CHAPTER IV
Mrs. Demorest was so fascinated by the company of Dona Rosita Pico andher romantic memories, that she prevailed upon that heart-broken butscarcely attenuated young lady to prolong her visit beyond the fortnightshe had allotted to communion with the past. For a day or two followingher singular experience in the garden, Mrs. Demorest plied her withquestions regarding the apparition she had seen, and finally extortedfrom her the admission that she could not positively swear to its beingthe real Johnson, or even a perfectly consistent shade of that faithlessman. When Joan pointed out to her that such masculine perfectionsas curling raven locks, long silken mustachios, and dark eyes, wereattributes by no means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionallyseen among other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, DonaRosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. "Besides,dear," said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, "it is four yearssince you've seen him, and surely the man has either shaved since, orelse he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and then he would be morefully bearded."
But Dona Rosita only shook her pretty head. "Ah, but he have an air--asomething I know not what you call--so." She threw her shawl over herleft shoulder, and as far as a pair of soft blue eyes and comfortablypacific features would admit, endeavored to convey an idea of wicked andgloomy 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 wasthere--just as mysterious, romantic, and wicked-looking. And in factthey hinted terrible things about him. Well! so much so, that Mr.Demorest was quite foolish about my being barely civil to him--youunderstand--and--" She stopped suddenly, with a heightened color underthe 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 andtrust me," she replied in an austere voice.
Rosita looked at her a moment in mystification and then shrugged hershoulders. The conversation dropped. Nevertheless, it is worthy of beingrecorded that from that moment the usual familiar allusions, playful andserious, to Rosita's mysterious visitor began to diminish in frequencyand finally ceased. Even the news brought by Demorest of some vaguerumor in the pueblo that an intended attack on the stage-coach had beenfrustrated by the authorities, and that the vicinity had been haunted byincognitos of both parties, failed to revive the discussion.
Meantime the slight excitement that had stirred the sluggish life of thepueblo of San Buenaventura had subsided. The posada of Senor Mateohad lost its feverish and perplexing dual life; the alley behind itno longer was congested by lounging cigarette smokers; the compartmentlooking upon the silent patio was unoccupied, and its chairs and tableswere empty. The two deputy sheriffs, of whom Senor Mateo presumablyknew very little, had fled; and the mysterious Senor Johnson, of whomhe--still presumably--knew still less, had also disappeared. For SenorMateo's knowledge of what transpired in and about his posada, and ofthe character and purposes of those who frequented it, was tinctured bygrave and philosophical doubts. This courteous and dignified scepticismgenerally took the formula of quien sabe to all frivolous and mundaneinquiry. He would affirm with strict verity that his omelettes wereunapproachable, his beds miraculous, his aguardiente supreme, his housewas even as your own. Beyond these were questions with which the simplyfinite and always discreet human intellect declined to grapple.
The disturbing effect of Senor Corwin upon a mind thus gravelyconstituted may be easily imagined. Besides Ezekiel's inordinatecapacity for useless or indiscreet information, it was undeniable thathis patent medicines had effected a certain peaceful revolutionarymovement in San Buenaventura. A simple and superstitious community thathad steadily resisted the practical domestic and agricultural Americanimprovements, succumbed to the occult healing influences of the Panaceaand Jones's Bitters. The virtues of a mysterious balsam, more or lessilluminated with a colored mythological label, deeply impressed them;and the exhibition of a circular, whereon a celestial visitant wasrepresented as descending with a gross of Rogers' Pills to a sufferingbut admiring multitude, touched their religious sympathies to such anextent that the good Padre Jose was obliged to warn them from the pulpitof the diabolical character of their heresies of healing--with thenatural result of yet more dangerously advertising Ezekiel. There werethose too who spoke under their breath of the miraculous efficacyof these nostrums. Had not Don Victor Arguello, whose respectabledigestion, exhausted by continuous pepper and garlic, failed himsuddenly, received an unexpected and pleasurable stimulus from theNew England rum, which was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not thebaker, tremulous from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustainedby the invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg's Nerve Tonic?Nor had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maidenand maternal requirements. Unguents, that made silken their black butsomewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming possibilities tothe Senoritas; while soothing syrups lent a peaceful repose to many adistracted mother's household. The success of Ezekiel was so marked asto justify his return at the end of three weeks with a fresh assortmentand an undiminished audacity.
