| There is no instinct like that of the heart… Lord Byron
A month had passed.
He found her on the bottom step, gazing pensively across the path at the broodmares gathered at the pasture fence.
“Will you walk with me, Sable? Please?”
She was warmly cloaked; though the rancher, healthy and accustomed to the rigors of an outdoor life, needed only his hat and a sheepskin vest over his blue flannel shirt to protect him from the cold.
Gazing first at his outstretched hand, then upward to the man himself, she, very slowly, accepted his assistance to rise. Silently, Galen clasped her shoulder, wishing to offer her only affection and support, and gestured they walk the beaten path, north, toward the Alteza Archway. They did not speak; words no longer came easily to either one of them. Yet he led her to the oak, and to the old bench he had carved so very long ago; in another lifetime so it seemed to him now. But only when she was seated, did he bend his long legs and hunker down before her, so that his eyes could meet hers.
“He asked you.”
Softly Sable sighed, and slowly nodded; yet no smile graced her lips. It seemed she had forgotten how.
Galen Metairie scowled. “He adores you, you know,” he said gently, rising languorously like a cat, only to settle down once more on the bench by her side. “He has spoken fondly of you these many months.” He paused, “And he never hesitated to scold me.” This time he sighed.
“Are you playing matchmaker, Mr. Metairie?” she asked bluntly. “Trying to rid yourself of a troublesome wife?”
Uncomfortable with her scrutiny, inhaling deeply, Galen removed his Stetson just long enough to smooth his thick brown hair back from his brow. “Is that what you think?” he asked softly.
The girl just nodded.
“I’m not, you know … trying to …” Metairie scowled. “What I’m trying to do, my sweet child …”
“I’m not a child, Galen,” she correctly sharply.
“I’m sorry, Sable, I … what I’m trying to do, my dear young woman, is make amends for the pain I’ve caused you.”
“How is that possible, Galen?” she demanded softly. “Can you erase the months? Return me to Chicago, to the time before we met?”
“Is that what you really want, my dear?” he inquired intently. “You’ve changed, grown in so many ways since you came to Alteza … would you truly want to be the girl you were before … ahhh … before you met me?”
She studied him then, his tired gaunt face … the face of a man who had found no peace in his life; and now this new … situation … with his “wife.” But, no …
“No, Galen.” Her voice was soft. “I would never want to go back … to that other life. To those people.” Even a hint of a smile emerged. “I never truly lived before … before you … or before you brought me to your home. Because it was here that I found my family.” The tears came unbidden to her eyes, and quickly, glancing away from him, she attempted to wipe them away.
Again, he encircled her shoulder and drew her to him. “They care for you, too, Sable … more than you will ever know. As do I … our only desire to see you happy.”
Sad still, yet feeling comforted by his touch, her voice was hoarse. “You care for me, you say?” she demanded softly, “But not as a husband should.”
He pulled her closer. “No,” he whispered; “but the fault for that lies within me. My heart is bound and will not allow it.”
“Bound?” she repeated, the hurt in her voice so obvious. “To Mariah.”
“I didn’t say that. Would never say that.”
“You didn’t have to, Galen … for I am neither a child nor a fool. Sully didn’t have to tell me that.”
He withdrew his arm and rose from the bench; at first standing before her, then, slowly, began to pace back and forth, all the while his gaze never leaving hers.
“There is much you need to understand, my young beauty,” he explained bluntly. “About me, about the way I’ve always been … and about Sully as well.” For a second he stood still, just to study the young woman whose immediate future so concerned him; and then, once again, began his pacing, for all intents like a caged wild beast.
“Sable, I’m a man … not a school boy. I’ve known many women in my life. Surely you understand that!” he exclaimed. “But I have never brought one home to Alteza before … much less given a woman my name or assumed responsibility for her life. And when I married you …”
“For your own reasons.”
“Yes,” he admitted; “When, for my own reasons, I asked you to join your life with mine, I truly wanted you for my wife.”
“Why?” she interrupted. “Why me, Galen? I was certainly not your intellectual equal. Perhaps my package was pleasing, but I’ve always thought you, of all people, could see past superficial beauty.”
“Why?” he repeated, halting his speech, to gaze fondly at the girl. “It was your spirit, Sable … I felt you crying out for something more. More,” he explained, “than what the rich boys for whom you were holding court could possibly offer you; more than the endless socializing and empty chatter, though this seemed to satisfy the rest of the girls. I could sense your hunger! Not for wealth … but to experience life! For I sensed in you a depth the others of your class did not have.
Yet I’ll be honest, my girl … not only did I want to help satisfy your longing for growth and adventure, but my own as well. I wanted to see life again … new … through your eyes: To share your enthusiasm and inquiring nature.” Galen sighed. “But the truth of the matter,” he stated bluntly; “Why not admit to ourselves what was obvious to all? Why does a forty-year-old man marry a girl of nineteen, Sable? To reclaim his youth, no doubt; to mold her in another’s image, perhaps; or, as in my case, a desperate attempt to recreate a love that was never really mine.”
But he would continue the matter. “And why, my dear Sable, would a girl of your age even consider marriage to a forty-year-old man? And what kind of father would consent to your marrying a man you … or he … hardly even knew? So what were you seeking in our union, my dear … except the father’s devotion you never had? For the same traits which attracted you … my maturity, work ethic and commitment to a stated goal … are, in fact, the very traits which distressed you so immediately upon our arrival here … because they took me away from you.”
“But there was more to it that that!” she cried; “Much more.”
