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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com. + + + + + +THE ARGONAUTS OF NORTH LIBERTY + +by Bret Harte + + + + +PART I + +CHAPTER I + + +The bell of the North Liberty Second Presbyterian Church had just +ceased ringing. North Liberty, Connecticut, never on any day a +cheerful town, was always bleaker and more cheerless on the +seventh, when the Sabbath sun, after vainly trying to coax a smile +of reciprocal kindliness from the drawn curtains and half-closed +shutters of the austere dwellings and the equally sealed and hard- +set churchgoing faces of the people, at last settled down into a +blank stare of stony astonishment. On this chilly March evening of +the year 1850, that stare had kindled into an offended sunset and +an angry night that furiously spat sleet and hail in the faces of +the worshippers, and made them fight their way to the church, step +by step, with bent heads and fiercely compressed lips, until they +seemed to be carrying its forbidding portals at the point of their +umbrellas. + +Within that sacred but graceless edifice, the rigors of the hour +and occasion reached their climax. The shivering gas-jets lit up +the austere pallor of the bare walls, and the hollow, shell-like +sweep of colorless vacuity behind the cold communion table. +The chill of despair and hopeless renunciation was in the air, +untempered by any glow from the sealed air-tight stove that seemed +only to bring out a lukewarm exhalation of wet clothes and cheaply +dyed umbrellas. Nor did the presence of the worshippers themselves +impart any life to the dreary apartment. Scattered throughout the +white pews, in dull, shapeless, neutral blotches, rigidly separated +from each other, they seemed only to accent the colorless church +and the emptiness of all things. A few children, who had huddled +together for warmth in one of the back benches and who had became +glutinous and adherent through moisture, were laboriously drawn out +and painfully picked apart by a watchful deacon. + +The dry, monotonous disturbance of the bell had given way to the +strain of a bass viol, that had been apparently pitched to the key +of the east wind without, and the crude complaint of a new +harmonium that seemed to bewail its limited prospect of ever +becoming seasoned or mellowed in its earthly tabernacle, and then +the singing began. Here and there a human voice soared and +struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous cadence with a +cry of individual longing, but was borne down by the dull, +trampling precision of the others' formal chant. This and a +certain muffled raking of the stove by the sexton brought the +temperature down still lower. A sermon, in keeping with the +previous performance, in which the chill east wind of doctrine was +not tempered to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, followed. +A spark of human and vulgar interest was momentarily kindled by the +collection and the simultaneous movement of reluctant hands towards +their owners' pockets; but the coins fell on the baize-covered +plates with a dull thud, like clods on a coffin, and the dreariness +returned. Then there was another hymn and a prolonged moan from +the harmonium, to which mysterious suggestion the congregation rose +and began slowly to file into the aisle. For a moment they +mingled; there was the silent grasping of damp woollen mittens and +cold black gloves, and the whispered interchange of each other's +names with the prefix of "Brother" or "Sister," and an utter +absence of fraternal geniality, and then the meeting slowly +dispersed. + +The few who had waited until the minister had resumed his hat, +overcoat, and overshoes, and accompanied him to the door, had +already passed out; the sexton was turning out the flickering gas +jets one by one, when the cold and austere silence was broken by a +sound--the unmistakable echo of a kiss of human passion. + +As the horror-stricken official turned angrily, the figure of a man +glided from the shadow of the stairs below the organ loft, and +vanished through the open door. Before the sexton could follow, +the figure of a woman slipped out of the same portal and with a +hurried glance after the first retreating figure, turned in the +opposite direction and was lost in the darkness. By the time the +indignant and scandalized custodian had reached the portal, they +had both melted in the troubled sea of tossing umbrellas already to +the right and left of him, and pursuit and recognition were +hopeless. + + +CHAPTER II + + +The male figure, however, after mingling with his fellow-worshippers +to the corner of the block, stopped a moment under the lamp-post +as if uncertain as to the turning, but really to cast a long, +scrutinizing look towards the scattered umbrellas now almost lost +in the opposite direction. He was still gazing and apparently +hesitating whether to retrace his steps, when a horse and buggy +rapidly driven down the side street passed him. In a brief glance +he evidently recognized the driver, and stepping over the curbstone +called in a brief authoritative voice: + +"Ned!" + +The occupant of the vehicle pulled up suddenly, leaned from the +buggy, and said in an astonished tone: + +"Dick Demorest! Well! I declare! hold on, and I'll drive up to +the curb." + +"No; stay where you are." + +The speaker approached the buggy, jumped in beside the occupant, +refastened the apron, and coolly taking the reins from his +companion's hand, started the horse forward. The action was that +of an habitually imperious man; and the only recognition he made +of the other's ownership was the question: + +"Where were you going?" + +"Home--to see Joan," replied the other. "Just drove over from +Warensboro Station. But what on earth are YOU doing here?" + +Without answering the question, Demorest turned to his companion +with the same good-natured, half humorous authority. "Let your +wife wait; take a drive with me. I want to talk to you. She'll be +just as glad to see you an hour later, and it's her fault if I +can't come home with you now." + +"I know it," returned his companion, in a tone of half-annoyed +apology. "She still sticks to her old compact when we first +married, that she shouldn't be obliged to receive my old worldly +friends. And, see here, Dick, I thought I'd talked her out of it +as regards YOU at least, but Parson Thomas has been raking up all +the old stories about you--you know that affair of the Fall River +widow, and that breaking off of Garry Spofferth's match--and about +your horse-racing--until--you know, she's more set than ever +against knowing you." + +"That's not a bad sort of horse you've got there," interrupted +Demorest, who usually conducted conversation without reference to +alien topics suggested by others. "Where did you get him? He's +good yet for a spin down the turnpike and over the bridge. We'll +do it, and I'll bring you home safely to Mrs. Blandford inside the +hour." + +Blandford knew little of horseflesh, but like all men he was not +superior to this implied compliment to his knowledge. He resigned +himself to his companion as he had been in the habit of doing, and +Demorest hurried the horse at a rapid gait down the street until +they left the lamps behind, and were fully on the dark turnpike. +The sleet rattled against the hood and leathern apron of the buggy, +gusts of fierce wind filled the vehicle and seemed to hold it back, +but Demorest did not appear to mind it. Blandford thrust his hands +deeply into his pockets for warmth, and contracted his shoulders as +if in dogged patience. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was +tired, cold, and anxious to see his wife, he was conscious of a +secret satisfaction in submitting to the caprices of this old +friend of his boyhood. After all, Dick Demorest knew what he was +about, and had never led him astray by his autocratic will. It was +safe to let Dick have his way. It was true it was generally Dick's +own way--but he made others think it was theirs too--or would have +been theirs had they had the will and the knowledge to project it. +He looked up comfortably at the handsome, resolute profile of the +man who had taken selfish possession of him. Many women had done +the same. + +"Suppose if you were to tell your wife I was going to reform," said +Demorest, "it might be different, eh? She'd want to take me into +the church--'another sinner saved,' and all that, eh?" + +"No," said Blandford, earnestly. "Joan isn't as rigid as all that, +Dick. What she's got against you is the common report of your free +way of living, and that--come now, you know yourself, Dick, that +isn't exactly the thing a woman brought up in her style can stand. +Why, she thinks I'm unregenerate, and--well, a man can't carry on +business always like a class meeting. But are you thinking of +reforming?" he continued, trying to get a glimpse of his +companion's eyes. + +"Perhaps. It depends. Now--there's a woman I know--" + +"What, another? and you call this going to reform?" interrupted +Blandford, yet not without a certain curiosity in his manner. + +"Yes; that's just why I think of reforming. For this one isn't +exactly like any other--at least as far as I know." + +"That means you don't know anything about her." + +"Wait, and I'll tell you." He drew the reins tightly to accelerate +the horse's speed, and, half turning to his companion, without, +however, moving his eyes from the darkness before him, spoke +quickly between the blasts: "I've seen her only half a dozen times. +Met her first in 6.40 train out from Boston last fall. She sat +next to me. Covered up with wraps and veils; never looked twice at +her. She spoke first--kind of half bold, half frightened way. +Then got more comfortable and unwound herself, you know, and I saw +she was young and not bad-looking. Thought she was some school- +girl out for a lark--but rather new at it. Inexperienced, you +know, but quite able to take care of herself, by George! and +although she looked and acted as if she'd never spoken to a +stranger all her life, didn't mind the kind of stuff I talked to +her. Rather encouraged it; and laughed--such a pretty little odd +laugh, as if laughing wasn't in her usual line, either, and she +didn't know how to manage it. Well, it ended in her slipping out +at one end of the car when we arrived, while I was looking out for +a cab for her at the other." He stopped to recover from a stronger +gust of wind. "I--I thought it a good joke on me, and let the +thing drop out of my mind, although, mind you, she'd promised to +meet me a month afterwards at the same time and place. Well, when +the day came I happened to be in Boston, and went to the station. +Don't know why I went, for I didn't for a moment think she'd keep +her appointment. First, I couldn't find her in the train, but +after we'd started she came along out of some seat in the corner, +prettier than ever, holding out her hand." He drew a long +inspiration. "You can bet your life, Ned, I didn't let go that +little hand the rest of the journey." + +His passion, or what passed for it, seemed to impart its warmth to +the vehicle, and even stirred the chilled pulses of the man beside +him. + +"Well, who and what was she?" + +"Didn't find out; don't know now. For the first thing she made me +promise was not to follow her, nor to try to know her name. In +return she said she would meet me again on another train near +Hartford. She did--and again and again--but always on the train +for about an hour, going or coming. Then she missed an appointment. +I was regularly cut up, I tell you, and swore as she hadn't kept her +word, I wouldn't keep mine, and began to hunt for her. In the midst +of it I saw her accidentally; no matter where; I followed her +to--well, that's no matter to you, either. Enough that I saw her +again--and, well, Ned, such is the influence of that girl over me +that, by George! she made me make the same promise again!" + +Blandford, a little disappointed at his friend's dogmatic +suppression of certain material facts, shrugged his shoulders. + +"If that's all your story," he said, "I must say I see no prospect +of your reforming. It's the old thing over again, only this time +you are evidently the victim. She's some designing creature who +will have you if she hasn't already got you completely in her +power." + +"You don't know what you're talking about, Ned, and you'd better +quit," returned Demorest, with cheerful authoritativeness. "I tell +you that that's the sort of girl I'm going to marry, if I can, and +settle down upon. You can make a memorandum of that, old man, if +you like." + +"Then I don't really see why you want to talk to ME about it. And +if you are thinking that such a story would go down for a moment +with Joan as an evidence of your reformation, you're completely +out, Dick. Was that your idea?" + +"Yes--and I can tell you, you're wrong again, Ned. You don't know +anything about women. You do just as I say--do you understand?-- +and don't interfere with your own wrong-headed opinions of what +other people will think, and I'll take the risks of Mrs. Blandford +giving me good advice. Your wife has got a heap more sense on +these subjects than you have, you bet. You just tell her that I +want to marry the girl and want her to help me--that I mean +business, this time--and you'll see how quick she'll come down. +That's all I want of you. Will you or won't you?" + +With an outward expression of sceptical consideration and an inward +suspicion of the peculiar force of this man's dogmatic insight, +Blandford assented, with, I fear, the mental reservation of telling +the story to his wife in his own way. He was surprised when his +friend suddenly drew the horse up sharply, and after a moment's +pause began to back him, cramp the wheels of the buggy and then +skilfully, in the almost profound darkness, turn the vehicle and +horse completely round to the opposite direction. + +"Then you are not going over the bridge?" said Blandford. + +Demorest made an imperative gesture of silence. The tumultuous +rush and roar of swollen and rapid water came from the darkness +behind them. "There's been another break-out somewhere, and I +reckon the bridge has got all it can do to-night to keep itself out +of water without taking us over. At least, as I promised to set +you down at your wife's door inside of the hour, I don't propose to +try." As the horse now travelled more easily with the wind behind +him, Demorest, dismissing abruptly all other subjects, laid his +hand with brusque familiarity on his companion's knee, and as if +the hour for social and confidential greeting had only just then +arrived, said: "Well, Neddy, old boy, how are you getting on?" + +"So, so," said Blandford, dubiously. "You see," he began, +argumentatively, "in my business there's a good deal of +competition, and I was only saying this morning--" + +But either Demorest was already familiar with his friend's +arguments, or had as usual exhausted his topic, for without paying +the slightest attention to him, he again demanded abruptly, "Why +don't you go to California? Here everything's played out. That's +the country for a young man like you--just starting into life, and +without incumbrances. If I was free and fixed in my family affairs +like you I'd go to-morrow." + +There was such an occult positivism in Demorest's manner that for +an instant Blandford, who had been married two years, and was +transacting a steady and fairly profitable manufacturing business +in the adjacent town, actually believed he was more fitted for +adventurous speculation than the grimly erratic man of energetic +impulses and pleasures beside him. He managed to stammer +hesitatingly: + +"But there's Joan--she--" + +"Nonsense! Let her stay with her mother; you sell out your +interest in the business, put the money into an assorted cargo, and +clap it and yourself into the first ship out of Boston--and there +you are. You've been married going on two years now, and a little +separation until you've built up a business out there, won't do +either of you any harm." + +Blandford, who was very much in love with his wife, was not, +however, above putting the onus of embarrassing affection upon HER. +"You don't know, Joan, Dick," he replied. "She'd never consent to +a separation, even for a short time." + +"Try her. She's a sensible woman--a deuced sight more than you +are. You don't understand women, Ned. That's what's the matter +with you." + +It required all of Blandford's fond memories of his wife's +conservative habits, Puritan practicality, religious domesticity, +and strong family attachments, to withstand Demorest's dogmatic +convictions. He smiled, however, with a certain complacency, as +he also recalled the previous autumn when the first news of the +California gold discovery had penetrated North Liberty, and he had +expressed to her his belief that it would offer an outlet to +Demorest's adventurous energy. She had received it with ill- +disguised satisfaction, and the remark that if this exodus of +Mammon cleared the community of the godless and unregenerate it +would only be another proof of God's mysterious providence. + +With the tumultuous wind at their backs it was not long before the +buggy rattled once more over the cobble-stones of the town. Under +the direction of his friend, Demorest, who still retained possession +of the reins, drove briskly down a side street of more pretentious +dwellings, where Blandford lived. One or two wayfarers looked up. + +"Not so fast, Dick." + +"Why? I want to bring you up to your door in style." + +"Yes--but--it's Sunday. That's my house, the corner one." + +They had stopped before a square, two-storied brick house, with an +equally square wooden porch supported by two plain, rigid wooden +columns, and a hollow sweep of dull concavity above the door, +evidently of the same architectural order as the church. There was +no corner or projection to break the force of the wind that swept +its smooth glacial surface; there was no indication of light or +warmth behind its six closed windows. + +"There seems to be nobody at home," said Demorest, briefly. "Come +along with me to the hotel." + +"Joan sits in the back parlor, Sundays," explained the husband. + +"Shall I drive round to the barn and leave the horse and buggy +there while you go in?" continued Demorest, good-humoredly, +pointing to the stable gate at the side. + +"No, thank you," returned Blandford, "it's locked, and I'll have to +open it from the other side after I go in. The horse will stand +until then. I think I'll have to say good-night, now," he added, +with a sudden half-ashamed consciousness of the forbidding aspect +of the house, and his own inhospitality. "I'm sorry I can't ask +you in--but you understand why." + +"All right," returned Demorest, stoutly, turning up his coat- +collar, and unfurling his umbrella. "The hotel is only four blocks +away--you'll find me there to-morrow morning if you call. But mind +you tell your wife just what I told you--and no meandering of your +own--you hear! She'll strike out some idea with her woman's wits, +you bet. Good-night, old man! He reached out his hand, pressed +Blandford's strongly and potentially, and strode down the street. + +Blandford hitched his steaming horse to a sleet-covered horse block +with a quick sigh of impatient sympathy over the animal and +himself, and after fumbling in his pocket for a latchkey, opened +the front door. A vista of well-ordered obscurity with shadowy +trestle-like objects against the walls, and an odor of chill +decorum, as if of a damp but respectable funeral, greeted him on +entering. A faint light, like a cold dawn, broke through the glass +pane of a door leading to the kitchen. Blandford paused in the +mid-darkness and hesitated. Should he first go to his wife in the +back parlor, or pass silently through the kitchen, open the back +gate, and mercifully bestow his sweating beast in the stable? With +the reflection that an immediate conjugal greeting, while his horse +was still exposed to the fury of the blast in the street, would +necessarily be curtailed and limited, he compromised by quickly +passing through the kitchen into the stable yard, opening the gate, +and driving horse and vehicle under the shed to await later and +more thorough ministration. As he entered the back door, a faint +hope that his wife might have heard him and would be waiting for +him in the hall for an instant thrilled him; but he remembered it +was Sunday, and that she was probably engaged in some devotional +reading or exercise. He hesitatingly opened the back-parlor door +with a consciousness of committing some unreasonable trespass, and +entered. + +She was there, sitting quietly before a large, round, shining +centre-table, whose sterile emptiness was relieved only by a shaded +lamp and a large black and gilt open volume. A single picture on +the opposite wall--the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened +over a corresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain +in his rigid hand, and apparently defied posterity to take from +him--seemed to offer a not uncongenial companionship. Yet the +greenish light of the shade fell upon a young and pretty face, +despite the color it extracted from it, and the hand that supported +her low white forehead over which her full hair was simply parted, +like a brown curtain, was slim and gentle-womanly. In spite of her +plain lustreless silk dress, in spite of the formal frame of sombre +heavy horsehair and mahogany furniture that seemed to set her off, +she diffused an atmosphere of cleanly grace and prim refinement +through the apartment. The priestess of this ascetic temple, the +femininity of her closely covered arms, her pink ears, and a little +serviceable morocco house-shoe that was visible lower down, resting +on the carved lion's paw that upheld the centre-table, appeared to +be only the more accented. And the precisely rounded but softly +heaving bosom, that was pressed upon the edges of the open book of +sermons before her, seemed to assert itself triumphantly over the +rigors of the volume. + +At least so her husband and lover thought, as he moved tenderly +towards her. She met his first kiss on her forehead; the second, +a supererogatory one, based on some supposed inefficiency in the +first, fell upon a shining band of her hair, beside her neck. She +reached up her slim hands, caught his wrists firmly, and, slightly +putting him aside, said: + +"There, Edward?" + +"I drove out from Warensboro, so as to get here to-night, as I have +to return to the city on Tuesday. I thought it would give me a +little more time with you, Joan," he said, looking around him, and, +at last, hesitatingly drawing an apparently reluctant chair from +its formal position at the window. The remembrance that he had +ever dared to occupy the same chair with her, now seemed hardly +possible of credence. + +"If it was a question of your travelling on the Lord's Day, Edward, +I would rather you should have waited until to-morrow," she said, +with slow precision. + +"But--I--I thought I'd get here in time for the meeting," he said, +weakly. + +"And instead, you have driven through the town, I suppose, where +everybody will see you and talk about it. But," she added, raising +her dark eyes suddenly to his, "where else have you been? The +train gets into Warensboro at six, and it's only half an hour's +drive from there. What have you been doing, Edward?" + +It was scarcely a felicitous moment for the introduction of +Demorest's name, and he would have avoided it. But he reflected +that he had been seen, and he was naturally truthful. "I met Dick +Demorest near the church, and as he had something to tell me, we +drove down the turnpike a little way--so as to be out of the town, +you know, Joan--and--and--" + +He stopped. Her face had taken upon itself that appalling and +exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but +drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine +veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell +you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, +glad to escape until the veil was lifted again. "I suppose the +hired man is out." + +"I should hope he was in church, Edward, but I trust YOU won't +delay taking care of that poor dumb brute who has been obliged to +minister to your and Mr. Demorest's Sabbath pleasures." + +Blandford did not wait for a further suggestion. When the door had +closed behind him, Mrs. Blandford went to the mantel-shelf, where a +grimly allegorical clock cut down the hours and minutes of men with +a scythe, and consulted it with a slight knitting of her pretty +eyebrows. Then she fell into a vague abstraction, standing before +the open book on the centre-table. Then she closed it with a snap, +and methodically putting it exactly in the middle of the top of a +black cabinet in the corner, lifted the shaded lamp in her hand and +passed slowly with it up the stairs to her bedroom, where her light +steps were heard moving to and fro. In a few moments she reappeared, +stopping for a moment in the hall with the lighted lamp as if to +watch and listen for her husband's return. Seen in that favorable +light, her cheeks had caught a delicate color, and her dark eyes +shone softly. Putting the lamp down in exactly the same place as +before, she returned to the cabinet for the book, brought it again +to the table, opened it at the page where she had placed her +perforated cardboard book-marker, sat down beside it, and with her +hands in her lap and her eyes on the page began abstractedly to tear +a small piece of paper into tiny fragments. When she had reduced it +to the smallest shreds, she scraped the pieces out of her silk lap +and again collected them in the pink hollow of her little hand, +kneeling down on the scrupulously well-swept carpet to peck up with +a bird-like action of her thumb and forefinger an escaped atom here +and there. These and the contents of her hand she poured into the +chilly cavity of a sepulchral-looking alabaster vase that stood on +the etagere. Returning to her old seat, and making a nest for her +clasped fingers in the lap of her dress, she remained in that +attitude, her shoulders a little narrowed and bent forward, until +her husband returned. + +"I've lit the fire in the bedroom for you to change your clothes +by," she said, as he entered; then evading the caress which this +wifely attention provoked, by bending still more primly over her +book, she added, "Go at once. You're making everything quite damp +here." + +He returned in a few moments in his slippers and jacket, but +evidently found the same difficulty in securing a conjugal and +confidential contiguity to his wife. There was no apparent social +centre or nucleus of comfort in the apartment; its fireplace, +sealed by an iron ornament like a monumental tablet over dead +ashes, had its functions superseded by an air-tight drum in the +corner, warmed at second-hand from the dining-room below, and +offered no attractive seclusion; the sofa against the wall was +immovable and formally repellent. He was obliged to draw a chair +beside the table, whose every curve seemed to facilitate his wife's +easy withdrawal from side-by-side familiarity. + +"Demorest has been urging me very strongly to go to California, +but, of course, I spoke of you," he said, stealing his hand into +his wife's lap, and possessing himself of her fingers. + +Mrs. Blandford slowly lifted her fingers enclosed in his clasping +hand and placed them in shameless publicity on the volume before +her. This implied desecration was too much for Blandford; he +withdrew his hand. + +"Does that man propose to go with you?" asked Mrs. Blandford, +coldly. + +"No; he's preoccupied with other matters that he wanted me to talk +to you about," said her husband, hesitatingly. "He is--" + +"Because"--continued Mrs. Blandford in the same measured tone, "if +he does not add his own evil company to his advice, it is the best +he has ever given yet. I think he might have taken another day +than the Lord's to talk about it, but we must not despise the means +nor the hour whence the truth comes. Father wanted me to take some +reasonable moment to prepare you to consider it seriously, and I +thought of talking to you about it to-morrow. He thinks it would +be a very judicious plan. Even Deacon Truesdail--" + +"Having sold his invoice of damaged sugar kettles for mining +purposes, is converted," said Blandford, goaded into momentary +testiness by his wife's unexpected acquiescence and a sudden +recollection of Demorest's prophecy. "You have changed your +opinion, Joan, since last fall, when you couldn't bear to think of +my leaving you," he added reproachfully. + +"I couldn't bear to think of your joining the mob of lawless and +sinful men who use that as an excuse for leaving their wives and +families. As for my own feelings, Edward, I have never allowed +them to stand between me and what I believed best for our home and +your Christian welfare. Though I have no cause to admire the +influence that I find this man, Demorest, still holds over you, I +am willing to acquiesce, as you see, in what he advises for your +good. You can hardly reproach ME, Edward, for worldly or selfish +motives. + +Blandford felt keenly the bitter truth of his wife's speech. For +the moment he would gladly have exchanged it for a more illogical +and selfish affection, but he reflected that he had married this +religious girl for the security of an affection which he felt was +not subject to the temptations of the world--or even its own +weakness--as was too often the case with the giddy maidens whom he +had known through Demorest's companionship. It was, therefore, +more with a sense of recalling this distinctive quality of his wife +than any loyalty to Demorest that he suddenly resolved to confide +to her the latter's fatuous folly. + +"I know it, dear," he said, apologetically, "and we'll talk it over +to-morrow, and it may be possible to arrange it so that you shall +go with me. But, speaking of Demorest, I think you don't quite do +HIM justice. He really respects YOUR feelings and your knowledge +of right and wrong more than you imagine. I actually believe he +came here to-night merely to get me to interest you in an +extraordinary love affair of his. I mean, Joan," he added hastily, +seeing the same look of dull repression come over her face, "I +mean, Joan--that is, you know, from all I can judge--it is +something really serious this time. He intends to reform. And +this is because he has become violently smitten with a young woman +whom he has only seen half a dozen times, at long intervals, whom +he first met in a railway train, and whose name and residence he +don't even know." + +There was an ominous silence--so hushed that the ticking of the +allegorical clock came like a grim monitor. "Then," said Mrs. +Blandford, in a hard, dry voice that her alarmed husband scarcely +recognized, "he proposed to insult your wife by taking her into his +shameful confidence." + +"Good heavens! Joan, no--you don't understand. At the worst, this +is some virtuous but silly school-girl, who, though she may be +intending only an innocent flirtation with him, has made this man +actually and deeply in love with her. Yes; it is a fact, Joan. I +know Dick Demorest, and if ever there was a man honestly in love, +it is he." + +"Then you mean to say that this man--an utter stranger to me--a man +whom I've never laid my eyes on--whom I wouldn't know if I met in +the street--expects me to advise him--to--to--" She stopped. +Blandford could scarcely believe his senses. There were tears in +her eyes--this woman who never cried; her voice trembled--she who +had always controlled her emotions. + +He took advantage of this odd but opportune melting. He placed his +arm around her shoulders. She tried to escape it, but with a coy, +shy movement, half hysterical, half girlish, unlike her usual +stony, moral precision. "Yes, Joan," he repeated, laughingly, "but +whose fault is it? Not HIS, remember! And I firmly believe he +thinks you can do him good." + +"But he has never seen me," she continued, with a nervous little +laugh, "and probably considers me some old Gorgon--like--like-- +Sister Jemima Skerret." + +Blandford smiled with the complacency of far-reaching masculine +intuition. Ah! that shrewd fellow, Demorest, was right. Joan, +dear Joan, was only a woman after all. + +"Then he'll be the more agreeably astonished," he returned, gayly, +"and I think YOU will, too, Joan. For Dick isn't a bad-looking +fellow; most women like him. It's true," he continued, much amused +at the novelty of the perfectly natural toss and grimace with which +Mrs. Blandford received this statement. + +"I think he's been pointed out to me somewhere," she said, +thoughtfully; "he's a tall, dark, dissipated-looking man." + +"Nothing of the kind," laughed her husband. "He's middle-sized and +as blond as your cousin Joe, only he's got a long yellow moustache, +and has a quick, abrupt way of talking. He isn't at all fancy- +looking; you'd take him for an energetic business man or a doctor, +if you didn't know him. So you see, Joan, this correct little wife +of mine has been a little, just a little, prejudiced." + +He drew her again gently backwards and nearer his seat, but she +caught his wrists in her slim hands, and rising from the chair at +the same moment, dexterously slipped from his embrace with her back +towards him. "I do not know why I should be unprejudiced by +anything you've told me," she said, sharply closing the book of +sermons, and, with her back still to her husband, reinstating it +formally in its place on the cabinet. "It's probably one of his +many scandalous pursuits of defenceless and believing women, and +he, no doubt, goes off to Boston, laughing at you for thinking him +in earnest; and as ready to tell his story to anybody else and +boast of his double deceit." Her voice had a touch of human +asperity in it now, which he had never before noticed, but +recognizing, as he thought, the human cause, it was far from +exciting his displeasure. + +"Wrong again, Joan; he's waiting here at the Independence House for +me to see him to-morrow," he returned, cheerfully. "And I believe +him so much in earnest that I would be ready to swear that not +another person will ever know the story but you and I and he. No, +it is a real thing with him; he's dead in love, and it's your duty +as a Christian to help him." + +There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Blandford remained by the +cabinet, methodically arranging some small articles displaced by +the return of the book. "Well," she said, suddenly, "you don't +tell me what mother had to say. Of course, as you came home +earlier than you expected, you had time to stop THERE--only four +doors from this house." + +"Well, no, Joan," replied Blandford, in awkward discomfiture. "You +see I met Dick first, and then--then I hurried here to you--and-- +and--I clean forgot it. I'm very sorry," he added, dejectedly. + +"And I more deeply so," she returned, with her previous bloodless +moral precision, "for she probably knows by this time, Edward, why +you have omitted your usual Sabbath visit, and with WHOM you were." + +"But I can pull on my boots again and run in there for a moment," +he suggested, dubiously, "if you think it necessary. It won't take +me a moment." + +"No," she said, positively; "it is so late now that your visit +would only show it to be a second thought. I will go myself--it +will be a call for us both." + +"But shall I go with you to the door? It is dark and sleeting," +suggested Blandford, eagerly. + +"No," she replied, peremptorily. "Stay where you are, and when +Ezekiel and Bridget come in send them to bed, for I have made +everything fast in the kitchen. Don't wait up for me." + +She left the room, and in a few moments returned, wrapped from head +to foot in an enormous plaid shawl. A white woollen scarf thrown +over her bare brown head, and twice rolled around her neck, almost +concealed her face from view. When she had parted from her +husband, and reached the darkened hall below, she drew from beneath +the folds of her shawl a thick blue veil, with which she completely +enveloped her features. As she opened the front door and peered +out into the night, her own husband would have scarcely recognized +her. + +With her head lowered against the keen wind she walked rapidly down +the street and stopped for an instant at the door of the fourth +house. Glancing quickly back at the house she had left and then at +the closed windows of the one she had halted before, she gathered +her skirts with one hand and sped away from both, never stopping +until she reached the door of the Independence Hotel. + + +CHAPTER III + + +Mrs. Blandford entered the side door boldly. Luckily for her, the +austerities of the Sabbath were manifest even here; the bar-room +was closed, and the usual loungers in the passages were absent. +Without risking the recognition of her voice in an inquiry to the +clerk, she slipped past the office, still muffled in her veil, and +quickly mounted the narrow staircase. For an instant she hesitated +before the public parlor, and glanced dubiously along the half-lit +corridor. Chance befriended her; the door of a bedroom opened at +that moment, and Richard Demorest, with his overcoat and hat on, +stepped out in the hall. + +With a quick and nervous gesture of her hand she beckoned him to +approach. He came towards her leisurely, with an amused curiosity +that suddenly changed to utter astonishment as she hurriedly lifted +her veil, dropped it, turned, and glided down the staircase into +the street again. He followed rapidly, but did not overtake her +until she had reached the corner, when she slackened her pace an +instant for him to join her. + +"Lulu," he said eagerly; "is it you?" + +"Not a word here," she said, breathlessly. "Follow me at a +distance." + +She started forward again in the direction of her own house. +He followed her at a sufficient interval to keep her faintly +distinguishable figure in sight until she had crossed three +streets, and near the end of the next block glided up the steps of +a house not far from the one where he remembered to have left +Blandford. As he joined her, she had just succeeded in opening the +door with a pass-key, and was awaiting him. With a gesture of +silence she took his hand in her cold fingers, and leading him +softly through the dark hall and passage, quickly entered the +kitchen. Here she lit a candle, turned, and faced him. He could +see that the outside shutters were bolted, and the kitchen +evidently closed for the night. + +As she removed the veil from her face he made a movement as if to +regain her hand again, but she drew it away. + +"You have forced this upon me," she said hurriedly, "and it may be +ruin to us both. Why have you betrayed me?" + +"Betrayed you, Lulu--Good God! what do you mean?" + +She looked him full in the eye, and then said slowly, "Do you mean +to say that you have told no one of our meetings?" + +"Only one--my old friend Blandford, who lives-- Ah, yes! I see it +now. You are neighbors. He has betrayed me. This house is--" + +"My father's!" she replied boldly. + +The momentary uneasiness passed from Demorest's resolute face. His +old self-sufficiency returned. "Good," he said, with a frank +laugh, "that will do for me. Open the door there, Lulu, and take +me to him. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done, my girl, nor +need you be. I'll tell him my real name is Dick Demorest, as I +ought to have told you before, and that I want to marry you, fairly +and squarely, and let him make the conditions. I'm not a vagabond +nor a thief, Lulu, if I have met you on the sly. Come, dear, let +us end this now. Come--" + +But she had thrown herself before him and placed her hand upon his +lips. "Hush! are you mad? Listen to me, I tell you--please--oh, +do--no you must not!" He had covered her hand with kisses and was +drawing her face towards his own. "No--not again, it was wrong +then, it is monstrous now. I implore you, listen, if you love me, +stop." + +He released her. She sank into a chair by the kitchen-table, and +buried her flushed face in her hands. + +He stood for a moment motionless before her. "Lulu, if that is +your name," he said slowly, but gently, "tell me all now. Be frank +with me, and trust me. If there is anything stands in the way, let +me know what it is and I can overcome it. If it is my telling Ned +Blandford, don't let that worry you, he's as loyal a fellow as ever +breathed, and I'm a dog to ever think he willingly betrayed us. +His wife, well, she's one of those pious saints--but no, she would +not be such a cursed hypocrite and bigot as this." + +"Hush, I tell you! WILL you hush," she said, in a frantic whisper, +springing to her feet and grasping him convulsively by the lapels +of his overcoat. "Not a word more, or I'll kill myself. Listen! +Do you know what I brought you here for? why I left my--this house +and dragged you out of your hotel? Well, it was to tell you that +you must leave me, leave HERE--go out of this house and out of this +town at once, to-night! And never look on it or me again! There! +you have said we must end this now. It is ended, as only it could +and ever would end. And if you open that door except to go, or if +you attempt to--to touch me again, I'll do something desperate. +There!" + +She threw him off again and stepped back, strangely beautiful in +the loosened shackles of her long repressed human emotion. It was +as if the passion-rent robes of the priestess had laid bare the +flesh of the woman dazzling and victorious. Demorest was +fascinated and frightened. + +"Then you do not love me?" he said with a constrained smile, "and I +am a fool?" + +"Love you!" she repeated. "Love you," she continued, bowing her +brown head over her hanging arms and clasped hands. "What then has +brought me to this? Oh," she said suddenly, again seizing him by +his two arms, and holding him from her with a half-prudish, half- +passionate gesture, "why could you not have left things as they +were; why could we not have met in the same old way we used to +meet, when I was so foolish and so happy? Why could you spoil that +one dream I have clung to? Why didn't you leave me those few days +of my wretched life when I was weak, silly, vain, but not the +unhappy woman I am now. You were satisfied to sit beside me and +talk to me then. You respected my secret, my reserve. My God! I +used to think you loved me as I loved you--for THAT! Why did you +break your promise and follow me here? I believed you the first +day we met, when you said there was no wrong in my listening to +you; that it should go no further; that you would never seek to +renew it without my consent. You tell me I don't love you, and I +tell you now that we must part, that frightened as I was, foolish +as I was, that day was the first day I had ever lived and felt as +other women live and feel. If I ran away from you then it was +because I was running away from my old self too. Don't you +understand me? Could you not have trusted me as I trusted you?" + +"I broke my promise only when you broke yours. When you would not +meet me I followed you here, because I loved you." + +"And that is why you must leave me now," she said, starting from +his outstretched arms again. "Do not ask me why, but go, I implore +you. You must leave this town to-night, to-morrow will be too +late." + +He cast a hurried glance around him, as if seeking to gather +some reason for this mysterious haste, or a clue for future +identification. He saw only the Sabbath-sealed cupboards, the cold +white china on the dresser, and the flicker of the candle on the +partly-opened glass transom above the door. "As you wish," he +said, with quiet sadness. "I will go now, and leave the town to- +night; but"--his voice struck its old imperative note--"this shall +not end here, Lulu. There will be a next time, and I am bound to +win you yet, in spite of all and everything." + +She looked at him with a half-frightened, half-hysterical light in +her eyes. "God knows!" + +"And you will be frank with me then, and tell me all?" + +"Yes, yes, another time; but go now." She had extinguished the +candle, turned the handle of the door noiselessly, and was holding +it open. A faint light stole through the dark passage. She drew +back hastily. "You have left the front door open," she said in a +frightened voice. "I thought you had shut it behind me," he +returned quickly. "Good night." He drew her towards him. She +resisted slightly. They were for an instant clasped in a +passionate embrace; then there was a sudden collapse of the light +and a dull jar. The front door had swung to. + +With a desperate bound she darted into the passage and through the +hall, dragging him by the hand, and threw the front door open. +Without, the street was silent and empty. + +"Go," she whispered frantically. + +Demorest passed quickly down the steps and disappeared. At the +same moment a voice came from the banisters of the landing above. +"Who's there?" + +"It's I, mother." + +"I thought so. And it's like Edward to bring you and sneak off in +that fashion." + +Mrs. Blandford gave a quick sigh of relief. Demorest's flight had +been mistaken for her husband's habitual evasion. Knowing that her +mother would not refer to the subject again, she did not reply, but +slowly mounted the dark staircase with an assumption of more than +usual hesitating precaution, in order to recover her equanimity. + + +The clocks were striking eleven when she left her mother's house +and re-entered her own. She was surprised to find a light burning +in the kitchen, and Ezekiel, their hired man, awaiting her in a +dominant and nasal key of religious and practical disapprobation. +"Pity you wern't tu hum afore, ma'am, considerin' the doins that's +goin' on in perfessed Christians' houses arter meetin' on the +Sabbath Day." + +"What's the difficulty now, Ezekiel?" said Mrs. Blandford, who had +regained her rigorous precision once more under the decorous +security of her own roof. + +"Wa'al, here comes an entire stranger axin for Squire Blandford. +And when I tells he warn't tu hum--" + +"Not at home?" interrupted Mrs. Blandford, with a slight start. "I +left him here." + +"Mebbee so, but folks nowadays don't 'pear to keer much whether +they break the Sabbath or not, trapsen' raound town in and arter +meetin' hours, ez if 'twor gin'ral tranin' day--and hez gone out +agin." + +"Go on," said Mrs. Blandford, curtly. + +"Wa'al, the stranger sez, sez he, 'Show me the way to the stables,' +sez he, and without taken' no for an answer, ups and meanders +through the hall, outer the kitchen inter the yard, ez if he was +justice of the peace; and when he gets there he sez, 'Fetch out his +hoss and harness up, and be blamed quick about it, and tell Ned +Blandford that Dick Demorest hez got to leave town to-night, and ez +ther ain't a blamed puritanical shadbelly in this hull town ez +would let a hoss go on hire Sunday night, he guesses he'll hev to +borry his.' And afore I could say Jack Robinson, he tackles the +hoss up and drives outer the yard, flinging this two-dollar-and-a- +half-piece behind him ez if I wur a Virginia slave and he was John +C. Calhoun hisself. I'd a chucked it after him if it hadn't been +the Lord's Day, and it mout hev provoked disturbance." + +"Mr. Demorest is worldly, but one of Edward's old friends," said +Mrs. Blandford, with a slight kindling of her eyes, "and he would +not have refused to aid him in what might be an errand of grace or +necessity. You can keep the money, Ezekiel, as a gift, not as a +wage. And go to bed. I will sit up for Mr. Blandford." + +She passed out and up the staircase into her bedroom, pausing on +her way to glance into the empty back parlor and take the lamp from +the table. Here she noticed that her husband had evidently changed +his clothes again and taken a heavier overcoat from the closet. +Removing her own wraps she again descended to the lower apartment, +brought out the volume of sermons, placed it and the lamp in the +old position, and with her abstracted eyes on the page fell into +her former attitude. Every suggestion of the passionate, half- +frenzied woman in the kitchen of the house only four doors away, +had vanished; one would scarcely believe she had ever stirred from +the chair in which she had formally received her husband two hours +before. And yet she was thinking of herself and Demorest in that +kitchen. + +His prompt and decisive response to her appeal, as shown in this +last bold and characteristic action, relieved, while it half piqued +her. But the overruling destiny which had enabled her to bring him +from his hotel to her mother's house unnoticed, had protected them +while there, had arrested a dangerous meeting between him and +herself and her husband in her own house, impressed her more than +all. It imparted to her a hideous tranquillity born of the +doctrines of her youth--Predestination! She reflected with secret +exultation that her moral resolution to fly from him and her +conscientiously broken promise had been the direct means of +bringing him there; that step by step circumstances not in +themselves evil or to be combated had led her along; that even her +husband and mother had felt it their duty to assist towards this +fateful climax! If Edward had never kept up his worldly +friendship, if she had never been restricted and compassed in her +own; if she had ever known the freedom of other girls,--all this +might not have happened. She had been elected to share with +Demorest and her husband the effects of their ungodliness. She +was no longer a free agent; what availed her resolutions? To +Demorest's imperious hope, she had said, "God knows." What more +could she say? Her small red lips grew white and compressed; her +face rigid, her eyes hollow and abstracted; she looked like the +genius of asceticism as she sat there, grimly formulating a +dogmatic explanation of her lawless and unlicensed passion. + +The wind had risen to a gale without, and stirred even the sealed +sepulchre of the fireplace with dull rumblings and muffled moans. +At times the hot-air drum in the corner seemed to expand as with +some pent-up emotion. Strange currents of air crossed the empty +room like the passage of unseen spirits, and she even fancied she +heard whispers at the window. This caused her to rise and open it, +when she found that the sleet had given way to a dry feathery snow +that was swarming through the slits of the shutter; a faint +reflection from the already whitened fences glimmered in the panes. +She shut the window hastily, with a little shiver of cold. Where +was Demorest in this storm? Would it stop him? She thought with +pride now of the dominant energy that had frightened her, and knew +it would not. But her husband?