It was on his second visit that the sceptical, non-committal policy ofSenor Mateo was sorely tried. Arriving at the posada one night, Ezekielbecame aware that his host was engaged in some mysterious conferencewith a visitor who had entered through the ordinary public room. Theview which the acute Ezekiel managed to get of the stranger, however,was productive of no further discovery than that he bore a faintand disreputable resemblance to Blandford, and was handsome after aconscious, reckless fashion, with an air of mingled bravado and conceit.But an hour later, as Corwin was taking the cooler air of the verandabefore retiring to one of the miraculous beds of the posada, he wasamazed at seeing what was apparently Blandford himself emerge onhorseback from the alley, and after a quick glance towards the veranda,canter rapidly up the street. Ezekiel's first impression was to call tohim, but the sudden recollection that he parted from his old master onconfidential terms only three days before in San Francisco, and that itwas impossible for him to be in the pueblo, stopped him with his fingersmeditatively in his beard. Then he turned in to the posada, and hastilysummoned Mateo.
The gentleman presented himself in a state of such profound scepticismthat it seemed to have already communicated itself to his shoulders, andgave 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 politedoubt of his own perceptions and a courteous acceptance of hisquestioner'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, whomust be also relieved, and shake his respected hand. Bueno. And then hehad met this Senor Johnson? doubtless a friend? And he was well? and allwere happy?
"Look yer, Mattayo! What I wanter know ez THIS. When did that man, whohas just ridden out of your alley, come here? Sabe that--it's a plainquestion."
Ah surely, of the clearest comprehension. Bueno. It may have been lastweek--or even this week--or perhaps yesterday--or of a possibilityto-day. The Senor Corwin, who was wise and omniscient, would comprehendthat the difficulty lay in deciding WHO was that man. Perhaps a friendof the Senor Corwin--perhaps only one who LOOKED like him. Thereexisted--might Mateo point out--a doubt.
Ezekiel regarded Mateo with a certain grim appreciation. "Wa'al, isthere anybody here who looks like Johnson?"
Again there were the difficulty of ascertaining perfectly how the SenorJohnson looked. If the Senor Johnson was Americano, doubtless therewere other Americanos who had resembled him. It was possible. The SenorCorwin had doubtless observed for a little space a caballero who washere, 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 hiscautious intellect to fall in with any prevailing scepticism of hishost. Satisfied in his mind that Mateo was concealing something fromhim, and equally satisfied that he would sooner or later find it out,he grinned diabolically in the face of that worthy man, and sought themeditation of his miraculous couch. When he had departed, the scepticturned to his wife:
"This animal has been sniffing at the trail."
"Truly--but Mother of God--where is the discretion of our friend. If hewill continue to haunt the pueblo like a lovesick chicken, he will gethis neck wrung yet."
Following out an ingenious idea of his own, Ezekiel called the next dayon the Demorests, and in some occult fashion obtained an invitation tostay under their hospitable roof during his sojourn in Buenaventura.Perfectly aware that he owed this courtesy more to Joan than to herhusband, it is probable that his grim enjoyment was not diminished bythe fact; while Joan, for reasons of her own, preferred the constraintwhich 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 andhalf-spoiled child, was in her way, and she would willingly haveshared the young lady's company with her husband had Demorest shown anysympathy for the girl. It was in the faint hope that Ezekiel might insome way beguile Rosita's wandering attention that she had invited him.The only difficulty lay in his uncouthness, and in presenting to theheiress of the Picos a man who had been formerly her own servant. Hadshe attempted to conceal that fact she was satisfied that Ezekiel'sindependence and natural predilection for embarrassing situations wouldhave inevitably revealed it. She had even gone so far as to consider thepropriety of investing him with a poor relationship to her family, whenDona Rosita herself happily stopped all further trouble. On her veryfirst introduction to him, that charming young lady at once accepted himas a lunatic whose brains were turned by occult, scientific, and medicalstudy! Ah! she, Rosita, had heard of such cases before. Had not apaternal ancestor of hers, one Don Diego Castro, believed he haddiscovered the elixir of youth. Had he not to that end refused even towash him the hand, to cut him the nail of the finger and the hair ofthe head! Exalted by that discovery, had he not been unsparinglyuncomplimentary to all humanity, especially to the weaker sex? Even asthe Senor Corwin!
Far from being offended at this ingenious interpretation of hischaracter, Ezekiel exhibited a dry gratification over it, and evenconceived an unwholesome admiration of the fair critic; he haunted herpresence and preoccupied her society far beyond Joan's most sanguineexpectations. He sat in open-mouthed enjoyment of her at the table,he waylaid her in the garden, he attempted to teach her English. DonaRosita received these extraordinary advances in a no less extraordinarymanner. In the scant masculine atmosphere of the house, and the somewhatrigid New England reserve that still pervaded it, perhaps she languisheda little, and was not averse to a slight flirtation, even with a madman.Besides, she assumed the attitude of exercising a wholesome restraintover him. "If we are not found dead in our bed one morning, andextracted of our blood for a cordial, you shall thank to me for it," shesaid to Joan. "Also for the not empoisoning of the coffee!"
