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 recognized 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.
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!”
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!”