--what kept him? It was twelve +o'clock; he had seldom stayed out so late before. During the first +half hour of her reflections she had been relieved by his absence; +she had even believed that he had met Demorest in the town, and was +not alarmed by it, for she knew that the latter would avoid any +further confidence, and cut short any return to it. But why had +not Edward returned? For an instant the terrible thought that +something had happened, and that they might both return together, +took possession of her, and she trembled. But no; Demorest, who +had already taken such extreme measures, could not consistently +listen to any suggestion for delay. As her only danger lay in +Demorest's presence, the absence of her husband caused her more +undefinable uneasiness than actual alarm. + +The room had become cold with the dying out of the dining-room fire +that warmed the drum. She would go to bed. She nevertheless +arranged the room again with a singular impression that she was +doing it for the last time in her present existing circumstances, +and placing the lamp on the table in the hall, went up to her own +room. By the light of a single candle she undressed herself +hastily, said her prayers punctiliously, and got into bed, with an +unexpected relief at finding herself still occupying it alone. +Then she fell asleep and dreamed of Demorest. + + +CHAPTER IV + + +When Edward Blandford found himself alone after his wife had +undertaken to fulfil his abandoned filial duty at her parents' +house, he felt a slight twinge of self-reproach. He could not deny +that this was not the first time he had evaded the sterile Sabbath +evenings at his mother-in-law's, or that even at other times he was +not in accord with the cold and colorless sanctity of the family. +Yet he remembered that when he picked out from the budding +womanhood of North Liberty this pure, scentless blossom, he had +endured the privations of its surroundings with a sense of security +in inhaling the atmosphere in which it grew, and knowing the +integrity of its descent. There was a certain pleasure also in +invading this seclusion with human passion; the first pressure of +her hand when they were kneeling together at family prayers had the +zest without the sin of a forbidden pleasure; the first kiss he +had given her with their heads over the family Bible had fairly +intoxicated him in the thin, rarefied air of their surroundings. In +transplanting this blossom to his own home with the fond belief that +it would eventually borrow the hues and color of his own passion, he +had no further interest in the house he had left behind. When he +found, however, that the ancestral influence was stronger than he +expected, that the young wife, instead of assimilating to his +conditions, had imported into their little household the rigors of +her youthful home, he had been chilled and disappointed. But he +could not help also remembering that his own boyhood had been spent +in an atmosphere like her own in everything but its sincerity and +deep conviction. His father had recognized the business value of +placating the narrow tyranny of the respectable well-to-do religious +community, and had become a conscious hypocrite and a popular +citizen. He had himself been under that influence, and it was +partly a conviction of this that had drawn him towards her as +something genuine and real. It occurred to him now for the first +time, as he looked around upon that compromise of their two lives in +this chilly artificial home, that it was only natural that she would +prefer the more truthful austerities of her mother's house. Had she +detected the sham, and did she despise him for it? + +These were questions which seemed to bring another self-accusing +doubt in his own mind, although, without his being conscious of it, +they had been really the outcome of that doubt. He could not help +dwelling on the singular human interest she had taken in Demorest's +love affair, and the utterly unexpected emotion she had shown. He +had never seen her as charmingly illogical, capricious, and +bewitchingly feminine. Had he not made a radical mistake in not +giving her a frequent provocation for this innocent emotion--in +fact, in not taking her out into a world of broader sympathies and +experiences? What a household they might have had--if necessary +in some other town--away from those cramped prejudices and +limitations! What friends she might have been with Dick and his +other worldly acquaintances; what social pleasures--guiltless +amusements for her pure mind--in theatres, parties, and concerts! +Would she have objected to them?--had he ever seriously proposed +them to her? No! if she had objected there would have been time +enough to have made this present compromise; she would have at +least respected and understood his sacrifice--and his friends. + +Even the artificial externals of his household had never before so +visibly impressed him. Now that she was no longer in the room it +did not even bear a trace of her habitation, it certainly bore no +suggestion of his own. Why had he bought that hideous horsehair +furniture? To remind her of the old provincial heirlooms of her +father's sitting-room. Did it remind her of it? The stiff and +stony emptiness of this room had been fashioned upon the decorous +respectability of his own father's parlor--in which his father, who +usually spent his slippered leisure in the family sitting-room, +never entered except on visits from the minister. It had chilled +his own youthful soul--why had he perpetuated it here? + +He could only answer these questions by moodily wandering about the +house, and regretting he had not gone with her. After a vain +attempt to establish social and domestic relations with the hot-air +drum by putting his feet upon it--after an equally futile attempt +to extract interest from the book of sermons by opening its pages +at random--he glanced at the clock and suddenly resolved to go and +fetch her. It would remind him of the old times when he used to +accompany her from church, and, after her parents had retired, +spend a blissful half-hour alone with her. With what a mingling of +fear and childish curiosity she used to accept his equally timid +caresses! Yes, he would go and fetch her; and he would recall it +to her in a whisper while they were there. + +Filled with this idea, when he changed his clothes again he put on +a certain heavy beaver overcoat, on whose shaggy sleeve her little, +hand had so often rested when he escorted her from meeting; and he +even selected the gray muffler she had knit for him in the old +ante-nuptial days. It was lying in the half-opened drawer from +where she had not long before taken her disguising veil. + +It was still blowing in sudden, capricious gusts; and when he +opened the front door the wind charged fiercely upon him, as if to +drive him back. When he had finally forced his way into the +street, a return current closed the door as suddenly and sharply +behind him as if it had ejected him from his home for ever. + +He reached the fourth house quickly, and as quickly ran up the +steps; his hand was upon the bell when his eye suddenly caught +sight of his wife's pass-key still in the lock. She had evidently +forgotten it. Here was a chance to mischievously banter that +habitually careful little woman! He slipped it into his pocket and +quietly entered the dark but perfectly familiar hall. He reached +the staircase without a stumble and began to ascend softly. +Halfway up he heard the sound of his wife's hurried voice and +another that startled him. He ascended hastily two steps, which +brought him to the level of the half-opened transom of the kitchen. +A candle was burning on the kitchen table; he could see everything +that passed in the room; he could hear distinctly every word that +was uttered. + +He did not utter a cry or sound; he did not even tremble. He +remained so rigid and motionless, clutching the banisters with his +stiffened fingers, that when he did attempt to move, all life, as +well as all that had made life possible to him, seemed to have died +from him for ever. There was no nervous illusion, no dimming of +his senses; he saw everything with a hideous clarity of perception. +By some diabolical instantaneous photography of the brain, little +actions, peculiarities, touches of gesture, expression and attitude +never before noted by him in his wife, were clearly fixed and +bitten in his consciousness. He saw the color of his friend's +overcoat, the reddish tinge of his wife's brown hair, till then +unnoticed; in that supreme moment he was aware of a sudden likeness +to her mother; but more terrible than all, there seemed to be a +nameless sympathetic resemblance that the guilty pair had to each +other in gesture and movement as of some unhallowed relationship +beyond his ken. He knew not how long he stood there without +breath, without reflection, without one connected thought. He saw +her suddenly put her hand on the handle of the door. He knew that +in another moment they would pass almost before him. He made a +convulsive effort to move, with an inward cry to God for support, +and succeeded in staggering with outstretched palms against the +wall, down the staircase, and blindly forward through the hall to +the front door. As yet he had been able to formulate only one +idea--to escape before them, for it seemed to him that their +contact meant the ruin of them both, of that house, of all that was +near to him--a catastrophe that struck blindly at his whole visible +world. He had reached the door and opened it at the moment that +the handle of the kitchen-door was turned. He mechanically fell +back behind the open door that hid him, while it let the cruel +light glimmer for a moment on their clasped figures. The door +slipped from his nerveless fingers and swung to with a dull sound. +Crouching still in the corner, he heard the quick rush of hurrying +feet in the darkness, saw the door open and Demorest glide out--saw +her glance hurriedly after him, close the door, and involve herself +and him in the blackness of the hall. Her dress almost touched him +in his corner; he could feel the near scent of her clothes, and the +air stirred by her figure retreating towards the stairs; could hear +the unlocking of a door above and the voice of her mother from the +landing, his wife's reply, the slow fading of her footsteps on the +stairs and overhead, the closing of a door, and all was quiet +again. Still stooping, he groped for the handle of the door, +opened it, and the next moment reeled like a drunken man down the +steps into the street. + +It was well for him that a fierce onset of wind and sleet at that +instant caught him savagely--stirred his stagnated blood into +action, and beat thought once more into his brain. He had +mechanically turned towards his own home; his first effort of +recovering will hurried him furiously past it and into a side +street. He walked rapidly, but undeviatingly on to escape +observation and secure some solitude for his returning thoughts. +Almost before he knew it he was in the open fields. + +The idea of vengeance had never crossed his mind. He was neither +a physical nor a moral coward, but he had never felt the merely +animal fury of disputed animal possession which the world has +chosen to recognize as a proof of outraged sentiment, nor had North +Liberty accepted the ethics that an exchange of shots equalized a +transferred affection. His love had been too pure and too real to +be moved like the beasts of the field, to seek in one brutal +passion compensation for another. Killing--what was there to kill? +All that he had to live for had been already slain. With the love +that was in him--in them--already dead at his feet, what was it to +him whether these two hollow lives moved on and passed him, or +mingled their emptiness elsewhere? Only let them henceforth keep +out of his way! + +For in his first feverish flow of thought--the reaction to his +benumbed will within and the beating sleet without--he believed +Demorest as treacherous as his wife. He recalled his sudden and +unexpected intrusion into the buggy only a few hours before, his +mysterious confidences, his assurance of Joan's favorable reception +of his secret, and her consent to the Californian trip. What had +all this meant if not that Demorest was using him, the husband, to +assist his intrigue, and carry the news of his presence in the town +to her? And this boldness, this assurance, this audacity of +conception was like Demorest! While only certain passages of the +guilty meeting he had just seen and overheard were distinctly +impressed on his mind, he remembered now, with hideous and terrible +clearness, all that had gone before. It was part of the disturbed +and unequal exaltation of his faculties that he dwelt more upon +this and his wife's previous deceit and manifest hypocrisy, than +upon the actual evidence he had witnessed of her unfaithfulness. +The corroboration of the fact was stronger to him than the fact +itself. He understood the coldness, the uncongeniality now--the +simulated increase of her aversion to Demorest--her journeys to +Boston and Hartford to see her relatives, her acquiescence to his +frequent absences; not an incident, not a characteristic of her +married life was inconsistent with her guilt and her deceit. He +went even back to her maidenhood: how did he know this was not the +legitimate sequence of other secret schoolgirl escapades. The +bitter worldly light that had been forced upon his simple ingenuous +nature had dazzled and blinded him. He passed from fatuous +credulity to equally fatuous distrust. + +He stopped suddenly with the roaring of water before him. In the +furious following of his rapid thought through storm and darkness +he had come, he knew not how, upon the bank of the swollen river, +whose endangered bridge Demorest had turned from that evening. A +few steps more and he would have fallen into it. He drew nearer +and looked at it with vague curiosity. Had he come there with any +definite intention? The thought sobered without frightening him. +There was always THAT culmination possible, and to be considered +coolly. + +He turned and began to retrace his steps. On his way thither he +had been fighting the elements step by step; now they seemed to him +to have taken possession of him and were hurrying him quickly away. +But where? and to what? He was always thinking of the past. He +had wandered he knew not how long, always thinking of that. It was +the future he had to consider. What was to be done? + +He had heard of such cases before; he had read of them in +newspapers and talked of them with cold curiosity. But they were +of worldly, sinful people, of dissolute men whose characters he +could not conceive--of silly, vain, frivolous, and abandoned women +whom he had never even met. But Joan--O God! It was the first +time since his mute prayer on the staircase that the Divine name +had been wrested from his lips. It came with his wife's--and his +first tears! But the wind swept the one away and dried the others +upon his hot cheeks. + +It had ceased to rain, and the wind, which was still high, had +shifted more to the north and was bitterly cold. He could feel the +roadway stiffening under his feet. When he reached the pavement of +the outskirts once more he was obliged to take the middle of the +street, to avoid the treacherous films of ice that were beginning +to glaze the sidewalks. Yet this very inclemency, added to the +usual Sabbath seclusion, had left the streets deserted. He was +obliged to proceed more slowly, but he met no one and could pursue +his bewildering thoughts unchecked. As he passed between the lines +of cold, colorless houses, from which all light and life had +vanished, it seemed to him that their occupants were dead as his +love, or had fled their ruined houses as he had. Why should he +remain? Yet what was his duty now as a man--as a Christian? His +eye fell on the hideous facade of the church he was passing--her +church! He gave a bitter laugh and stumbled on again. + +With one of the gusts he fancied he heard a familiar sound--the +rattling of buggy wheels over the stiffening road. Or was it +merely the fanciful echo of an idea that only at that moment sprung +up in his mind? If it was real it came from the street parallel +with the one he was in. Who could be driving out at this time? +What other buggy than his own could be found to desecrate this +Christian Sabbath? An irresistible thought impelled him at the +risk of recognition to quicken his pace and turn the corner as +Richard Demorest drove up to the Independence Hotel, sprang from +his buggy, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and disappeared +into the hotel! + +Blandford stood still, but for an instant only. He had been +wandering for an hour aimlessly, hopelessly, without consecutive +idea, coherent thought or plan of action; without the faintest +inspiration or suggestion of escape from his bewildering torment, +without--he had begun to fear--even the power to conceive or the +will to execute; when a wild idea flashed upon him with the rattle +of his buggy wheels. And even as Demorest disappeared into the +hotel, he had conceived his plan and executed it. He crossed the +street swiftly, leaped into his buggy, lifted the reins and brought +down the whip simultaneously, and the next instant was dashing down +the street in the direction of the Warensboro turnpike. So sudden +was the action that by the time the astonished hall porter had +rushed into the street, horse and buggy had already vanished in the +darkness. + +Presently it began to snow. So lightly at first that it seemed a +mere passing whisper to the ear, the brush of some viewless insect +upon the cheek, or the soft tap of unseen fingers on the shoulders. +But by the time the porter returned from his hopeless and invisible +chase of the "runaway," he came in out of a swarming cloud of +whirling flakes, blinded and whitened. There was a hurried +consultation with the landlord, the exhibition of much imperious +energy and some bank-notes from Demorest, and with a glance at the +clock that marked the expiring limit of the Puritan Sabbath, the +landlord at last consented. By the time the falling snow had +muffled the street from the indiscreet clamor of Sabbath-breaking +hoofs, the landlord's noiseless sledge was at the door and Demorest +had departed. + +The snow fell all that night; with fierce gusts of wind that moaned +in the chimneys of North Liberty and sorely troubled the Sabbath +sleep of its decorous citizens; with deep, passionless silences, +none the less fateful, that softly precipitated a spotless mantle +of merciful obliteration equally over their precise or their +straying footprints, that would have done them good to heed and to +remember; and when morning broke upon a world of week-day labor, it +was covered as far as their eyes could reach as with a clear and +unwritten tablet, on which they might record their lives anew. +Near the wreck of the broken bridge on the Warensboro turnpike an +overturned buggy lay imbedded in the drift and debris of the river +hurrying silently towards the sea, and a horse with fragments of +broken and icy harness still clinging to him was found standing +before the stable-door of Edward Blandford. But to any further +knowledge of the fate of its owner, North Liberty awoke never +again. + + +PART II + +CHAPTER I + + +The last note of the Angelus had just rung out of the crumbling +fissures in the tower of the mission chapel of San Buena-ventura. +The sun which had beamed that day and indeed every day for the +whole dry season over the red-tiled roofs of that old and happily +ventured pueblo seemed to broaden to a smile as it dipped below the +horizon, as if in undiminished enjoyment of its old practical joke +of suddenly plunging the Southern California coast in darkness +without any preliminary twilight. The olive and fig trees at once +lost their characteristic outlines in formless masses of shadow; +only the twisted trunks of the old pear trees in the mission garden +retained their grotesque shapes and became gruesome in the +gathering gloom. The encircling pines beyond closed up their +serried files; a cool breeze swept down from the coast range and, +passing through them, sent their day-long heated spices through the +town. + +If there was any truth in the local belief that the pious +incantation of the Angelus bell had the power of excluding all evil +influence abroad at that perilous hour within its audible radius, +and comfortably keeping all unbelieving wickedness at a distance, +it was presumably ineffective as regarded the innovating stage- +coach from Monterey that twice a week at that hour brought its +question-asking, revolver-persuading and fortune-seeking load of +passengers through the sleepy Spanish town. On the night of the 3d +of August, 1856, it had not only brought but set down at the Posada +one of those passengers. It