So she permitted him to carry a chair or hammock for her into thegarden, to fetch the various articles which she was continually losing,and which he found with his usual penetration; and to supply her withinformation, in which, however, he exercised an unwonted caution. Onthe other hand, certain naive recollections and admissions, which in thequality of a voluble child she occasionally imparted to this "madman" inreturn, were in the proportion of three to one.
It had been a hot day, and even the usual sunset breeze had failed thatevening to rock the tops of the outlying pine-trees or cool the heatedtiles of the pueblo roofs. There was a hush and latent expectancy in theair that reacted upon the people with feverish unrest and uneasiness;even a lull in the faintly whispering garden around the Demorests' casahad affected the spirits of its inmates, causing them to wander aboutin vague restlessness. Joan had disappeared; Dona Rosita, under anolive-tree in one of the deserted paths, and attended by the faithfulEzekiel, had said it was "earthquake weather," and recalled, with a signof the cross, a certain dreadful day of her childhood, when el temblorhad shaken down one of the Mission towers. "You shall see it now, ashe have left it so it has remain always," she added with superstitiousgravity.
"That's just the lazy shiftlessness of your folks," responded Ezekielwith prompt ungallantry. "It ain't no wonder the Lord Almighty hez tostir you up now and then to keep you goin'."
Dona Rosita gazed at him with simple childish pity. "Poor man; it haveaffect you also in the head, this weather. So! It was even so withthe uncle of my father. Hush up yourself, and bring to me the box ofchocolates of my table. I will gif to you one. You shall for one timehave something pleasant on the end of your tongue, even if you mustswallow him after."
Ezekiel grinned. "Ye ain't afraid o' bein' left alone with the ghostthat 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 eyescould be seen. "Attract the ghost!" he echoed. "Then you kalkilate thatit's--" he stopped, insinuatingly.
Rosita brought her fan sharply over his knuckles, and immediately openedit again over her half-embarrassed face. "I comprehend not anything to'ekalkilate.' WILL you go, Don Fantastico; or is it for me to bring toyou?"
Ezekiel flew. He quickly found the chocolates and returned, but wasdisconcerted on arriving under the olive-tree to find Dona Rosita nolonger in the hammock. He turned into a by-path, where an extraordinarycircumstance attracted his attention. The air was perfectly still, butthe leaves of a manzanita bush near the misshapen cactus were slightlyagitated. Presently Ezekiel saw the stealthy figure of a man emerge frombehind it and approach the cactus. Reaching his hand cautiously towardsthe plant, the stranger detached something from one of its thorns, andinstantly disappeared. The quick eyes of Ezekiel had seen that it was aletter, his unerring perception of faces recognized at the same momentthat the intruder was none other than the handsome, reckless-looking manhe had seen the other day in conference with Mateo.
But Ezekiel was not the only witness of this strange intrusion. A fewpaces from him, Dona Rosita, unconscious of his return, was gazing ina half-frightened, breathless absorption in the direction of thestranger's flight.
"Wa'al!" drawled Ezekiel lazily.
She started and turned towards him. Her face was pale and alarmed, andyet to the critical eye of Ezekiel it seemed to wear an expression ofgratified 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. "Iwonder 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 wasperfect, for she returned his look unwaveringly. "The fruit, eh? I havenot 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 atits side. She looked up and glanced from Ezekiel to Dona Rosita with anagitated air.
"Oh, you saw him too?" she said eagerly.
"I reckon," answered Ezekiel, with his eyes still on Rosita. "I waswondering 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 youfrightened 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 hisswee
theart," she said significantly, with a glance towards Ezekiel. "Letus go in."
She passed her hand through Rosita's passive arm and led her towardsthe house, Ezekiel's penetrating eyes still following Rosita with anexpression of gratified doubt.
For once, however, that astute observer was wrong. When Mrs. Demoresthad reached the house she slipped into her own room, and, bolting thedoor, drew from her bosom a letter which SHE had picked from the cactusthorn, and read it with a flushed face and eager eyes.
It may have been the effect of the phenomenal weather, but the next daya malign influence seemed to pervade the Demorest household. Dona Rositawas confined to her room by an attack of languid nerves, superinduced,as she was still voluble enough to declare, by the narcotic effect ofsome unknown herb which the lunatic Ezekiel had no doubt mysteriouslyadministered to her with a view of experimenting on its properties. Sheeven avowed that she must speedily return to Los Osos, before Ezekielshould further compromise her reputation by putting her on a coloredlabel 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 disagreeablecriticism, had gone to the pueblo early that morning. The house wascomparatively silent and deserted when Demorest walked into his wife'sboudoir.