Inhaling deeply, he contemplated the young woman who sat before him. “I know, sweetheart,” he murmured, sitting beside her once more, simply relieved that she did not reject his comforting arm. “For so many reasons, could ever there be a worse husband than I?” he asked frankly. “Although I was … and still am, I hope … encouraging and supportive to you, Sable … for you are very dear to me; but as a lover, I failed you miserably. And brought you to this state … and for that, dearest girl, I will never cease trying to atone.”
The silence consumed them: for Sable, because she suffered; for Galen, because he was the cause of her suffering.
“Sable,” he whispered, “Please. Never, did I intend you hurt. It’s just, when we returned to my home, I … I … realized nothing had changed.” Again he hesitated, and his voice hoarsened; yet he asked her bluntly: “How does one break the pattern of twenty years, dear girl? Or alter the dictates of one’s own heart?”
“You never should have married me,” she stated; “Or brought me here.” Deeply, Sable sighed. “If half the things Sully told me are true …” Her voice failed, and, still, sadness consumed her.
“My dear,” he explained, “There is much you need to understand about Sully and me. What were Schiller’s words? ‘“For the hatred of former friends is of all the most fierce and irreconcilable.”’
Again he rose to stand before her. “Once we were very close, much like Courty and I are now. We helped him establish his own spread, not from benevolence, but because, in many ways, we thought of him as family. But three years ago, he changed. He said he could never forgive me … yet would never tell me why. Then he disappeared. And although I’ve heard a rare report of his activities in the territory, I have not seen him since.”
“Oh, yes, he hates you quite thoroughly.”
Again he sat beside her. “Then let him hate me, sweet Sable. For that is a matter between men. But that he used you to get to me is his cruelest act! And one I will never forgive.”
“But I love him,” she moaned, and buried her face in her hands.
“Oh Gawd!” Galen groaned, his gut so twisted, her heart a wreck. And softly he caressed her slim back.
“That two such men with wounded hearts could wound your heart as well! And here I am now, more inconsiderate even raising the question. But Sable … there is so much you need to know … before you contemplate a different future for yourself … and, even more importantly, for your child.”
She was listening.
“Sully is…” Galen looked around impatiently, searching for the right words. “I don’t know what Sully is!” he exclaimed. “I know who he was … a boy, a man who was my close friend and frequent companion for fifteen years. A man worthy of the name! But what he has become…”
Again he hesitated; and heaved a ragged sigh. In perplexity, Galen Metairie shrugged his shoulders, his face a scowl.
“Unlike your father, Sable, I will be quick to tell you bluntly: You do not know this man! And although once I thought of him almost as a brother, I do not know the man he has become…although his association with the likes of Moor is telling me plenty.
But, my dearest girl, even were he somehow to show up here, to plead for you to come to him … to be his wife … I still don’t trust the man to keep his word! To marry you or to care for you or to keep you safe.
And THAT is what is at issue here, Sable,” he stated coldly: “Your safety … and that of your child. Here at Alteza, I can protect you. Courty can protect you. But once you leave our domain, you are exposed to the primitive nature of this territory … and to the primitive nature of the men who infest it.
Remember the cowtown where we left the train? And remember that drunken cowboy who sought to accost you before Courty and I whisked you away. Just hours later that same man was jailed for savagely beating to death a young prostitute who dared to ask him for her fifty cent fee. She was sixteen years old, Sable; yet already had a two-year-old son she was trying to raise in a tiny room behind the livery.”
His expression grim, Galen continued. “I heard this sad tale before we boarded the stage, Sable. The girl had been seduced … then abandoned … and had been forced to take to the streets to try to keep her child alive.
I’m telling you this now, Sable, to make you aware how dangerous life is out here for a young woman alone. Here I can protect you. But even the idea of you leaving Alteza grips me with great fear!”
“He said you would try to keep me … not because of love, but that Metairies hold their own. That I was your possession … no different than your cattle or your horses or your land.”
“Do you really believe that?”
His visage was grim, worried; and Sable read only concern, not arrogance, in his sad brown eyes. And he was voicing the concern for her which her father had not.
“No,” she softly replied. “No.”
He considered her soberly. “What he should have said to you was: Metairies take care of their own. No one knows that better than Sully.”
First she rose, then he followed, and silently they walked once again under the great Alteza Archway and back toward the house.
“Did Courty tell you about his land, Sable?” he asked quietly as they strolled side-by-side. “And that he is wealthy in his own right?”
“Yes,” she murmured, staring down at the ground before her.
“Of course,” he hurried to add, “Wealth does not equate with happiness, my dear.” He scowled. “As you well know. But, since he has asked for your hand, you should be informed of his circumstance.”
He glanced at her once again, as they halted at the bottom of the ten stone steps. “Please know this, my dear: Courty’s feelings for you are deep. I have known this for some time, and was tortured by it. But Court is a fine man and very honorable, and would have kept his love for you forever silent rather than betray me. But now, at last, he no longer is compelled to do so. And he has declared his love for you.
Sable, I seek not to determine your course … for I have no right in the matter. But I care for you greatly; as I do for Court. I want you and your child safe; and if you and Courty could find happiness together … I would be a contented man.
But, if you choose another course,” he advised soberly, “I will support you still, dear girl; but know this: If I feel the course you choose … the man you choose … is a threat in any way, I will not stand idly by. I will do what your father did not, Sable: I will endeavor to protect you.”
Her smile was soft; and she gazed up into the caring face of the man she had dared to marry. “I must think” her only words.
He nodded, on his lips the barest trace of a smile; with a gentle squeeze to her shoulder, he walked away. And, slowly, Sable ascended the ten stone steps once again.
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