was a Mr. Ezekiel Corwin, formerly +known to these pages as "hired man" to the late Squire Blandford, +of North Liberty, Connecticut, but now a shrewd, practical, self- +sufficient, and self-asserting unit of the more cautious later +Californian immigration. As the stage rattled away again with more +or less humorous and open disparagement of the town and the Posada +from its "outsiders," he lounged with lazy but systematic +deliberation towards Mateo Morez, the proprietor. + +"I guess that some of your folks here couldn't direct me to Dick +Demorest's house, could ye?" + +The Senor Mateo Morez was at once perplexed and pained. Pained at +the ignorance thus forced upon him by a caballero; perplexed as to +its intention. Between the two he smiled apologetically but +gravely, and said: "No sabe, Senor. I 'ave not understood." + +"No more hev I," returned Ezekiel, with patronizing recognition of +his obtuseness. "I guess ez heow you ain't much on American. You +folks orter learn the language if you kalkilate to keep a hotel." + +But the momentary vision of a waistless woman with a shawl gathered +over her head and shoulders at the back door attracted his +attention. She said something to Mateo in Spanish, and the +yellowish-white of Mateo's eyes glistened with intelligent +comprehension. + +"Ah, posiblemente; it is Don Ricardo Demorest you wish?" + +Mr. Ezekiel's face and manner expressed a mingling of grateful +curiosity and some scorn at the discovery. "Wa'al," he said, +looking around as if to take the entire Posada into his confidence, +"way up in North Liberty, where I kem from, he was allus known as +Dick Demorest, and didn't tack any forrin titles to his name. Et +wouldn't hev gone down there, I reckon, 'mongst free-born Merikin +citizens, no mor'n aliases would in court--and I kinder guess for +the same reason. But folks get peart and sassy when they're way +from hum, and put on ez many airs as a buck nigger. And so he +calls hisself Don Ricardo here, does he?" + +"The Senor knows Don Ricardo?" said Mateo politely. + +"Ef you mean me--wa'al, yes--I should say so. He was a partiklar +friend of a man I've known since he was knee-high to a grasshopper." + +Ezekiel had actually never seen Demorest but once in his life. He +would have scorned to lie, but strict accuracy was not essential +with an ignorant foreign audience. + +He took up his carpet-bag. + +"I reckon I kin find his house, ef it's anyway handy." + +But the Senor Mateo was again politely troubled. The house of Don +Ricardo was of a truth not more than a mile distant. It was even +possible that the Senor had observed it above a wall and vineyard +as he came into the pueblo. But it was late--it was also dark, as +the Senor would himself perceive--and there was still to-morrow. +To-morrow--ah, it was always there! Meanwhile there were beds of a +miraculous quality at the Posada, and a supper such as a caballero +might order in his own house. Health, discretion, solicitude for +oneself--all pointed clearly to to-morrow. + +What part of this speech Ezekiel understood affected him only as an +innkeeper's bid for custom, and as such to be steadily exposed and +disposed of. With the remark that he guessed Dick Demorest's was +"a good enough hotel for HIM," and that he'd better be "getting +along there," he walked down the steps, carpet-bag in hand, and +coolly departed, leaving Mateo pained, but smiling, on the doorstep. + +"An animal with a pig's head--without doubt," said Mateo, +sententiously. + +"Clearly a brigand with the liver of a chicken," responded his +wife. + +The subject of this ambiguous criticism, happily oblivious, +meantime walked doggedly back along the road the stage-coach had +just brought him. It was badly paved and hollowed in the middle +with the worn ruts of a century of slow undeviating ox carts, and +the passage of water during the rainy season. The low adobe houses +on each side, with bright cinnamon-colored tiles relieving their +dark-brown walls, had the regular outlines of their doors and +windows obliterated by the crumbling of years, until they looked as +if they had been afterthoughts of the builder, rudely opened by +pick and crowbar, and finished by the gentle auxiliary architecture +of birds and squirrels. Yet these openings at times permitted +glimpses of a picturesque past in the occasional view of a lace- +edged pillow or silken counterpane, striped hangings, or dyed +Indian rugs, the flitting of a flounced petticoat or flower-covered +head, or the indolent leaning figure framed in a doorway of a man +in wide velvet trousers and crimson-barred serape, whose brown face +was partly hidden in a yellow nimbus of cigarette smoke. Even in +the semi-darkness, Ezekiel's penetrating and impertinent eyes took +eager note of these facts with superior complacency, quite +unmindful, after the fashion of most critical travellers, of the +hideous contrast of his own long shapeless nankeen duster, his +stiff half-clerical brown straw hat, his wisp of gingham necktie, +his dusty boots, his outrageous carpet-bag, and his straggling +goat-like beard. A few looked at him in grave, discreet wonder. +Whether they recognized in him the advent of a civilization that +was destined to supplant their own ignorant, sensuous, colorful +life with austere intelligence and rigid practical improvement, did +not appear. He walked steadily on. As he passed the low arched +door of the mission church and saw a faint light glimmering from +the side windows, he had indeed a weak human desire to go in and +oppose in his own person a debased and idolatrous superstition with +some happily chosen question that would necessarily make the +officiating priest and his congregation exceedingly uncomfortable. +But he resisted; partly in the hope of meeting some idolater on his +way to Benediction, and, in the guise of a stranger seeking +information, dropping a few unpalatable truths; and partly because +be could unbosom himself later to Demorest, who he was not +unwilling to believe had embraced Popery with his adoption of a +Spanish surname and title. + +It had become quite dark when he reached the long wall that +enclosed Demorest's premises. The wall itself excited his +resentment, not only as indicating an exclusiveness highly +objectionable in a man who had emigrated from a free State, but +because he, Ezekiel Corwin, had difficulty in discovering the +entrance. When he succeeded, he found himself before an iron gate, +happily open, but savoring offensively of feudalism and tyrannical +proprietorship, and passed through and entered an avenue of trees +scarcely distinguishable in the darkness, whose mysterious shapes +and feathery plumes were unknown to him. Numberless odors equally +vague and mysterious were heavy in the air, strange and delicate +plants rose dimly on either hand; enormous blossoms, like ghostly +faces, seemed to peer at him from the shadows. For an instant +Ezekiel succumbed to an unprofitable sense of beauty, and +acquiesced in this reckless extravagance of Nature that was so +unlike North Liberty. But the next moment he recovered himself, +with the reflection that it was probably unhealthy, and doggedly +approached the house. It was a long, one-storied, structure, +apparently all roof, vine, and pillared veranda. Every window and +door was open; the two or three grass hammocks swung emptily +between the columns; the bamboo chairs and settees were vacant; his +heavy footsteps on the floor had summoned no attendant; not even a +dog had barked as he approached the house. It was shiftless, it +was sinful--it boded no good to the future of Demorest. + +He put down his carpet-bag on the veranda and entered the broad +hall, where an old-fashioned lantern was burning on a stand. Here, +too, the doors of the various apartments were open, and the rooms +themselves empty of occupants. An opportunity not to be lost by +Ezekiel's inquiring mind thus offered itself. He took the lantern +and deliberately examined the several apartments, the furniture, +the bedding, and even the small articles that were on the tables +and mantels. When he had completed the round--including a corridor +opening on a dark courtyard, which he did not penetrate--he +returned to the hall, and set down the lantern again. + +"Well," said a voice in his own familiar vernacular, "I hope you +like it." + +Ezekiel was surprised, but not disconcerted. What he had taken +in the shadow for a bundle of serapes lying on the floor of the +veranda, was the recumbent figure of a man who now raised himself +to a sitting posture. + +"Ez to that," drawled Ezekiel, with unshaken self-possession, +"whether I like it or not ez only a question betwixt kempany +manners and truth-telling. Beggars hadn't oughter be choosers, and +transient visitors like myself needn't allus speak their mind. But +if you mean to signify that with every door and window open and +universal shiftlessness lying round everywhere temptin' Providence, +you ain't lucky in havin' a feller-citizen of yours drop in on ye +instead of some Mexican thief, I don't agree with ye--that's all." + +The man laughed shortly and rose up. In spite of his careless yet +picturesque Mexican dress, Ezekiel instantly recognized Demorest. +With his usual instincts he was naturally pleased to observe that +he looked older and more careworn. The softer, sensuous climate +had perhaps imparted a heaviness to his figure and a deliberation +to his manner that was quite unlike his own potential energy. + +"That don't tell me who you are, and what you want," he said, +coldly. + +"Wa'al then, I'm Ezekiel Corwin of North Liberty, ez used to live +with my friend and YOURS too, I guess--seein' how the friendship +was swapped into relationship--Squire Blandford." + +A slight shade passed over Demorest's face. "Well," he said, +impatiently, "I don't remember you; what then?" + +"You don't remember me; that's likely," returned Ezekiel +imperturbably, combing his straggling chin beard with three fingers, +"but whether it's NAT'RAL or not, considerin' the sukumstances when +we last met, ez a matter of op-pinion. You got me to harness up the +hoss and buggy the night Squire Blandford left home, and never was +heard of again. It's true that it kem out on enquiry that the hoss +and buggy ran away from the hotel, and that you had to go out to +Warensboro in a sleigh, and the theory is that poor Squire Blandford +must have stopped the hoss and buggy somewhere, got in and got run +away agin, and pitched over the bridge. But seein' your relationship +to both Squire and Mrs. Blandford, and all the sukumstances, I +reckoned you'd remember it." + +"I heard of it in Boston a month afterwards," said Demorest, dryly, +"but I don't think I'd have recognized you. So you were the hired +man who gave me the buggy. Well, I don't suppose they discharged +you for it." + +"No," said Ezekiel, with undisturbed equanimity. "I kalkilate Joan +would have stopped that. Considerin', too, that I knew her when +she was Deacon Salisbury's darter, and our fam'lies waz thick az +peas. She knew me well enough when I met her in Frisco the other +day." + +"Have you seen Mrs. Demorest already?" said Demorest, with sudden +vivacity. "Why didn't you say so before?" It was wonderful how +quickly his face had lighted up with an earnestness that was not, +however, without some undefinable uneasiness. The alert Ezekiel +noticed it and observed that it was as totally unlike the +irresistible dominance of the man of five years ago as it was +different from the heavy abstraction of the man of five minutes +before. + +"I reckon you didn't ax me," he returned coolly. "She told me +where you were, and as I had business down this way she guessed I +might drop in." + +"Yes, yes--it's all right, Mr. Corwin; glad you did," said +Demorest, kindly but half nervously. "And you saw Mrs. Demorest? +Where did you see her, and how did you think she was looking? As +pretty as ever, eh?" + +But the coldly literal Ezekiel was not to be beguiled into polite +or ambiguous fiction. He even went to the extent of insulting +deliberation before he replied. "I've seen Joan Salisbury lookin' +healthier and ez far ez I kin judge doin' more credit to her stock +and raisin' gin'rally," he said, thoughtfully combing his beard, +"and I've seen her when she was too poor to get the silks and +satins, furbelows, fineries and vanities she's flauntin' in now, +and that was in Squire Blandford's time, too, I reckon. Ez to her +purtiness, that's a matter of taste. You think her purty, and I +guess them fellows ez was escortin' and squirin' her round Frisco +thought so too, or SHE thought they did to hev allowed it." + +"You are not very merciful to your townsfolk, Mr. Corwin," said +Demorest, with a forced smile; "but what can I do for you?" + +It was the turn for Ezekiel's face to brighten, or rather to break +up, like a cold passionless mirror suddenly cracked, into various +amusing but distorted reflections on the person before him. +"Townies ain't to be fooled by other townies, Mr. Demorest; at +least that ain't my idea o' marcy, he-he! But seen you're +pressin', I don't mind tellen you MY business. I'm the only agent +of Seventeen Patent Medicine Proprietors in Connecticut represented +by the firm of Dilworth & Dusenberry, of San Francisco. Mebbe you +heard of 'em afore--A1 druggists and importers. Wa'al, I'm openin' +a field for 'em and spreadin' 'em gin'rally through these air +benighted and onhealthy districts, havin' the contract for the hull +State--especially for Wozun's Universal Injin Panacea ez cures +everything--bein' had from a recipe given by a Sachem to Dr. +Wozun's gran'ther. That bag--leavin' out a dozen paper collars and +socks--is all the rest samples. That's me, Ezekiel Corwin--only +agent for Californy, and that's my mission." + +"Very well; but look here, Corwin," said Demorest, with a slight +return of his old off-hand manner,--"I'd advise you to adopt a +little more caution, and a little less criticism in your speech to +the people about here, or I'm afraid you'll need the Universal +Panacea for yourself. Better men than you have been shot in my +presence for half your freedom." + +"I guess you've just hit the bull's-eye there," replied Ezekiel, +coolly, "for it's that HALF-freedom and HALF-truth that doesn't +pay. I kalkilate gin'rally to speak my hull mind--and I DO. Wot's +the consequence? Why, when folks find I ain't afeard to speak my +mind on their affairs, they kinder guess I'm tellin' the truth +about my own. Folks don't like the man that truckles to 'em, +whether it's in the sellin' of a box of pills or a principle. When +they re-cognize Ezekiel Corwin ain't goin' to lie about 'em to +curry favor with 'em, they're ready to believe he ain't goin' to +lie about Jones' Bitters or Wozun's Panacea. And, wa'al, I've been +on the road just about a fortnit, and I haven't yet discovered that +the original independent style introduced by Ezekiel Corwin ever +broke anybody's bones or didn't pay." + +And he told the truth. That remarkably unfair and unpleasant +spoken man had actually frozen Hanley's Ford into icy astonishment +at his audacity, and he had sold them an invoice of the Panacea +before they had recovered; he had insulted Chipitas into giving an +extensive order in bitters; he had left Hayward's Creek pledged to +Burne's pills--with drawn revolvers still in their hands. + +At another time Demorest might have been amused at his guest's +audacity, or have combated it with his old imperiousness, but he +only remained looking at him in a dull sort of way as if yielding +to his influence. It was part of the phenomenon that the two men +seemed to have changed character since they last met, and when +Ezekiel said confidentially: "I reckon you're goin' to show me what +room I ken stow these duds o' mine in," Demorest replied hurriedly, +"Yes, certainly," and taking up his guest's carpet-bag preceded him +through the hall to one of the apartments. + +"I'll send Manuel to you presently," he said, putting down the bag +mechanically; "the servants are not back from church, it's some +saint's festival to-day." + +"And so you keep a pack of lazy idolaters to leave your house to +take care of itself, whilst they worship graven images," said +Ezekiel, delighted at this opportunity to improve the occasion. + +"If my memory isn't bad, Mr. Corwin," said Demorest dryly, "when I +accompanied Mr. Blandford home the night he returned from his +journey, we found YOU at church, and he had to put up his horse +himself." + +"But that was the Sabbath--the seventh day of the command," +retorted Ezekiel. + +"And here the Sabbath doesn't consist of only ONE day to serve God +in," said Demorest, sententiously. + +Ezekiel glanced under his white lashes at Demorest's thoughtful +face. His fondest fears appeared to be confirmed; Demorest had +evidently become a Papist. But that gentleman stopped any +theological discussion by the abrupt inquiry: + +"Did Mrs. Demorest say when she thought of returning?" + +"She allowed she mout kem to-morrow--but--" added Ezekiel dubiously. + +"But what?" + +"Wa'al, wot with her enjyments of the vanities of this life and the +kempany she keeps, I reckon she's in no hurry," said Ezekiel, +cheerfully. + +The entrance of Manuel here cut short any response from Demorest, +who after a few directions in Spanish to the peon, left his guest +to himself. + +He walked to the veranda with the same dull preoccupation that +Ezekiel had noticed as so different from his old decisive manner, +and remained for a few moments abstractedly gazing into the dark +garden. The strange and mystic shapes which had impressed even the +practical Ezekiel, had become even more weird and ghost-like in the +faint radiance of a rising moon. + +What memories evoked by his rude guest seemed to take form and +outline in that dreamy and unreal expanse! + +He saw his wife again, standing as she had stood that night in her +mother's house, with the white muffler around her head, and white +face, imploring him to fly; he saw himself again hurrying through +the driving storm to Warensboro, and reaching the train that bore +him swiftly and safely miles away--that same night when her husband +was perishing in the swollen river. He remembered with what +strangely mingled sensations he had read the account of Blandford's +death in the newspapers, and how the loss of his old friend was +forgotten in the associations conjured up by his singular meeting +that very night with the mysterious woman he had loved. He +remembered that he had never dreamed how near and fateful were +these associations; and how he had kept his promise not to seek her +without her permission, until six months after, when she appointed +a meeting, and revealed to him the whole truth. He could see her +now, as he had seen her then, more beautiful and fascinating than +ever in her black dress, and the pensive grace of refined suffering +and restrained passion in her delicate face. He remembered, too, +how the shock of her disclosure--the knowledge that she had been +his old friend's wife--seemed only to accent her purity and +suffering and his own wilful recklessness, and how it had stirred +all the chivalry, generosity, and affection of his easy nature to +take the whole responsibility of this innocent but compromising +intrigue on his own shoulders. He had had no self-accusing sense +of disloyalty to Blandford in his practical nature; he had never +suspected the shy, proper girl of being his wife; he was willing to +believe now, that had he known it, even that night, he would never +have seen her again; he had been very foolish; he had made this +poor woman participate in his folly; but he had never been +dishonest or treacherous in thought or action. If Blandford had +lived, even he would have admitted it. Yet he was guiltily +conscious of a material satisfaction in Blandford's death, without +his wife's religious conviction of the saving graces of +predestination. + +They had been married quietly when the two years of her widowhood +had expired; his former relations with her husband and the +straitened circumstances in which Blandford's death had left her +having been deemed sufficient excuse in the eyes of North Liberty +for her more worldly union. They had come to California at her +suggestion "to begin life anew," for she had not hesitated to make +this dislocation of all her antecedent surroundings as a reason as +well as a condition of this marriage. She wished to see the world +of which he had been a passing glimpse; to expand under his +protection beyond the limits of her fettered youth. He had bought +this old Spanish estate, with its near vineyard and its outlying +leagues covered with wild cattle, partly from that strange +contradictory predilection for peaceful husbandry common to men who +have led a roving life, and partly as a check to her growing and +feverish desire for change and excitement. He had at first enjoyed +with an almost parental affection her childish unsophisticated +delight in that world he had already wearied of, and which he had +been prepared to gladly resign for her. But as the months and even +years had passed without any apparent diminution in her zest for +these pleasures, he tried uneasily to resume his old interest in +them, and spent ten months with her in the chaotic freedom of San +Francisco hotel life. But to his discomfiture he found that they +no longer diverted him; to his horror he discovered that those easy +gallantries in which he had spent his youth, and in which he had +seen no harm, were intolerable when exhibited to his wife, and he +trembled between inquietude and indignation at the copies of his +former self, whom he met in hotel parlors, at theatres, and in +public conveyances. The next time she visited some friends in San +Francisco he did not accompany her. Though he fondly cherished his +experience of her power to resist even stronger temptation, he was +too practical to subject himself to the annoyance of witnessing it. +In her absence he trusted her completely; his scant imagination +conjured up no disturbing picture of possibilities beyond what he +actually knew. In his recent questions of Ezekiel he did not +expect to learn anything more. Even his guest's uncomfortable +comments added no sting that he had not already felt. + +With these thoughts called up by the unlooked-for advent of Ezekiel +under his roof, he continued to gaze moodily into the garden. Near +the house were scattered several uncouth varieties of cacti which +seemed to have lost all semblance of vegetable growth, and had +taken rude likeness to beasts and human figures. One high- +shouldered specimen, partly hidden in the shadow, had the +appearance of a man with a cloak or serape thrown over his left +shoulder. As Demorest's wandering eyes at last became fixed upon +it, he fancied he could trace the faint outlines of a pale face, +the lower part of which was hidden by the folds of the serape. +There certainly was the forehead, the curve of the dark eyebrows, +the shadow of a nose, and even as he looked more steadily, a +glistening of the eyes upturned to the moonlight. A sudden chill +seized him. It was a horrible fancy, but it looked as might have +looked the dead face of Edward Blandford! He started and ran +quickly down the steps of the veranda. A slight wind at the same +moment moved the long leaves and tendrils of a vine nearest him and +sent a faint wave through the garden. He reached the cactus; its +fantastic bulk stood plainly before him, but nothing more. + +"Whar are ye runnin' to?" said the inquiring voice of Ezekiel from +the veranda. + +"I thought I saw some one in the garden," returned Demorest, +quietly, satisfied of the illusion of his senses, "but it was a +mistake." + +"It mout and it moutn't," said Ezekiel, dryly. "Thar's nothin' to +keep any one out. It's only a wonder that you ain't overrun with +thieves and sich like." + +"There are usually servants about the place," said Demorest, +carelessly. + +"Ef they're the same breed ez that Manuel, I reckon I'd almost as +leave take my chances in the road. Ef it's all the same to you I +kalkilate to put a paytent fastener to my door and winder to-night. +I allus travel with them." Seeing that Demorest only shrugged his +shoulders without replying, he continued, "Et ain't far from here +that some folks allow is the headquarters of that cattle-stealing +gang. The driver of the coach went ez far ez to say that some of +these high and mighty Dons hereabouts knows more of it than they +keer to tell." + +"That's simply a yarn for greenhorns," said Demorest, contemptuously. +"I know all the ranch proprietors for twenty leagues around, and +they've lost as many cattle and horses as I have." + +"I wanter know," said Ezekiel, with grim interest. "Then you've +already had consid'ble losses, eh? I kalkilate them cattle are +vally'ble--about wot figger do you reckon yer out and injured?" + +"Three or four thousand dollars, I suppose, altogether," replied +Demorest, shortly. + +"Then you don't take any stock in them yer yarns about the gang +being run and protected by some first-class men in Frisco?" said +Ezekiel, regretfully. + +"Not much," responded Demorest, dryly; "but if people choose to +believe this bluff gotten up by the petty thieves themselves to +increase their importance and secure their immunity--they can. But +here's Manuel to tell us supper is ready." + +He led the way to the corridor and courtyard which Ezekiel had not +penetrated on account of its obscurity and solitude, but which now +seemed to be peopled with peons and household servants of both +sexes. At the end of a long low-ceilinged room a table was spread +with omelettes, chupa, cakes, chocolate, grapes, and melons, around +which half a dozen attendants stood gravely in waiting. The size +of the room, which to Ezekiel's eyes looked as large as the church +at North Liberty, the profusion of the viands, the six attendants +for the host and solitary guest, deeply impressed him. Morally +rebelling against this feudal display and extravagance, he, who had +disdained to even assist the Blandfords' servant-in-waiting at +table and had always made his solitary meal on the kitchen dresser, +was not above feeling a material satisfaction in sitting on equal +terms with his master's friend and being served by these menials he +despised. He did full justice to the victuals of which Demorest +partook in sparing abstraction, and particularly to the fruit, +which Demorest did not touch at all. Observant of his servants' +eyes fixed in wonder on the strange guest who had just disposed of +a second melon at supper, Demorest could not help remarking that he +would lose credit as a medico with the natives unless he restrained +a public exhibition of his tastes. + +"Ez ha'aw?" queried Ezekiel. + +"They have a proverb here that fruit is gold in the morning, silver +at noon, and lead at night." + +"That'll do for lazy stomicks," said the unabashed Ezekiel. "When +they're once fortified by Jones' bitters and hard work, they'll be +able to tackle the Lord's nat'ral gifts of the airth at any time." + +Declining the cigarettes offered him by Demorest for a quid of +tobacco, which he gravely took from a tin box in his pocket, and to +the astonished eyes of the servants apparently obliterated any +further remembrance of the meal, he accompanied his host to the +veranda again, where, tilting his chair back and putting his feet +on the railing, he gave himself up to unwonted and silent rumination. + +The silence was broken at last by Demorest, who, half-reclining on +a settee, had once or twice glanced towards the misshapen cactus. + +"Was there any trace discovered of Blandford, other than we knew +before we left the States?" + +"Wa'al, no," said Ezekiel, thoughtfully. "The last idea was that +he'd got control of the hoss after passin' the bridge, and had +managed to turn him back, for there was marks of buggy wheels on +the snow on the far side, and that fearin' to trust the hoss or the +bridge he tried to lead him over when the bridge gave way, and he +was caught in the wreck and carried off down stream. That would +account for his body not bein' found; they do tell that chunks of +that bridge were picked up on the Sound beach near the mouth o' the +river, nigh unto sixty miles away. That's about the last idea they +had of it at North Liberty." He paused and then cleverly directing +a stream of tobacco juice at an accurate curve over the railing, +wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and added, slowly: +"Thar's another idea--but I reckon it's only mine. Leastways I +ain't heard it argued by anybody." + +"What is that?" asked Demorest. + +"Wa'al, it ain't exakly complimentary to E. Blandford, Esq., and it +mout be orkard for YOU." + +"I don't think you're in the habit of letting such trifles +interfere with your opinion," said Demorest, with a slightly forced +laugh; "but what is your idea?" + +"That thar wasn't any accident." + +"No accident?" replied Demorest, raising himself on his elbow. + +"Nary accident," continued Ezekiel, deliberately, "and, if it comes +to that, not much of a dead body either." + +"What the devil do you mean?" said Demorest, sitting up. + +"I mean," said Ezekiel, with momentous deliberation, "that E. +Blandford, of the Winnipeg Mills, was in March, '50, ez nigh bein' +bust up ez any man kin be without actually failin'; that he'd been +down to Boston that day to get some extensions; that old Deacon +Salisbury knew it, and had been pesterin' Mrs. Blandford to induce +him to sell out and leave the place; and that the night he left he +took about two hundred and fifty dollars in bank bills that they +allus kept in the house, and Mrs. Blandford was in the habit o' +hidin' in the breast-pocket of one of his old overcoats hangin' up +in the closet. I mean that that air money and that air overcoat +went off with him, ez Mrs. Blandford knows, for I heard her tell +her ma about it. And when his affairs were wound up and his debts +paid, I reckon that the two hundred and fifty was all there was +left--and he scooted with it. It's orkard for you--ez I said +afore--but I don't see wot on earth you need get riled for. Ef he +ran off on account of only two hundred and fifty dollars he ain't +goin' to run back again for the mere matter o' your marrying Joan. +Ef he had--he'd a done it afore this. It's orkard ez I said--but +the only orkardness is your feelin's. I reckon Joan's got used to +hers." + +Demorest had risen angrily to his feet. But the next moment the +utter impossibility of reaching this man's hidebound moral +perception by even physical force hopelessly overcame him. It +would only impress him with the effect of his own disturbing power, +that to Ezekiel was equal to a proof of the truth of his opinions. +It might even encourage him to repeat this absurd story elsewhere +with his own construction upon his reception of it. After all it +was only Ezekiel's opinion--an opinion too preposterous for even a +moment's serious consideration. Blandford alive, and a petty +defaulter! Blandford above the earth and complacently abandoning +his wife and home to another! Blandford--perhaps a sneaking, +cowardly Nemesis--hiding in the shadow for future--impossible! It +really was enough to make him laugh. + +He did laugh, albeit with an uneasy sense that only a few years +ago he would have struck down the man who had thus traduced his +friend's memory. + +"You've been overtaxing your brain in patent-medicine circulars, +Corwin," he said in a roughly rallying manner, "and you've got +rather too much highfalutin and bitters mixed with your opinions. +After that yarn of yours you must be dry. What'll you take? I +haven't got any New England rum, but I can give you some ten-year- +old aguardiente made on the place." + +As he spoke he lifted a decanter and glass from a small table which +Manuel had placed in the veranda. + +"I guess not," said Ezekiel dryly. "It's now goin' on five years +since I've been a consistent temperance man." + +"In everything but melons, and criticism of your neighbor, eh?" +said Demorest, pouring out a glass of the liquor. + +"I hev my convictions," said Ezekiel with affected meekness. + +"And I have mine," said Demorest, tossing off the fiery liquor at a +draft, "and it's that this is devilish good stuff. Sorry you can't +take some. I'm afraid I'll have to get you to excuse me for a +while. I have to take a ride over the ranch before turning in, to +see if everything's right. The house is 'at your disposition,' as +we say here. I'll see you later." + +He walked away with a slight exaggeration of unconcern. Ezekiel +watched him narrowly with colorless eyes beneath his white lashes. +When he had gone he examined the thoroughly emptied glass of +aguardiente, and, taking the decanter, sniffed critically at its +sharp and potent contents. A smile of gratified discernment +followed. It was clear to him that Demorest was a heavy drinker. + +Contrary to his prognostication, however, Mrs. Demorest DID arrive +the next day. But although he was to depart from Buenaventura by +the same coach that had set her down at the gate of the casa, he +had already left the house armed with some letters of introduction +which Demorest had generously given him, to certain small traders +in the pueblo and along the route. Demorest was not displeased to +part with him before the arrival of his wife, and thus spare her +the awkwardness of a repetition of Ezekiel's effrontery in her +presence. Nor was he willing to have the impediment of a guest in +the house to any explanation he might have to seek from her, or to +the confidences that hereafter must be fuller and more mutual. +For with all his deep affection for his wife, Richard Demorest +unconsciously feared her. The strong man whose dominance over men +and women alike had been his salient characteristic, had begun to +feel an undefinable sense of some unrecognized quality in the woman +he loved. He had once or twice detected it in a tone of her voice, +in a remembered and perhaps even once idolized gesture, or in the +accidental lapse of some bewildering word. With the generosity of +a large nature he had put the thought aside, referring it to some +selfish weakness of his own, or--more fatuous than all--to a +possible diminution of his own affection. + +He was standing on the steps ready to receive her. Few of her +appreciative sex could have remained indifferent to the tender and +touching significance of his silent and subdued welcome. He had +that piteous wistfulness of eye seen in some dogs and the husbands +of many charming women--the affection that pardons beforehand the +indifference it has learned to expect. She approached him smiling +in her turn, meeting the sublime patience of being unloved with +the equally resigned patience of being loved, and feeling that +comforting sense of virtue which might become a bore, but never a +self-reproach. For the rest, she was prettier than ever; her five +years of expanded life had slightly rounded the elongated oval of +her face, filled up the ascetic hollows of her temples, and freed +the repression of her mouth and chin. A more genial climate had +quickened the circulation that North Liberty had arrested, and +suffused the transparent beauty of her skin with eloquent life. It +seemed as if the long, protracted northern spring of her youth had +suddenly burst into a summer of womanhood under those gentle skies; +and yet enough of her puritan precision of manner, movement, and +gesture remained to temper her fuller and more exuberant life and +give it repose. In a community of pretty women more or less given +to the license and extravagance of the epoch, she always looked +like a lady. + +He took her in his arms and half-lifted her up the last step of the +veranda. She resisted slightly with her characteristic action of +catching his wrists in both her hands and holding him off with an +awkward primness, and almost in the same tone that she had used to +Edward Blandford five years before, said: + +"There, Dick, that will do." + + +CHAPTER II + + +Demorest's dream of a few days' conjugal seclusion and confidences +with his wife was quickly dispelled by that lady. "I came down +with Rosita Pico, whose father, you know, once owned this +property," she said. "She's gone on to her cousins at Los Osos +Rancho to-night, but comes here to-morrow for a visit. She knows +the place well; in fact, she once had a romantic love affair here. +But she is very entertaining. It will be a little change for us," +she added, naively. + +Demorest kept back a sigh, without changing his gentle smile. "I'm +glad for your sake, dear. But is she not a little flighty and +inclined to flirt a good deal? I think I've heard so." + +"She's a young girl who has been severely tried, Richard, and +perhaps is not to blame for endeavoring to forget it in such +distraction as she can find," said Mrs. Demorest, with a slight +return of her old manner. "I can understand her feelings +perfectly." She looked pointedly at her husband as she spoke, it +being one of her late habits to openly refer to their ante-nuptial +acquaintance as a natural reaction from the martyrdom of her first +marriage, with a quiet indifference that seemed almost an +indelicacy. But her husband only said: "As you like, dear," +vaguely remembering Dona Rosita as the alleged heroine of a +forgotten romance with some earlier American adventurer who had +disappeared, and trying vainly to reconcile his wife's sentimental +description of her with his own recollection of the buxom, pretty, +laughing, but dangerous-eyed Spanish girl he had, however, seen but +once. + +She arrived the next day, flying into a protracted embrace of Joan, +which included a smiling recognition of Demorest with an unoccupied +blue eye, and a shake of her fan over his wife's shoulder. Then +she drew back and seemed to take in the whole veranda and garden in +another long caress of her eyes. "Ah-yess! I have recog-nized it, +mooch. It es ze same. Of no change--not even of a leetle. No, +she ess always--esso." She stopped, looked unutterable things at +Joan, pressed her fan below a spray of roses on her full bodice as +if to indicate some thrilling memory beneath it, shook her head +again, suddenly caught sight of Demorest's serious face, said: "Ah, +that brigand of our husband laughs himself at me," and then herself +broke into a charming ripple of laughter. + +"But I was not laughing, Dona Rosita," said Demorest, smiling +sadly, however, in spite of himself. + +She made a little grimace, and then raised her elbows, slightly +lifting her shoulders. "As it shall please you, Senor. But he is +gone--thees passion. Yess--what you shall call thees sentiment of +lof--zo--as he came!" She threw her fingers in the air as if to +illustrate the volatile and transitory passage of her affections, +and then turned again to Joan with her back towards Demorest. + +"Do please go on--Dona Rosita," said he, "I never heard the real +story. If there is any romance about my house, I'd like to know +it," he added with a faint sigh. + +Dona Rosita wheeled upon him with an inquiring little look. "Ah, +you have the sentiment, and YOU," she continued, taking Joan by the +arms, "YOU have not. Eet ess good so. When a--the wife," she +continued boldly, hazarding an extended English abstraction, "he +has the sentimente and the hoosband he has nothing, eet is not +good--for a-him--ze wife," she concluded triumphantly. + +"But I have great appreciation and I am dying to hear it," said +Demorest, trying to laugh. + +"Well, poor one, you look so. But you shall lif till another +time," said Dona Rosita, with a mock courtesy, gliding with Joan +away. + +The "other time" came that evening when chocolate was served on the +veranda, where Dona Rosita, mantilla-draped against the dry, clear, +moonlit air, sat at the feet of Joan on the lowest step. Demorest, +uneasily observant of the influence of the giddy foreigner on his +wife, and conscious of certain confidences between them from which +he was excluded, leaned against a pillar of the porch in half +abstracted resignation; Joan, under the tutelage of Rosita, lit a +cigarette; Demorest gazed at her wonderingly, trying to recall, in +her fuller and more animated face, some memory of the pale, refined +profile of the Puritan girl he had first met in the Boston train, +the faint aurora of whose cheek in that northern clime seemed to +come and go with his words. Becoming conscious at last of the eyes +of Dona Rosita watching him from below, with an effort he recalled +his duty as her host and gallantly reminded her that moonlight and +the hour seemed expressly fitted for her promised love story. + +"Do tell it," said Joan, "I don't mind hearing it again." + +"Then you know it already?" said Demorest, surprised. + +Joan took the cigarette from her lips, laughed complacently, and +exchanged a familiar glance with Rosita. "She told it me a year +ago, when we first knew each other," she replied. "Go on, dear," +to Rosita. + +Thus encouraged, Dona Rosita began, addressing herself first in +Spanish to Demorest, who understood the language better than his +wife, and lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed +to them both. It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo-- +this story of a silly muchacha like herself and a strange +caballero. He would go to sleep while she was talking, and to- +night he would say to his wife, "Mother of God! why have you +brought here this chattering parrot who speaks but of one thing?" +But she would go on always like the windmill, whether there was +grain to grind or no. "It was four years ago. Ah! Don Ricardo did +not remember the country then--it was when the first Americans +came--now it is different. Then there were no coaches--in truth +one travelled very little, and always on horseback, only to see +one's neighbors. And suddenly, as if in one day, it was changed; +there were strange men on the roads, and one was frightened, and +one shut the gates of the pateo and drove the horses into the +corral. One did not know much of the Americans then--for why? +They were always going, going--never stopping, hurrying on to the +gold mines, hurrying away from the gold mines, hurrying to look for +other gold mines: but always going on foot, on horseback, in queer +wagons--hurrying, pushing everywhere. Ah, it took away the breath. +All, except one American--he did not hurry, he did not go with the +others, he came and stayed here at Buenaventura. He was very +quiet, very civil, very sad, and very discreet. He was not like +the others, and always kept aloof from them. He came to see Don +Andreas Pico, and wanted to beg a piece of land and an old +vaquero's hut near the road for a trifle. Don Andreas would have +given it, or a better house, to him, or have had him live at the +casa here; but he would not. He was very proud and shy, so he took +the vaquero's hut, a mere adobe affair, and lived in it, though a +caballero like yourself, with white hands that knew not labor, and +small feet that had seldom walked. In good time he learned to ride +like the best vaquero, and helped Don Andreas to find the lost +mustangs, and showed him how to improve the old mill. And his +pride and his shyness wore off, and he would come to the casa +sometimes. And Don Andreas got to love him very much, and his +daughter, Dona Rosita--ah, well, yes truly--a leetle. + +"But he had strange moods and ways, this American, and at times +they would have thought him a lunatico had they not believed it to +be an American fashion. He would be very kind and gentle like one +of the family, coming to the casa every day, playing with the +children, advising Don Andreas and--yes--having a devotion--very +discreet, very ceremonious, for Dona Rosita. And then, all in a +moment, he would become as ill, without a word or gesture, until he +would stalk out of the house, gallop away furiously, and for a week +not be heard of. The first time it happened, Dona Rosita was +piqued by his rudeness, Don Andreas was alarmed, for it was on an +evening like the present, and Dona Rosita was teaching him a little +song on the guitar when the fit came on him. And he snapped the +guitar strings like thread and threw it down, and got up like a +bear and walked away without a word." + +"I see it all," said Demorest, half seriously: "you were coquetting +with him, and he was jealous." + +But Dona Rosita shook her head and turned impetuously, and said in +English to Joan: + +"No, it was astutcia--a trick, a ruse. Because when my father have +arrived at his house, he is agone. And so every time. When he +have the fit he goes not to his house. No. And it ees not until +after one time when he comes back never again, that we have +comprehend what he do at these times. And what do you think? I +shall tell to you." + +She composed herself comfortably, with her plump elbows on her +knees, and her fan crossed on the palm of her hand before her, and +began again: + +"It is a year he has gone, and the stagecoach is attack of +brigands. Tiburcio, our vaquero, have that night made himself a +pasear on the road, and he have seen HIM. He have seen, one, two, +three men came from the wood with something on the face, and HE is +of them. He has nothing on his face, and Tiburcio have recognize +him. We have laugh at Tiburcio. We believe him not. It is +improbable that this Senor Huanson--" + +"Senor who?" said Demorest. + +"Huanson--eet is the name of him. Ah, Carr!--posiblemente it is +nothing--a Don Fulano--or an apodo--Huanson." + +"Oh, I see, JOHNSON, very likely." + +"We have said it is not possible that this good man, who have come +to the house and ride on his back the children, is a thief and a +brigand. And one night my father have come from the Monterey in +the coach, and it was stopped. And the brigands have take from the +passengers the money, the rings from the finger, and the watch-- +and my father was of the same. And my father, he have great +dissatisfaction and anguish, for his watch is given to him of an +old friend, and it is not like the other watch. But the watch he +go all the same. And then when the robbers have made a finish +comes to the window of the coach a mascara and have say, 'Who is +the Don Andreas Pico?' And my father have say, 'It is I who am Don +Andreas Pico.' And the mask have say, 'Behold, your watch is +restore!' and he gif it to him. And my father say, 'To whom have I +the distinguished honor to thank?' And the mask say--" + +"Johnson," interrupted Demorest. + +"No," said Dona Rosita in grave triumph, "he say Essmith. For this +Essmith is like Huanson--an apodo--nothing." + +"Then you really think this man was your old friend?" asked +Demorest. + +"I think." + +"And that he was a robber even when living here--and that it was +not your cruelty that really drove him to take the road?" + +Dona Rosita shrugged her plump shoulders. "You will not +comprehend. It was because of his being a brigand that he stayed +not with us. My father would not have object if he have present +himself to me for marriage in these times. I would not have +object, for I was young, and we have knew nothing. It was he who +have object. For why? Inside of his heart he have feel he was a +brigand." + +"But you might have reformed him in time," said Demorest. + +She again shrugged her shoulders. "Quien sabe." After a pause she +added with infinite gravity: "And before he have reform, it is bad +for the menage. I should invite to my house some friend. They +arrive, and one say, 'I have not the watch of my pocket,' and +another, 'The ring of my finger, he is gone,' and another, 'My +earrings, she is loss.' And I am obliged to say, 'They reside now +in the pocket of my hoosband; patience! a little while--perhaps to- +morrow--he will restore.' No," she continued, with an air of +infinite conviction, "it is not good for the menage--the necessity +of those explanation." + +"You told me he was handsome," said Joan, passing her arm +carelessly around Dona Rosita's comfortable waist. "How did he +look?" + +"As an angel! He have long curls to his back. His moustache was +as silk, for he have had never a barber to his face. And his eyes-- +Santa Maria!