It was a pretty room, looking upon the garden, furnished with a singularmingling of her own inherited formal tastes and the more sensuouscoloring and abandon of her new life. There were a great many rugsand hangings scattered in disorder around the room, and apparentlypurposeless, except for color; there was a bamboo lounge as large as adivan, with two or three cushions disposed on it, and a low chair thatseemed the incarnation of indolence. Opposed to this, on the wall, wasthe rigid picture of her grandfather, who had apparently retired withhis volume further into the canvas before the spectacle of this ungodlyopulence; a large Bible on a funereal trestle-like stand, and theprimmest and barest of writing-tables, before which she was standing asat a sacrificial altar. With an almost mechanical movement she closedher portfolio as her husband entered, and also shut the lid of asmall box with a slight snap. This suggested exclusion of him from herprevious occupation, whatever it might have been, caused a faint shadowof pain to pass across his loving eyes. He cast a glance at his wifeas if mutely asking her to sit beside him, but she drew a chair to thetable, and with her elbow resting on the box, resignedly awaited hisspeech.
"I don't mean to disturb you, darling," he said, gently, "but as we werealone, 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 Ireturned."
"I thought you found fault with me then for forgetting the past. Butlet that pass, dear; it is not OUR affairs I wanted to talk to you aboutnow," he said, stifling a sigh, "it's about your friend. Please don'tmisunderstand what I am going to say; nor that I interpose except fromnecessity."
She turned her dark brown eyes in his direction, but her glance passedabstractedly over his head into the garden.
"It's a matter perfectly well known to me--and, I fear, to all ourservants also--that somebody is making clandestine visits to our garden.I would not trouble you before, until I ascertained the object of thesevisits. It is quite plain to me now that Dona Rosita is that object, andthat communications are secretly carried on between her and some unknownstranger. He has been here once or twice before; he was here againyesterday. Ezekiel saw him and saw her."
"Together?" asked Mrs. Demorest, sharply.
"No; but it was evident that there was some understanding, and that somecommunication passed between them."
"Well?" said Mrs. Demorest, with repressed impatience.
"It is equally evident, Joan, that this stranger is a man who does notdare 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 maybe perfectly innocent, but is certainly compromising to all concerned.I am quite willing to believe that Dona Rosita is only romantic andreckless, but that will not prevent her from becoming a dupe of somerascal who dare not face us openly, and who certainly does not act asher 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 hisdaughter to be compromised under my roof."
Her eyes sprang up to meet his in hatred as promptly as they once hadmet in love. "And since when, Richard Demorest, have you become soparticular?" she began, with dry asperity. "Since you lured ME from theside of my wedded husband? Since you met ME clandestinely in trains andmade love to ME under an assumed name? Since you followed ME to my houseunder 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 ofcompromising ME then? Did you think of ruining my reputation, of drivingmy husband from his home in despair? Did you call yourself a rascalthen? 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 precisioninto an hysterical, and it is to be feared a virtuous, conviction ofher wrongs. Beginning only with the instinct to taunt and wound the manbefore her, she had been led by a secret consciousness of something elsehe did not know to anticipate his reproach and justify herself in a wildfeminine abandonment of emotion. But she stopped at his words. For amoment she was even thrilled again by the strength and imperiousness shehad loved.
They were facing each other after five years of mistaken passion, evenas they had faced each other that night in her mother's kitchen. But thegrave of that dead passion yawned between them. It was Joan who brokethe silence, that after her single outburst seemed to fill and oppressthe room.
"As far as Rosita is concerned," she said, with affected calmness, "sheis going to-night. And you probably will not be troubled any longer byyour mysterious visitor."
Whether he heeded the sarcastic significance of her last sentence, oreven heard her at all, he did not reply. For a moment he turned hisblazing eyes full upon her, and then without a word strode from theroom.
She walked to the door and stood uneasily listening in the passage untilshe heard the clatter of hoofs in the paved patio, and knew that he hadordered his horse. Then she turned back relieved to her room.
It was already sunset when Demorest drew rein again at the entranceof the corral, and the last stroke of the Angelus was ringing fromthe Mission tower. He looked haggard and exhausted, and his horse wasflecked with foam and dirt. Wherever he had been, or for what object, orwhether, objectless and dazed, he had simply sought to lose himself inaimlessly wandering over the dry yellow hills or in careering furiouslyamong his own wild cattle on the arid, brittle plain; whether he hadbeaten all thought from his brain with the jarring leap of his horse, orwhether he had pursued some vague and elusive determination to his owndoor, is not essential to this brief chronicle. Enough that when hedismounted he drew a pistol from his holster and replaced it in hispocket.
He had just pushed open the gate of the corral as he led in his horseby the bridle, when he noticed another horse tethered among some cottonwoods that shaded the outer wall of his garden. As he gazed, the figureof a man swung lightly from one of the upper boughs of a cotton-woodon the wall and disappeared on the other side. It was evidently theclandestine visitor. Demorest was in no mood for trifling. Hurriedlydriving his horse into the enclosure with a sharp cut of his riata, heclosed the gate upon him, slipped past the intervening space into thepatio, and then unnoticed into the upper part of the garden. