddies I was thinking of," said my husband, in a slightly remote voice. And the mockery of that statement, knowing what I knew, was too much for me.

"I'm sorry you didn't think of us a little sooner," I observed. And I had the bitter-sweet reward of seeing a stricken light creep up into Dinky-Dunk's eyes.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

But I didn't answer that question of his. Instead, I asked him another.

"Did you know that Lady Alicia came here and announced that she was in love with you?" I demanded, resolved to let the light in to that tangled mess which was fermenting in the silo of my soul.

"Yes, I know," he quietly affirmed, as he hung his head. "She told me about it. And it was awful. It should never have happened. It made me ashamed even--even to face you!"

"That was natural," I agreed, with my heart still steeled against him.

"It makes a fool of a man," he protested, "a situation like that."

"Then the right sort of man wouldn't encourage it," I reminded him, "wouldn't even permit it." And still again I caught that quick movement of impatience from him.

"What's that sort of thing to a man of my age?" he demanded. "When you get to where I am you don't find love looming so large on the horizon. What--"

"No, it clearly doesn't loom so large," I interrupted.

"What you want then," went on Dinky-Dunk, ignoring me, "is power, success, the consolation of knowing you're not a failure in life. That's the big issue, and that's the stake men play big for, and play hard for."

It was, I remembered in my bitterness of soul, what I myself had been playing hard for--but I had lost. And it had left my heart dry. It had left my heart so dry that my own Dinky-Dunk, standing there before me in the open sunlight, seemed millions of miles removed from me, mysteriously depersonalized, as remote in spirit as a stranger from Mars come to converse about an inter-stellar telephone-system.

"Then you've really achieved your ambition," I reminded my husband, as he stood studying a face which I tried to keep tranquil under his inspection.

"Oh, no," he corrected, "only a small part of it."

"What's the rest?" I indifferently inquired, wondering why most of life's victories, after all, were mere Pyrrhic victories.

"You," declared Dinky-Dunk, with a reckless light in his eyes, "You, and the children, now that I'm in a position to give them what they want."

"But are you?" I queried.

"Well, that's what I'm coming back to demonstrate," he found the courage to assert.

"To them?" I asked.

"To all of you!" he said with a valiant air of finality.

I told him it was useless, but he retorted that he didn't propose to have that stop him. I explained to him that it would be embarrassing, but he parried that claim by protesting that sacrifice was good for the soul. I asserted that it would be a good deal of a theatricality, under the circumstances, but he attempted to brush this aside by stating that what he had endured for years might be repeated by patience.

So Dinky-Dunk is coming back to Alabama Ranch! It sounds momentous, and yet, I know in my heart, that it doesn't mean so very much. He will sleep under the same roof with me as remote as though he were reposing a thousand miles away. He will breakfast and go forth to his work, and my thoughts will not be able to go with him. He will return with the day's weariness in his bones, but a weariness which I can neither fathom nor explain in my own will keep my blood from warming at the sound of his voice through the door. Being still his wife, I shall have to sew and mend and cook for him. That is the penalty of prairie life; there is no escape from propinquity.

But that life can go on in this way, indefinitely, is unthinkable. What will happen, I don't know. But there will have to be a change, somewhere. There will have to be a change, but I am too tired to worry over what it will be. I'm too tired even to think of it. That's something which lies in the lap of Time.

Saturday the Twenty-fifth

Dinky-Dunk is back. At least he sleeps and breakfasts at home, but the rest of the time he is over at Casa Grande getting his crop cut. He's too busy, I fancy, to pay much attention to our mutual lack of attention. But the compact was made, and he seems willing to comply with it. The only ones who fail to regard it are the children. I hadn't counted on them. There are times, accordingly, when they somewhat complicate the situation. It didn't take them long to get re-acquainted with their daddy. I could see, from the first, that he intended to be very considerate and kind with them, for I'm beginning to realize that he gets a lot of fun out of the kiddies. Pee-Wee will go to him, now, from anybody. He goes with an unmistakable expression of "Us-men-have-got-to-stick-together" satisfaction on his little face.

But Dinky-Dunk's intimacies, I'm glad to say, do not extend beyond the children. Three days ago, though, he asked me about turning his hogs in on my land. It doesn't sound disturbingly emotional. But if what's left of my crop, of course, is any use to Duncan, he's welcome to it....

I looked for that letter which I wrote to Dinky-Dunk several weeks ago, looked for it for an hour and more this morning, but haven't succeeded in finding it. I was sure that I'd put it between the pages of the old ranch journal. But it's not there.