--so soft and so--so melankoly. When he smile it is +like the moonlight. But," she added, rising to her feet and +tossing the end of her lace mantilla over her shoulder with a +little laugh--"it is finish--Adelante! Dr-rrive on!" + +"I don't want to destroy your belief in the connection of your +friend with the road agents," said Demorest grimly, "but if he +belongs to their band it is in an inferior capacity. Most of them +are known to the authorities, and I have heard it even said that +their leader or organizer is a very unromantic speculator in San +Francisco." + +But this suggestion was received coldly by the ladies, who +superciliously turned their backs upon it and the suggester. Joan +dropped her voice to a lower tone and turned to Dona Rosita. "And +you have never seen him since?" + +"Never." + +"I should--at least, I wouldn't have let it end in THAT way," said +Joan in a positive whisper. + +"Eh?" said Dona Rosita, laughing. "So eet is YOU, Juanita, that +have the romance--eh? Ah, bueno! 'you have the house--so I gif to +you the lover also.' I place him at your disposition." She made a +mock gesture of elaborate and complete abnegation. "But," she +added in Joan's ear, with a quick glance at Demorest, "do not let +our hoosband eat him. Even now he have the look to strangle ME. +Make to him a little lof, quickly, when I shall walk in the +garden." She turned away with a pretty wave of her fan to +Demorest, and calling out, "I go to make an assignation with my +memory," laughed again, and lazily passed into the shadow. An +ominous silence on the veranda followed, broken finally by Mrs. +Demorest. + +"I don't think it was necessary for you to show your dislike to +Dona Rosita quite so plainly," she said, coldly, slightly accenting +the Puritan stiffness, which any conjugal tete-a-tete lately +revived in her manner. + +"I show dislike of Dona Rosita?" stammered Demorest, in surprise. +"Come, Joan," he added, with a forgiving smile, "you don't mean to +imply that I dislike her because I couldn't get up a thrilling +interest in an old story I've heard from every gossip in the pueblo +since I can remember." + +"It's not an old story to HER," said Joan, dryly, "and even if it +were, you might reflect that all people are not as anxious to +forget the past as you are." + +Demorest drew back to let the shaft glance by. "The story is old +enough, at least for her to have had a dozen flirtations, as you +know, since then," he returned gently, "and I don't think she +herself seriously believes in it. But let that pass. I am sorry I +offended her. I had no idea of doing so. As a rule, I think she +is not so easily offended. But I shall apologize to her." He +stopped and approached nearer his wife in a half-timid, half- +tentative affection. "As to my forgetfulness of the past, Joan, +even if it were true, I have had little cause to forget it lately. +Your friend, Corwin--" + +"I must insist upon your not calling him MY friend, Richard," +interrupted Joan, sharply, "considering that it was through YOUR +indiscretion in coming to us for the buggy that night, that he +suspected--" + +She stopped suddenly, for at that moment a startled little shriek, +quickly subdued, rang through the garden. Demorest ran hurriedly +down the steps in the direction of the outcry. Joan followed more +cautiously. At the first turning of the path Dona Rosita almost +fell into his arms. She was breathless and trembling, but broke +into a hysterical laugh. + +"I have such a fear come to me--I cry out! I think I have seen a +man; but it was nothing--nothing! I am a fool. It is no one +here." + +"But where did you see anything?" said Joan, coming up. + +Rosita flew to her side. "Where? Oh, here!--everywhere! Ah, I am +a fool!" She was laughing now, albeit there were tears glistening +on her lashes when she laid her head on Joan's shoulder. + +"It was some fancy--some resemblance you saw in that queer cactus," +said Demorest, gently. "It is quite natural, I was myself deceived +the other night. But I'll look around to satisfy you. Take Dona +Rosita back to the veranda, Joan. But don't be alarmed, dear--it +was only an illusion." + +He turned away. When his figure was lost in the entwining foliage, +Dona Rosita seized Joan's shoulder and dragged her face down to a +level with her own. + +"It was something!" she whispered quickly. + +"Who?" + +"It was--HIM!" + +"Nonsense," groaned Joan, nevertheless casting a hurried glance +around her. + +"Have no fear," said Dona Rosita quickly, "he is gone--I saw him +pass away--so! But it was HE--Huanson. I recognize him. I forget +him never." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Have I the eyes? the memory? Madre de Dios! Am I a lunatico too? +Look! He have stood there--so." + +"Then you think he knew you were here?" + +"Quien sabe?" + +"And that he came here to see you?" + +Dona Rosita caught her again by the shoulders, and with her lips +to Joan's ear, said with the intensest and most deliberate of +emphasis: + +"NO!" + +"What in Heaven's name brought him here then?" + +"You!" + +"Are you crazy?" + +"You! you! YOU!" repeated Dona Rosita, with crescendo energy. "I +have come upon him here; where he stood and look at the veranda, +absorrrb of YOU. You move--he fly." + +"Hush!" + +"Ah, yes! I have said I give him to you. And he came, Bueno," +murmured Dona Rosita, with a half-resigned, half-superstitious +gesture. + +"WILL you be quiet!" + +It was the sound of Demorest's feet on the gravel path, returning +from his fruitless search. He had seen nothing. It must have been +Dona Rosita's fancy. + +"She was just saying she thought she had been mistaken," said Joan, +quietly. "Let us go in--it is rather chilly here, and I begin to +feel creepy too." + +Nevertheless, as they entered the house again, and the light of the +hall lantern fell upon her face, Demorest thought he had never but +once before seen her look so nervously and animatedly beautiful. + + +CHAPTER III + + +The following day, when Mr. Ezekiel Corwin had delivered his +letters of introduction, and thoroughly canvassed the scant +mercantile community of San Buenaventura with considerable success, +he deposited his carpet-bag at the stage office in the posada, and +found to his chagrin that he had still two hours to wait before the +coach arrived. After a vain attempt to impart cheerful but +disparaging criticism of the pueblo and its people to Senor Mateo +and his wife--whose external courtesy had been visibly increased by +a line from Demorest, but whose confidence towards the stranger had +not been extended in the same proportion--he gave it up, and threw +himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already hacked +with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife from +his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of +the Panacea--as a casual advertisement. During its progress, +however, he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to +enter the posada through the stage office, the number of voices in +the adjoining room seemed to increase, and the ministrations of +Mateo and his wife became more feverishly occupied with their +invisible guests. It seemed to Ezekiel that consequently there +must be a second entrance which he had not seen, and this added to +the circumstance that one or two lounging figures who had been +approaching unaccountably disappeared before reaching the veranda, +induced him to rise and examine the locality. A few paces beyond +was an alley, but it appeared to be already blocked by several +cigarette-smoking, short-jacketed men who were leaning against its +walls, and showed no inclination to make way for him. Checked, but +not daunted, Ezekiel coolly returned to the stage office, and +taking the first opportunity when Mateo passed through the rear +door, followed him. As he expected, the innkeeper turned to the +left and entered a large room filled with tobacco smoke and the +local habitues of the posada. But Ezekiel, shrewdly surmising that +the private entrance must be in the opposite direction, turned to +the right along the passage until he came unexpectedly upon the +corridor of the usual courtyard, or patio, of every Mexican +hostelry, closed at one end by a low adobe wall, in which there was +a door. The free passage around the corridor was interrupted by +wide partitions, fitted up with tables and benches, like stalls, +opening upon the courtyard where a few stunted fig and orange trees +still grew. As the courtyard seemed to be the only communication +between the passage he had left and the door in the wall, he was +about to cross it, when the voices of two men in the compartment +struck his ears. Although one was evidently an American's, Ezekiel +was instinctively convinced that they were speaking in English only +for greater security against being understood by the frequenters of +the posada. It is unnecessary to say that this was an innocent +challenge to the curiosity of Ezekiel that he instantly accepted. +He drew back carefully into the shadow of the partition as one of +the voices asked-- + +"Wasn't that Johnson just come in?" + +There was a movement as if some one had risen to look over the +compartment, but the gathering twilight completely hid Ezekiel. + +"No!" + +"He's late. Suppose he don't come--or back out?" + +The other man broke into a grim laugh. "I reckon you don't know +Johnson yet, or you'd understand this yer little game o' his is +just the one idea o' his life. He's been two years on that man's +track, and he ain't goin' to back out now that he's got a dead sure +thing on him." + +"But why is he so keen about it, anyway? It don't seem nat'ral for +a business man built after Johnson's style, and a rich man to boot, +to go into this detective business. It ain't the reward, we know +that. Is it an old grudge?" + +"You bet!" The speaker paused, and then in a lower voice, which +taxed Ezekial's keen ear to the uttermost, resumed: "It's said up +in Frisco that Cherokee Bob knew suthin' agin Johnson way back in +the States; anyhow, I believe it's understood that they came across +the plains together in '50--and Bob hounded Johnson and blackmailed +him here where he was livin', even to the point of makin' him help +him on the road or give information, until one day Johnson bucked +against it--kicked over the traces--and swore he'd be revenged on +Bob, and then just settled himself down to that business. Wotever +he'd been and done himself he made it all right with the sheriff +here; and I've heard ez it wasn't anything criminal or that sort, +but that it was o' some private trouble that he'd confided to that +hound Bob, and Bob had threatened to tell agen him. That's the +grudge they say Johnson has, and that's why he's allowed to be the +head devil in this yer affair. It's an understood thing, too, that +the sheriff and the police ain't goin' to interfere if Johnson +accidentally blows the top of Bob's head off in the scrimmage of a +capter." + +"And I reckon Bob wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to him +when he finds out that Johnson has given him away?" + +"I reckon," said the other, sententiously, "for it's Johnson's +knowledge of the country and the hoss-stealers that are in with +Bob's gang of road agents that made it easy for him to buy up and +win over Bob's friends here, so that they'd help to trap him." + +"It's pretty rough on Bob to be sold out in that way," said the +second speaker, sympathizingly. + +"If they were white men, p'rhaps," returned his companion, +contemptuously, "but this yer's a case of Injin agen Injin, ez the +men are Mexican half-breeds just as Bob's a half Cherokee. The +sooner that kind o' cross cattle exterminate each other the better +it'll be for the country. It takes a white man like Johnson to set +'em by the ears." + +A silence followed. Ezekiel, beginning to be slightly bored with +his cheaply acquired but rather impractical information, was about +to slip back into the passage again when he was arrested by a laugh +from the first speaker. + +"What's the matter?" growled the other. "Do you want to bring the +whole posada out here?" + +"I was only thinkin' what a skeer them innocent greenhorn +passengers will get just ez they're snoozing off for the night, ten +miles from here," responded his friend, with a chuckle. "Wonder ef +anybody's goin' up from here besides that patent medicine softy." + +Ezekiel stopped as if petrified. + +"Ef the ---- fools keep quiet they won't be hurt, for our men will +be ready to chip in the moment of the attack. But we've got to let +the attack be made for the sake of the evidence. And if we warn +off the passengers from going this trip, and let the stage go up +empty, Bob would suspect something and vamose. But here's +Johnson!" + +The door in the adobe wall had suddenly opened, and a figure in a +serape entered the patio. Ezekiel, whose curiosity was whetted +with indignation at the ignominious part assigned to him in this +comedy, forgot even his risk of detection by the newcomer, who +advanced quickly towards the compartment. When he had reached it +he said, in a tone of bitterness: + +"The game is up, gentlemen, and the whole thing is blown. The +scoundrel has got some confederate here--for he's been seen openly +on the road near Demorest's ranch, and the band have had warning +and dispersed. We must find out the traitor, and take our +precautions for the next time. Who is that there? I don't know +him." + +He was pointing to Ezekiel, who had started eagerly forward at the +first sound of his voice. The two occupants of the compartment +rose at the same moment, leaped into the courtyard, and confronted +Ezekiel. Surrounded by the three menacing figures he did not +quail, but remained intently gazing upon the newcomer. Then his +mouth opened, and he drawled lazily: + +"Wa'al, ef it ain't Squire Blandford, of North Liberty, Connecticut, +I'm a treed coon. Squire Blandford, how DO you do?" + +The stranger drew back in undisguised amazement; the two men +glanced hurriedly at each other; Ezekiel alone remained cool, +smiling, imperturbable, and triumphant. + +"Who are YOU, sir? I do not know you," demanded the newcomer, +roughly. + +"Like ez not," said Corwin dryly, "it's a matter o' four year sense +I lived in your house. Even Dick Demorest--you knew Dick?--didn't +know me; but I reckon that Mrs. Blandford as used to be--" + +"That's enough," said Blandford--for it was he--suddenly mastering +both himself and Corwin by a supreme emphasis of will and gesture. +"Wait!" Then turning to the two others who were discreetly +regarding the blank adobe wall before them, he said: "Excuse me for +a few minutes, gentlemen. There is no hurry now. I will see you +later;" and with an imperative wave of his hand motioned Ezekiel to +precede him into the passage, and followed him. + +He did not speak until they entered the stage office, when, passing +through it, he said peremptorily: "Follow me." The few loungers, +who seemed to recognize him, made way for him with a singular +deference that impressed Ezekiel, already dominated by his manner. +The first perception in his mind was that Blandford had in some +strange way succeeded to Demorest's former imperious character. +There was no trace left of the old, gentle subjection to Joan's +prim precision. Ezekiel followed him out of the office as +unresistingly as he had followed Demorest into the stables on that +eventful night. They passed down the narrow street until Blandford +suddenly stopped short and turned into the crumbling doorway of one +of the low adobe buildings and entered an apartment. It seemed to +be the ordinary living-room of the house, made more domestic by the +presence of a silk counterpaned bed in one corner, a prie Dieu and +crucifix, and one or two articles of bedchamber furniture. A woman +was sitting in deshabille by the window; a man was smoking on a +lounge against the wall. Blandford, in the same peremptory manner, +addressed a command in Spanish to the inmates, who immediately +abandoned the apartment to the seeming trespasser. + +Motioning his companion to a seat on the lounge just vacated, +Blandford folded his arms and stood erect before him. + +"Well," he said, with quick, business conciseness, "what do you +want?" + +Ezekiel was staggered out of his complacency. + +"Wa'al," he stammered, "I only reckoned to ask the news, ez we are +old friends--I--" + +"How much do you want?" repeated Blandford, impatiently. + +Ezekiel was mystified, yet expectant. "I can't say ez I exakly +understand," he began. + +"How--much--money--do--you--want," continued Blandford, with frigid +accuracy, "to get up and get out of this place?" + +"Wa'al, consideren ez I'm travellin' here ez the only authorized +agent of a first-class Frisco Drug House," said Ezekiel, with a +mingling of mortification, pride, and hopefulness, "unless you're +travellin' in the opposition business, I don't see what's that to +you." + +Blandford regarded him searchingly for an instant. "Who sent you +here?" + +"Dilworth & Dusenberry, Battery Street, San Francisco. Hev their +card?" said Ezekiel, taking one from his waistcoat pocket. + +"Corwin," said Blandford, sternly, "whatever your business is here +you'll find it will pay you better, a ---- sight, to be frank with +me and stop this Yankee shuffling. You say you have been with +Demorest--what has HE got to do with your business here?" + +"Nothin'," said Ezekiel. "I reckon he wos ez astonished to see me +ez you are." + +"And didn't he send you here to seek me?" said Blandford, +impatiently. + +"Considerin' he believes you a dead man, I reckon not." + +Blandford gave a hard, constrained laugh. After a pause, still +keeping his eyes fixed on Ezekiel, he said: + +"Then your recognition of me was accidental?" + +"Wa'al, yes. And ez I never took much stock in the stories that +you were washed off the Warensboro Bridge, I ain't much astonished +at finding you agin." + +"What did you believe happened to me?" said Blandford, less +brusquely. + +Ezekiel noticed the softening; he felt his own turn coming. "I +kalkilated you had reasons for going off, leaving no address behind +you," he drawled. + +"What reasons?" asked Blandford, with a sudden relapse of his +former harshness. + +"Wa'al, Squire Blandford, sens you wanter know--I reckon your +business wasn't payin', and there was a matter of two hundred and +fifty dollars ye took with ye, that your creditors would hev liked +to hev back." + +"Who dare say that?" demanded Blandford, angrily. + +"Your wife that was--Mrs. Demorest ez is--told it to her mother," +returned Ezekiel, lazily. + +The blow struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined. +For an instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' +retrospect of his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt +of its wisdom might have obtruded itself upon him, he had never +thought of THIS. He had been willing to believe that his wife had +quietly forgotten him as well as her treachery to him, he had +passively acquiesced in the results of that forgetfulness and his +own silence; he had been conscious that his wound had healed sooner +than he expected, but if this consciousness had enabled him to +extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife and Demorest, it +was always with the conviction that his mysterious effacement had +left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their consciences alone +could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading +interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally +unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of +that act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his +defence before the world, without being able now to offer the real +cause. The anguish of that night had gone forever; but the +ridiculous interpretation of it had survived, and would survive it. +In the eyes of the man before him he was not a wronged husband, but +an absconding petty defaulter, whom he had just detected! + +His mind was quickly made up. In that instant he had resolved upon +a step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its +results. For five years he had clearly misunderstood his attitude +towards his treacherous wife and perjured friend. Thanks to this +practical, selfish machine before him, he knew it now. + +"Look here, Corwin," he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless +face, but a steady, merciless eye. "I can guess, without your +telling me, what lies may be circulated about me by the man and +woman who know that I have only to declare myself alive to convict +them of infamy--perhaps even of criminality before the law. You +are not MY friend, or you would not have believed them; if you are +THEIRS, you have two courses open to you now. Keep this meeting to +yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it a secret also; or, tell +Mrs. Demorest that you have seen Mr. Johnson, who is not afraid +to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he is Edward +Blandford, her only lawful husband. Choose which course you like-- +it is nothing more to me." + +"Wa'al, I reckon that, as far as I know Mrs. Demorest," said +Ezekiel, dryly, "it don't make the least difference to her either; +but if you want to know my opinion o' this matter, it is that +neither you nor Demorest exactly understand that woman. I've known +Joan Salisbury since she was so high, but if ye expected me to tell +you wot she was goin' to do next, I'd be able to tell ye where the +next flash o' lightnin' would strike. It's wot you don't expect of +Joan Salisbury that she does. And the best proof of it is that she +filed papers for a divorce agin you in Chicago and got it by +default a few weeks afore she married Demorest--and you don't know +it." + +Blandford recoiled. "Impossible," he said, but his voice too +plainly showed how clearly its possibility struck him now. + +"It's so, but it was kept secret by Deacon Salisbury. I overheerd +it. Wa'al, that's a proof that you don't understand Joan, I +reckon. And considerin' that Demorest HIMSELF don't know it, ez I +found out only the other day in talking to him, I kalkilate I'm +safe in sayin' that you're neither o' you quite up to Deacon +Salisbury's darter in nat'ral cuteness. I don't like to obtrude my +opinion, Squire Blandford, ez we're old friends, but I do say, that +wot with Demorest's prematooriness and yer own hangfiredness, it's +a good thing that you two worldly men hev got Joan Salisbury to +stand up for North Liberty and keep it from bein' scandalized by +the ungodly. Ef it hadn't been for her smartness, whar y'd both be +landed now? There's a heap in Christian bringin' up, and a power +in grace, Squire Blandford." + +His hard, dry face was for an instant transfigured by a grim fealty +and the dull glow of some sectarian clannishness. Or was it +possible that this woman's personality had in some mysterious way +disturbed his rooted selfishness? + +During his speech Blandford had walked to the window. When Corwin +had ceased speaking, Blandford turned towards him with an equally +changed face and cold imperturbability that astonished him, and +held out his hand. "Let bygones be bygones, Corwin--whether we +ever meet again or not. Yet if I can do anything for you for the +sake of old times, I am ready to do it. I have some power here and +in San Francisco," he continued, with a slight touch of pride, +"that isn't dependent upon the mere name I may travel under. I +have a purpose in coming here." + +"I know it," said Ezekiel, dryly. "I heard it all from your two +friends. You're huntin' some man that did you an injury." + +"I'm hunting down a dog who, suspecting I had some secret in +emigrating here, tried to blackmail and ruin me," said Blandford, +with a sudden expression of hatred that seemed inconsistent with +anything that Ezekiel had ever known of his old master's character-- +"a scoundrel who tried to break up my new life as another had +broken up the old." He stopped and recovered himself with a short +laugh. "Well, Ezekiel, I don't know as his opinion of me was any +worse than yours or HERS. And until I catch HIM to clear my name +again, I let the other slanderers go." + +"Wa'al, I reckon you might lay hands on that devil yet, and not far +away, either. I was up at Demorest's to-day, and I heard Joan and +a skittish sort o' Mexican young lady talkin' about some tramp that +had frightened her. And Miss Pico said--" + +"What! Who did you say?" demanded Blandford, with a violent start. + +"Wa'al, I reckoned I heerd the first name too--Rosita." + +A quick flush crossed Blandford's face, and left it glowing like a +boy's. + +"Is SHE there?" + +"Wa'al, I reckon she's visitin' Joan," said Ezekiel, narrowly +attentive of Blandford's strange excitement; "but wot of it?" + +But Blandford had utterly forgotten Ezekiel's presence. He had +remained speechless and flushed. And then, as if suddenly dazzled +by an inspiration, he abruptly dashed from the room. Ezekiel heard +him call to his passive host with a Spanish oath, but before he +could follow, they had both hurriedly left the house. + +Ezekiel glanced around him and contemplatively ran his fingers +through his beard. "It ain't Joan Salisbury nor Dick Demorest ez +giv' him that start! Humph! Wa'al--I wanter know!" + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Mrs. Demorest was so fascinated by the company of Dona Rosita Pico +and her romantic memories, that she prevailed upon that heart- +broken but scarcely attenuated young lady to prolong her visit +beyond the fortnight she had allotted to communion with the past. +For a day or two following her singular experience in the garden, +Mrs. Demorest plied her with questions regarding the apparition she +had seen, and finally extorted from her the admission that she +could not positively swear to its being the real Johnson, or even +a perfectly consistent shade of that faithless man. When Joan +pointed out to her that such masculine perfections as curling raven +locks, long silken mustachios, and dark eyes, were attributes by no +means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionally seen among +other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, Dona +Rosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. +"Besides, dear," said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, "it +is four years since you've seen him, and surely the man has either +shaved since, or else he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and +then he would be more fully bearded." + +But Dona Rosita only shook her pretty head. "Ah, but he have an +air--a something I know not what you call--so." She threw her +shawl over her left shoulder, and as far as a pair of soft blue +eyes and comfortably pacific features would admit, endeavored to +convey an idea of wicked and gloomy abstraction. + +"You child," said Joan,--"that's nothing; they all of them do that. +Why, there was a stranger at the Oriental Hotel whom I met twice +when I was there--just as mysterious, romantic, and wicked-looking. +And in fact they hinted terrible things about him. Well! so much +so, that Mr. Demorest was quite foolish about my being barely civil +to him--you understand--and--" She stopped suddenly, with a +heightened color under the fire of Rosita's laughing eyes. + +"Ah--so--Dona Discretion! Tell to me all. Did our hoosband eat +him?" + +Joan's features suddenly tightened to their old puritan rigidity. +"Mr. Demorest has reasons--abundant reasons--to thoroughly +understand and trust me," she replied in an austere voice. + +Rosita looked at her a moment in mystification and then shrugged +her shoulders. The conversation dropped. Nevertheless, it is +worthy of being recorded that from that moment the usual familiar +allusions, playful and serious, to Rosita's mysterious visitor +began to diminish in frequency and finally ceased. Even the news +brought by Demorest of some vague rumor in the pueblo that an +intended attack on the stage-coach had been frustrated by the +authorities, and that the vicinity had been haunted by incognitos +of both parties, failed to revive the discussion. + +Meantime the slight excitement that had stirred the sluggish life +of the pueblo of San Buenaventura had subsided. The posada of +Senor Mateo had lost its feverish and perplexing dual life; the +alley behind it no longer was congested by lounging cigarette +smokers; the compartment looking upon the silent patio was +unoccupied, and its chairs and tables were empty. The two deputy +sheriffs, of whom Senor Mateo presumably knew very little, had +fled; and the mysterious Senor Johnson, of whom he--still +presumably--knew still less, had also disappeared. For Senor +Mateo's knowledge of what transpired in and about his posada, and +of the character and purposes of those who frequented it, was +tinctured by grave and philosophical doubts. This courteous and +dignified scepticism generally took the formula of quien sabe to +all frivolous and mundane inquiry. He would affirm with strict +verity that his omelettes were unapproachable, his beds miraculous, +his aguardiente supreme, his house was even as your own. Beyond +these were questions with which the simply finite and always +discreet human intellect declined to grapple. + +The disturbing effect of Senor Corwin upon a mind thus gravely +constituted may be easily imagined. Besides Ezekiel's inordinate +capacity for useless or indiscreet information, it was undeniable +that his patent medicines had effected a certain peaceful +revolutionary movement in San Buenaventura. A simple and +superstitious community that had steadily resisted the practical +domestic and agricultural American improvements, succumbed to the +occult healing influences of the Panacea and Jones's Bitters. The +virtues of a mysterious balsam, more or less illuminated with a +colored mythological label, deeply impressed them; and the +exhibition of a circular, whereon a celestial visitant was +represented as descending with a gross of Rogers' Pills to a +suffering but admiring multitude, touched their religious +sympathies to such an extent that the good Padre Jose was obliged +to warn them from the pulpit of the diabolical character of their +heresies of healing--with the natural result of yet more +dangerously advertising Ezekiel. There were those too who spoke +under their breath of the miraculous efficacy of these nostrums. +Had not Don Victor Arguello, whose respectable digestion, exhausted +by continuous pepper and garlic, failed him suddenly, received an +unexpected and pleasurable stimulus from the New England rum, which +was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not the baker, tremulous +from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustained by the +invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg's Nerve Tonic? Nor +had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maiden and +maternal requirements. Unguents, that made silken their black but +somewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming possibilities to +the Senoritas; while soothing syrups lent a peaceful repose to many +a distracted mother's household. The success of Ezekiel was so +marked as to justify his return at the end of three weeks with a +fresh assortment and an undiminished audacity. + +It was on his second visit that the sceptical, non-committal policy +of Senor Mateo was sorely tried. Arriving at the posada one night, +Ezekiel became aware that his host was engaged in some mysterious +conference with a visitor who had entered through the ordinary +public room. The view which the acute Ezekiel managed to get of +the stranger, however, was productive of no further discovery than +that he bore a faint and disreputable resemblance to Blandford, and +was handsome after a conscious, reckless fashion, with an air of +mingled bravado and conceit. But an hour later, as Corwin was +taking the cooler air of the veranda before retiring to one of the +miraculous beds of the posada, he was amazed at seeing what was +apparently Blandford himself emerge on horseback from the alley, +and after a quick glance towards the veranda, canter rapidly up the +street. Ezekiel's first impression was to call to him, but the +sudden recollection that he parted from his old master on +confidential terms only three days before in San Francisco, and +that it was impossible for him to be in the pueblo, stopped him +with his fingers meditatively in his beard. Then he turned in to +the posada, and hastily summoned Mateo. + +The gentleman presented himself in a state of such profound +scepticism that it seemed to have already communicated itself to +his shoulders, and gave him the appearance of having shrugged +himself into the room. + +"Ha'ow long ago did Mr. Johnson get here?" asked Corwin, lazily. + +"Ah--possibly--then there has been a Mr. Johnson?" This is a +polite doubt of his own perceptions and a courteous acceptance of +his questioner's. + +"Wa'al, I guess so. Considerin' I jest saw him with my own eyes," +returned Ezekiel. + +"Ah!" Mateo was relieved. Might he congratulate the Senor Corwin, +who must be also relieved, and shake his respected hand. Bueno. +And then he had met this Senor Johnson? doubtless a friend? And he +was well? and all were happy? + +"Look yer, Mattayo! What I wanter know ez THIS. When did that +man, who has just ridden out of your alley, come here? Sabe that-- +it's a plain question." + +Ah surely, of the clearest comprehension. Bueno. It may have been +last week--or even this week--or perhaps yesterday--or of a +possibility to-day. The Senor Corwin, who was wise and omniscient, +would comprehend that the difficulty lay in deciding WHO was that +man. Perhaps a friend of the Senor Corwin--perhaps only one who +LOOKED like him. There existed--might Mateo point out--a doubt. + +Ezekiel regarded Mateo with a certain grim appreciation. "Wa'al, +is there anybody here who looks like Johnson?" + +Again there were the difficulty of ascertaining perfectly how the +Senor Johnson looked. If the Senor Johnson was Americano, +doubtless there were other Americanos who had resembled him. It +was possible. The Senor Corwin had doubtless observed for a little +space a caballero who was here, as it were, in the instant of the +appearance of Senor Johnson? Possibly there was a resemblance, and +yet-- + +Corwin had certainly noticed this resemblance, but it did not suit +his cautious intellect to fall in with any prevailing scepticism of +his host. Satisfied in his mind that Mateo was concealing +something from him, and equally satisfied that he would sooner or +later find it out, he grinned diabolically in the face of that +worthy man, and sought the meditation of his miraculous couch. +When he had departed, the sceptic turned to his wife: + +"This animal has been sniffing at the trail." + +"Truly--but Mother of God--where is the discretion of our friend. +If he will continue to haunt the pueblo like a lovesick chicken, he +will get his neck wrung yet." + +Following out an ingenious idea of his own, Ezekiel called the next +day on the Demorests, and in some occult fashion obtained an +invitation to stay under their hospitable roof during his sojourn +in Buenaventura. Perfectly aware that he owed this courtesy more +to Joan than to her husband, it is probable that his grim enjoyment +was not diminished by the fact; while Joan, for reasons of her own, +preferred the constraint which the presence of another visitor put +upon Demorest's uxoriousness. Of late, too, there were times when +Dona Rosita's naive intelligence, which was not unlike the +embarrassing perceptions of a bright and half-spoiled child, was in +her way, and she would willingly have shared the young lady's +company with her husband had Demorest shown any sympathy for the +girl. It was in the faint hope that Ezekiel might in some way +beguile Rosita's wandering attention that she had invited him. The +only difficulty lay in his uncouthness, and in presenting to the +heiress of the Picos a man who had been formerly her own servant. +Had she attempted to conceal that fact she was satisfied that +Ezekiel's independence and natural predilection for embarrassing +situations would have inevitably revealed it. She had even gone so +far as to consider the propriety of investing him with a poor +relationship to her family, when Dona Rosita herself happily +stopped all further trouble. On her very first introduction to +him, that charming young lady at once accepted him as a lunatic +whose brains were turned by occult, scientific, and medical study! +Ah! she, Rosita, had heard of such cases before. Had not a +paternal ancestor of hers, one Don Diego Castro, believed he had +discovered the elixir of youth. Had he not to that end refused +even to wash him the hand, to cut him the nail of the finger and +the hair of the head! Exalted by that discovery, had he not been +unsparingly uncomplimentary to all humanity, especially to the +weaker sex? Even as the Senor Corwin! + +Far from being offended at this ingenious interpretation of his +character, Ezekiel exhibited a dry gratification over it, and even +conceived an unwholesome admiration of the fair critic; he haunted +her presence and preoccupied her society far beyond Joan's most +sanguine expectations. He sat in open-mouthed enjoyment of her at +the table, he waylaid her in the garden, he attempted to teach her +English. Dona Rosita received these extraordinary advances in a no +less extraordinary manner. In the scant masculine atmosphere of +the house, and the somewhat rigid New England reserve that still +pervaded it, perhaps she languished a little, and was not averse to +a slight flirtation, even with a madman. Besides, she assumed the +attitude of exercising a wholesome restraint over him. "If we are +not found dead in our bed one morning, and extracted of our blood +for a cordial, you shall thank to me for it," she said to Joan. +"Also for the not empoisoning of the coffee!" + +So she permitted him to carry a chair or hammock for her into the +garden, to fetch the various articles which she was continually +losing, and which he found with his usual penetration; and to +supply her with information, in which, however, he exercised an +unwonted caution. On the other hand, certain naive recollections +and admissions, which in the quality of a voluble child she +occasionally imparted to this "madman" in return, were in the +proportion of three to one. + +It had been a hot day, and even the usual sunset breeze had failed +that evening to rock the tops of the outlying pine-trees or cool +the heated tiles of the pueblo roofs. There was a hush and latent +expectancy in the air that reacted upon the people with feverish +unrest and uneasiness; even a lull in the faintly whispering garden +around the Demorests' casa had affected the spirits of its inmates, +causing them to wander about in vague restlessness. Joan had +disappeared; Dona Rosita, under an olive-tree in one of the +deserted paths, and attended by the faithful Ezekiel, had said it +was "earthquake weather," and recalled, with a sign of the cross, a +certain dreadful day of her childhood, when el temblor had shaken +down one of the Mission towers. "You shall see it now, as he have +left it so it has remain always," she added with superstitious +gravity. + +"That's just the lazy shiftlessness of your folks," responded +Ezekiel with prompt ungallantry. "It ain't no wonder the Lord +Almighty hez to stir you up now and then to keep you goin'." + +Dona Rosita gazed at him with simple childish pity. "Poor man; it +have affect you also in the head, this weather. So! It was even +so with the uncle of my father. Hush up yourself, and bring to me +the box of chocolates of my table. I will gif to you one. You +shall for one time have something pleasant on the end of your +tongue, even if you must swallow him after." + +Ezekiel grinned. "Ye ain't afraid o' bein' left alone with the +ghost that haunts the garden, Miss Rosita?" + +"After YOU--never-r-r." + +"I'll find Mrs. Demorest and send her to ye," said Ezekiel, +hesitatingly. + +"Eh, to attract here the ghost? Thank you, no, very mooch." + +Ezekiel's face contracted until nothing but his bright peering gray +eyes could be seen. "Attract the ghost!" he echoed. "Then you +kalkilate that it's--" he stopped, insinuatingly. + +Rosita brought her fan sharply over his knuckles, and immediately +opened it again over her half-embarrassed face. "I comprehend not +anything to 'ekalkilate.' WILL you go, Don Fantastico; or is it +for me to bring to you?" + +Ezekiel flew. He quickly found the chocolates and returned, but +was disconcerted on arriving under the olive-tree to find Dona +Rosita no longer in the hammock. He turned into a by-path, where +an extraordinary circumstance attracted his attention. The air +was perfectly still, but the leaves of a manzanita bush near the +misshapen cactus were slightly agitated. Presently Ezekiel saw the +stealthy figure of a man emerge from behind it and approach the +cactus. Reaching his hand cautiously towards the plant, the +stranger detached something from one of its thorns, and instantly +disappeared. The quick eyes of Ezekiel had seen that it was a +letter, his unerring perception of faces recognized at the same +moment that the intruder was none other than the handsome, +reckless-looking man he had seen the other day in conference with +Mateo. + +But Ezekiel was not the only witness of this strange intrusion. A +few paces from him, Dona Rosita, unconscious of his return, was +gazing in a half-frightened, breathless absorption in the direction +of the stranger's flight. + +"Wa'al!" drawled Ezekiel lazily. + +She started and turned towards him. Her face was pale and alarmed, +and yet to the critical eye of Ezekiel it seemed to wear an +expression of gratified relief. She laughed faintly. + +"Ef that's the kind o' ghost you hev about yer, it's a healthy +one," drawled Ezekiel. He turned and fixed his keen eyes on +Rosita's face. "I wonder what kind o' fruit grows on the cactus +that he's so fond of?" + +Either she had not seen the abstraction of the letter, or his +acting was perfect, for she returned his look unwaveringly. "The +fruit, eh? I have not comprehend." + +"Wa'al, I reckon I will," said Ezekiel. He walked towards the +cactus; there was nothing to be seen but its thorny spikes. He was +confronted, however, by the sudden apparition of Joan from behind +the manzanita at its side. She looked up and glanced from Ezekiel +to Dona Rosita with an agitated air. + +"Oh, you saw him too?" she said eagerly. + +"I reckon," answered Ezekiel, with his eyes still on Rosita. "I +was wondering what on airth he was so taken with that air cactus +for." + +Rosita had become slightly pale again in the presence of her +friend. Joan quietly pushed Ezekiel aside and put her arm around +her. "Are you frightened again?" she asked, in a low whisper. + +"Not mooch," returned Rosita, without lifting her eyes. + +"It was only some peon, trespassing to pick blossoms for his +sweetheart," she said significantly, with a glance towards Ezekiel. +"Let us go in." + +She passed her hand through Rosita's passive arm and led her +towards the house, Ezekiel's penetrating eyes still following +Rosita with an expression of gratified doubt. + +For once, however, that astute observer was wrong. When Mrs. +Demorest had reached the house she slipped into her own room, and, +bolting the door, drew from her bosom a letter which SHE had picked +from the cactus thorn, and read it with a flushed face and eager +eyes. + +It may have been the effect of the phenomenal weather, but the next +day a malign influence seemed to pervade the Demorest household. +Dona Rosita was confined to her room by an attack of languid +nerves, superinduced, as she was still voluble enough to declare, +by the narcotic effect of some unknown herb which the lunatic +Ezekiel had no doubt mysteriously administered to her with a view +of experimenting on its properties. She even avowed that she must +speedily return to Los Osos, before Ezekiel should further +compromise her reputation by putting her on a colored label in +place of the usual Celestial Distributer of the Panacea. Ezekiel +himself, who had been singularly abstracted and reticent, and had +absolutely foregone one or two opportunities of disagreeable +criticism, had gone to the pueblo early that morning. The house +was comparatively silent and deserted when Demorest walked into his +wife's boudoir. + +It was a pretty room, looking upon the garden, furnished with a +singular mingling of her own inherited formal tastes and the more +sensuous coloring and abandon of her new life. There were a great +many rugs and hangings scattered in disorder around the room, and +apparently purposeless, except for color; there was a bamboo lounge +as large as a divan, with two or three cushions disposed on it, and +a low chair that seemed the incarnation of indolence. Opposed to +this, on the wall, was the rigid picture of her grandfather, who +had apparently retired with his volume further into the canvas +before the spectacle of this ungodly opulence; a large Bible on a +funereal trestle-like stand, and the primmest and barest of +writing-tables, before which she was standing as at a sacrificial +altar. With an almost mechanical movement she closed her portfolio +as her husband entered, and also shut the lid of a small box with a +slight snap. This suggested exclusion of him from her previous +occupation, whatever it might have been, caused a faint shadow of +pain to pass across his loving eyes. He cast a glance at his wife +as if mutely asking her to sit beside him, but she drew a chair to +the table, and with her elbow resting on the box, resignedly +awaited his speech. + +"I don't mean to disturb you, darling," he said, gently, "but as we +were alone, I thought we might have one of our old-fashioned talks, +and--" + +"Don't let it be so old-fashioned as to include North Liberty +again," she interrupted, wearily. "We've had quite enough of that +since I returned." + +"I thought you found fault with me then for forgetting the past. +But let that pass, dear; it is not OUR affairs I wanted to talk to +you about now," he said, stifling a sigh, "it's about your friend. +Please don't misunderstand what I am going to say; nor that I +interpose except from necessity." + +She turned her dark brown eyes in his direction, but her glance +passed abstractedly over his head into the garden. + +"It's a matter perfectly well known to me--and, I fear, to all our +servants also--that somebody is making clandestine visits to our +garden. I would not trouble you before, until I ascertained the +object of these visits. It is quite plain to me now that Dona +Rosita is that object, and that communications are secretly carried +on between her and some unknown stranger. He has been here once or +twice before; he was here again yesterday. Ezekiel saw him and saw +her." + +"Together?" asked Mrs. Demorest, sharply. + +"No; but it was evident that there was some understanding, and that +some communication passed between them." + +"Well?" said Mrs. Demorest, with repressed impatience. + +"It is equally evident, Joan, that this stranger is a man who does +not dare to approach your friend in her own house, nor more openly +in this; but who, with her connivance, uses us to carry on an +intrigue which may be perfectly innocent, but is certainly +compromising to all concerned. I am quite willing to believe that +Dona Rosita is only romantic and reckless, but that will not +prevent her from becoming a dupe of some rascal who dare not face +us openly, and who certainly does not act as her equal." + +"Well, Rosita is no chicken, and you are not her guardian." + +There was a vague heartlessness, more in her voice than in her +words, that touched him as her cold indifference to himself had +never done, and for an instant stung his crushed spirit to revolt. +"No" he said, sternly, "but I am her father's FRIEND, and I shall +not allow his daughter to be compromised under my roof." + +Her eyes sprang up to meet his in hatred as promptly as they once +had met in love. "And since when, Richard Demorest, have you +become so particular?" she began, with dry asperity. "Since you +lured ME from the side of my wedded husband? Since you met ME +clandestinely in trains and made love to ME under an assumed name? +Since you followed ME to my house under the pretext of being my +husband's friend, and forced me--yes, forced me--to see you +secretly under my mother's roof? Did you think of compromising ME +then? Did you think of ruining my reputation, of driving my +husband from his home in despair? Did you call yourself a rascal +then? Did you--" + +"Stop!" he said, in a voice that shook the rafters; "I command you, +stop!" + +She had gradually worked herself from a deliberately insulting +precision into an hysterical, and it is to be feared a virtuous, +conviction of her wrongs. Beginning only with the instinct to +taunt and wound the man before her, she had been led by a secret +consciousness of something else he did not know to anticipate his +reproach and justify herself in a wild feminine abandonment of +emotion. But she stopped at his words. For a moment she was even +thrilled again by the strength and imperiousness she had loved. + +They were facing each other after five years of mistaken passion, +even as they had faced each other that night in her mother's +kitchen. But the grave of that dead passion yawned between them. +It was Joan who broke the silence, that after her single outburst +seemed to fill and oppress the room. + +"As far as Rosita is concerned," she said, with affected calmness, +"she is going to-night. And you probably will not be troubled any +longer by your mysterious visitor." + +Whether he heeded the sarcastic significance of her last sentence, +or even heard her at all, he did not reply. For a moment he turned +his blazing eyes full upon her, and then without a word strode from +the room. + +She walked to the door and stood uneasily listening in the passage +until she heard the clatter of hoofs in the paved patio, and knew +that he had ordered his horse. Then she turned back relieved to +her room. + +It was already sunset when Demorest drew rein again at the entrance +of the corral, and the last stroke of the Angelus was ringing from +the Mission tower. He looked haggard and exhausted, and his horse +was flecked with foam and dirt. Wherever he had been, or for what +object, or whether, objectless and dazed, he had simply sought to +lose himself in aimlessly wandering over the dry yellow hills or in +careering furiously among his own wild cattle on the arid, brittle +plain; whether he had beaten all thought from his brain with the +jarring leap of his horse, or whether he had pursued some vague and +elusive determination to his own door, is not essential to this +brief chronicle. Enough that when he dismounted he drew a pistol +from his holster and replaced it in his pocket. + +He had just pushed open the gate of the corral as he led in his +horse by the bridle, when he noticed another horse tethered among +some cotton woods that shaded the outer wall of his garden. As he +gazed, the figure of a man swung lightly from one of the upper +boughs of a cotton-wood on the wall and disappeared on the other +side. It was evidently the clandestine visitor. Demorest was +in no mood for trifling. Hurriedly driving his horse into the +enclosure with a sharp cut of his riata, he closed the gate upon +him, slipped past the intervening space into the patio, and then +unnoticed into the upper part of the garden. Taking a narrow by- +path in the direction of the cotton woods that could be seen above +the wall, he presently came in sight of the object of his search +moving stealthily towards the house. It was the work of a moment +only to dash forward and seize him, to find himself engaged in a +sharp wrestle, to half draw his pistol as he struggled with his +captive in the open. But once in the clearer light, he started, +his grasp of the stranger relaxed, and he fell back in bewildered +terror. + +"Edward Blandford! Good God!" + +The pistol had dropped from his hand as he leaned breathless +against a tree. The stranger kicked the weapon contemptuously +aside. Then quietly adjusting his disordered dress, and picking +the brambles from his sleeve, he said with the same air of disdain, +"Yes! Edward Blandford, whom you thought dead! There! I'm not a +ghost--though you tried to make me one this time," he said, +pointing to the pistol. + +Demorest passed his hand across his white face. "Then it's you-- +and you have come here for--for--Joan?" + +"For Joan?" echoed Blandford, with a quick scornful laugh, that +made the blood flow back into Demorest's face as from a blow, and +recalled his scattered senses. "For Joan," he repeated. "Not +much!" + +The two men were facing each other in irreconcilable yet confused +antagonism. Both were still excited and combative from their late +physical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it +would have been impossible for either to have comprehended the +other. In the figure that had apparently risen from the dead to +confront him, Demorest only saw the man he had unconsciously +wronged--the man who had it in his power to claim Joan and exact a +terrible retribution! But it was part of this monstrous and +irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceased to contemplate +it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actual interference of a +man whom he no longer hated, but had begun to pity and despise. + +He glanced coolly around him. "Whatever we've got to say to each +other," he said deliberately, "had better not be overheard. At +least what I have got to say to you." + + +CHAPTER V + + +Demorest, now as self-possessed as his adversary, haughtily waved +his hand towards the path. They walked on in silence, without even +looking at each other, until they reached a small summer-house that +stood in the angle of the wall. Demorest entered. "We cannot be +heard here," he said curtly. + +"And we can see what is going on. Good," said Blandford, coolly +following him. The summer-house contained a bench and a table. +Blandford seated himself on the bench. Demorest remained standing +beside the table. There was a moment's silence. + +"I came here with no desire to see you or avoid you," said +Blandford, with cold indifference. "A few weeks ago I might +perhaps have avoided you, for your own sake. But since then I have +learned that among the many things I owe to--to your wife is the +fact that five years ago she secretly DIVORCED ME, and that +consequently my living presence could neither be a danger nor a +menace to you. I see," he added, dryly, with a quick glance at +Demorest's horror-stricken face, "that I was also told the truth +when they said you were as ignorant of the divorce as I was." + +He stopped, half in pity of his adversary's shame, half in surprise +of his own calmness. Five years before, in the tumultuous +consciousness of his wrongs, he would have scarcely trusted himself +face to face with the cooler and more self-controlled Demorest. He +wondered at and partly admired his own coolness now, in the +presence of his enemy's confusion. + +"As your mind is at rest on that point," he continued, sarcastically, +"I don't suppose you care to know what became of ME when I left +North Liberty. But as it happens to have something to do with my +being here to-night, and is a part of my business with you, you'll +have to listen to it. Sit down! Very well, then--stand up! It's +your own house." + +His half cynical, wholly contemptuous ignoring of the real issue +between them was more crushing to Demorest than the keenest +reproach or most tragic outburst. He did not lift his eyes as +Blandford resumed in a dry, business-like way: + +"When I came across the plains to California, I fell in with a man +about my own age--an emigrant also. I suppose I looked and acted +like a crazy fool through all the journey, for he satisfied himself +that I had some secret reason for leaving the States, and suspected +that I was, like himself--a criminal. I afterwards learned that he +was an escaped thief and assassin. Well, he played upon me all the +way here, for I didn't care to reveal my real trouble to him, lest +it should get back to North liberty--" He interrupted himself with +a sarcastic laugh. "Of course, you understand that all this while +Joan was getting her divorce unknown to me, and you were marrying +her--yet as I didn't know anything about it I let him compromise me +to save her. But"--he stopped, his eye kindled, and, losing his +self-control in what to Demorest seemed some incoherent passion, +went on excitedly: "that man continued his persecution HERE--yes, +HERE, in this very house, where I was a trusted and honored guest, +and threatened to expose me to a pure, innocent, simple girl who +had taken pity on me--unless I helped him in a conspiracy of +cattle-stealers and road agents, of which he was chief. I was such +a cursed sentimental fool then, that believing him capable of doing +this, believing myself still the husband of that woman, your wife, +and to spare that innocent girl the shame of thinking me a villain, +I purchased his silence by consenting. May God curse me for it!" + +He had started to his feet with flashing eyes, and the indication +of an overmastering passion that to Demorest, absorbed only in the +stupefying revelation of his wife's divorce and the horrible doubt +it implied, seemed utterly vacant and unmeaning. + +He had often dreamed of Blandford as standing before him, +reproachful, indignant, and even desperate over his wife's +unfaithfulness; but this insane folly and fury over some trivial +wrong done to that plump, baby-faced, flirting Dona Rosita, crushed +him by its unconscious but degrading obliteration of Joan and +himself more than the most violent denunciation. Dazed and +bewildered, yet with the instinct of a helpless man, he clung only +to that part of Blandford's story which indicated that he had come +there for Rosita, and not to separate him from Joan, and even +turned to his former friend with a half-embarrassed gesture of +apology as he stammered-- + +"Then it was YOU who were Rosita's lover, and you who have been +here to see her. Forgive me, Ned--if I had only known it." He +stopped and timidly extended his hand. But Blandford put it aside +with a cold gesture and folded his arms. + +"You have forgotten all you ever knew of me, Demorest! I am not in +the habit of making clandestine appointments with helpless women +whose natural protectors I dare not face. I have never pursued an +innocent girl to the house I dared not enter. When I found that I +could not honorably retain Dona Rosita's affection, I fled her +roof. When I believed that even if I broke with this scoundrel--as +I did--I was still legally if not morally tied to your wife, and +could not marry Rosita, I left her never to return. And I tore my +heart out to do it." + +The tears were standing in his eyes. Demorest regarded him again +with vacant wonder. Tears!--not for Joan's unfaithfulness to him-- +but for this silly girl's transitory sentimentalism. It was +horrible! + +And yet what was Joan to Blandford now? Why should he weep for the +woman who had never loved him--whom he loved no longer? The woman +who had deceived him--who had deceived them BOTH. Yes! for Joan +must have suspected that Blandford was living to have sought her +secret divorce--and yet she had never told him--him--the man for +whom she got it. Ah! he must not forget THAT! It was to marry him +that she had taken that step. It was perhaps a foolish caution--a +mistaken reservation; but it was the folly--the mistake of a loving +woman. He hugged this belief the closer, albeit he was conscious +at the same time of following Blandford's story of his alienated +affection with a feeling of wonder and envy. + +"And what was the result of this touching sacrifice?" continued +Blandford, trying to resume his former cynical indifference. "I'll +tell you. This scoundrel set himself about to supplant me. Taking +advantage of my absence, his knowledge that her affection for me +was heightened by the mystery of my life, and trusting to profit by +a personal resemblance he is said to bear to me, he began to haunt +her. Lately he has grown bolder, and he dared even to communicate +with her here. For it is he," he continued, again giving way to +his passion, "this dog, this sneaking coward, who visits the place +unknown to you, and thinks to entrap the poor girl through her +memory of me. And it is he that I came here to prevent, to expose-- +if necessary to kill! Don't misunderstand me. I have made myself +a deputy of the law for that purpose. I've a warrant in my pocket, +and I shall take him, this mongrel, half-breed Cherokee Bob, by +fair means or foul!" + +The energy and presence of his passion was so infectious that it +momentarily swept away Demorest's doubts of the past. "And I will +help you, before God, Blandford," he said eagerly. "And Joan +shall, too. She will find out from Rosita how far--" + +"Thank you," interrupted Blandford, dryly; "but your wife has +already interfered in this matter, to my cost. It is to her, I +believe, I owe this wretch's following Rosita here. She already +knows this man--has met him twice in San Francisco; he even boasts +of YOUR jealousy. You know best how far he lied." + +But Demorest had braced himself against the chill sensation that +had begun to creep over him as Blandford spoke. He nerved himself +and said, proudly, "I forbade her knowing him on account of his +reputation solely. I have no reason to believe she has ever even +wished to disobey me." + +A smile of scorn that had kindled in Blandford's eyes, darkened +with a swift shadow of compassion as he glanced at Demorest's hard, +ashen face. He held out his hand with a sudden impulse. "Enough, +I accept your offer, and shall put it to the test this very night. +I know--if you do not--that Rosita is to leave here for Los Osos an +hour from now in a private carriage, which your wife has ordered +especially for her. The same information tells me that this +villain and another of his gang will be in wait for the carriage +three miles out of the pueblo to attack it and carry off the young +girl." + +"Are you mad!" said Demorest, in unfeigned amazement. "Do you +believe them capable of attacking a private carriage and carrying +off a solitary, defenceless woman? Come, Blandford, this is a +school-girl romance--not an act of mercenary highwaymen--least of +all Cherokee Bob and his gang. This is some madness of Rosita's, +surely," he continued with a forced laugh. + +"Does this mean that you think better of your promise?" asked +Blandford, dryly. + +"I said I was at your service," said Demorest, reproachfully. + +"Then hear my plan to prevent it, and yet take that dog in the act," +said Blandford. "But we must first wait here till the last moment +to ascertain if he makes any signal to show that his plan is altered, +or that he has discovered he is watched." He turned, and in his +preoccupation laid his hand for an instant upon Demorest's shoulder +with the absent familiarity of old days. Unconscious as the action +was, it thrilled them both--from its very unconsciousness--and +impelled them to throw themselves into the new alliance with such +feverish and excited activity in order to preclude any dangerous +alien reflection, that when they rose a few moments later and +cautiously left the garden arm-in-arm through the outer gates, no +one would have believed they had ever been estranged, least of all +the clever woman who had separated them. + + +It was nearly nine o'clock when the two friends, accompanied by the +sheriff of the county, left San Buenaventura turnpike and turned +into a thicket of alders to wait the coming of the carriage they +were to henceforth follow cautiously and unseen in a parallel trail +to the main road. The moon had risen, and with it the long +withheld wind that now swept over the distant stretch of gleaming +road and partly veiled it at times with flying dust unchecked by +any dew from the clear cold sky. Demorest shivered even with his +ready hand on his revolver. Suddenly the sheriff uttered an +exclamation of disgust. + +"Blasted if thar ain't some one in the road between us and their +ambush." + +"It's one of their gang--scouting. Lie close." + +"Scout be darned. Look at him bucking round there in the dust. He +can't even ride! It's some blasted greenhorn taking a pasear on a +hoss for the first time. Damnation! he's ruined everything. +They'll take the alarm." + +"I'll push on and clear him out," said Blandford, excitedly. "Even +if they're off, I may yet get a shot at the Cherokee." + +"Quick then," said Demorest, "for here comes the carriage." He +pointed to a dark spot on the road occasionally emerging from the +driven dust clouds. + +In another moment Blandford was at the heels of the awkward +horseman, who wheeled clumsily at his approach and revealed the +lank figure of Ezekiel Corwin! + +"You here!" said Blandford, in stupefied fury. + +"Wa'al, yes, squire," said Ezekiel lazily, in spite of his uneasy +seat. "I kalkilated ef there was suthin' goin' on, I'd like to see +it." + +"You cursed prying fool! you've spoiled all. There!" he shouted +despairingly, as the quick clatter of hoofs rang from the arroyo +behind them, "there they go! That's your work, blockhead! Out of +my way, or by God--" but the sentence was left unfinished as, +joined by the sheriff, who had galloped up at the sound of the +robbers' flight, he darted past the unconcerned Ezekiel. Demorest +would have followed, but Blandford, with a warning cry to him to +remain and protect the carriage, halted him at the side of Corwin +as the vehicle now rapidly approached. + +But Ezekiel was before him even then, and as the driver pulled up, +that inquiring man tumbled from his horse, ran to the door and +opened it. Demorest rode up, glanced into the carriage, and fell +back in blank amazement. + +It was his wife who was sitting there alone, pale, erect, and +beautiful. By some illusion of the moonlight, her face and figure, +covered with soft white wrappings for a journey, looked as he +remembered to have seen her the first night they had met in the +Boston train. The picture was completed by the traveling bag and +rug that lay on the seat before her. Another terrible foreboding +seized him; his brain reeled. Was he going mad? + +"Joan!" he stammered. "You? What is the meaning of this?" + +Ezekiel whom but for his dazed condition he might have seen violently +contorting his features in Joan's face, presumably in equal +astonishment--broke into a series of discordant chuckles. + +"Wa'al, ef that ain't Deacon Salisbury's darter all over. Ha! Here +are ye two men folks makin' no end o' fuss to save that Mexican gal +with pistols and ambushes and plots and counterplots, and yer's Joan +Salisbury shows ye the way ha'ow to do it. And so, ma'am, you +succeeded in fixin' it up with Dona Rosita to take her place and just +sell them robbers cheap! Wa'al, ma'am, yer sold this yer party, +too--for"--he advanced his face close to hers--"I never let on a +word, though I knew it, and although they nearly knocked me off my +hoss in their fuss and fury. Ha! ha! They wanted to know what I +was doin' here, he-he! Tell 'em, Joan, tell 'em." + +Demorest gazed from one to another with a troubled face, yet one on +which a faint relief was breaking. + +"What does he mean, Joan? Speak," he said, almost imploringly. + +Joan, whose color was slightly returning, drew herself up with her +old cold Puritan precision. + +"After the scene you made this morning, Richard, when you chose to +accuse your wife of unfaithfulness to her friend, her guest, and +even your reputation, I resolved to go myself with Dona Rosita to +Los Osos and explain the matter to her father. Some rumor of the +ridiculous farce I have just witnessed reached us through Ezekiel, +and frightened the poor girl so that she declined--and properly, too +to face the hoax which you and some nameless impersonator of a +disgraced fugitive have gotten up for purposes of your own! I wish +you joy of your work! If the play is over now, I presume I may be +allowed to proceed on my journey?" + +"Not yet," said Demorest slowly, with a face over which the chasing +doubts had at last settled in a grayish pallor. "Believe what you +like, misunderstand me if you will, laugh at the danger you perhaps +comprehend better than I do, but upon this road, wherever or to +whatever it was leading you--to-night you go no further!" + +"Then I suppose I may return home," she said coldly. "Ezekiel will +accompany me back to protect me from--robbers. Come, Ezekiel. +Mr. Demorest and his friends can be safely trusted to take care of-- +your horse." + +And as the grinning Ezekiel sprang into the carriage beside her, she +pulled up the glass in the fateful and set face of her once trusting +husband; the carriage turned and drove off, leaving him like a statue +in the road. + + . . . . . . + +The bell of the North Liberty Second Presbyterian Church had just +ceased ringing. But in the last five years it had rung out the bass +viol and harmonium, and rung in an organ and choir; and the old +austere interior had been subjected at the hands of the rising +generation to an invasion of youthful warmth and color. Nowhere was +this more apparent than in the choir itself, where the bright spring +sunshine, piercing a newly-opened stained-glass window, picked out +the new spring bonnet of Mrs. Demorest and settled upon it during the +singing of the hymn. Perhaps that was the reason why a few eyes were +curiously directed in that direction, and that even the minister +himself strayed from the precise path of doctrine to allude with +ecclesiastical vagueness to certain shining examples of the Christian +virtues that were "again in our midst." The shrewd face and white +eyelashes of Ezekiel Corwin, junior partner in the firm of Dilworth & +Dusenberry, of San Francisco, were momentarily raised towards the +choir, and then relapsed into an expression of fatigued self- +righteousness. + +When the service was over a few worshipers lingered near the choir +staircase, mindful of the spring bonnet. + +"It looks quite nat'ral," said Deacon Fairchild, "ter see Joan +Salisbury attendin' the ministration of the Word agin. And I ain't +sorry she didn't bring that second husband of hers with her. It +kinder looks like old times--afore Edward Blandford was gathered to +the Lord." + +"That's so," replied his auditor meekly, "and they do say ez ha'ow +Demorest got more powerful worldly and unregenerate in that heathen +country, and that Joan ez a professin' Christian had to leave him. +I've heerd tell thet he'd got mixed up, out thar, with some +half-breed outlaw, of the name o' Johnson, ez hez a purty, high- +flyin' Mexican wife. It was fort'nit for Joan that she found a +friend in grace in Brother Corwin to look arter her share in the +property and bring her back tu hum." + +"She's lookin' peart," said Sister Bradley, "though to my mind that +bonnet savors still o' heathen vanities." + +"Et's the new idees--crept in with that organ," groaned Deacon +Fairchild; "but--sho--thar she comes." + +She shone for an instant--a charming vision--out of the shadow of the +choir stairs, and then glided primly into the street. + +The old sexton, still in waiting with his hand on the half-closed +door, paused and looked after her with a troubled brow. A singular +and utterly incomprehensible recollection and resemblance had just +crossed his mind. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Argonauts of North Liberty, by Harte + |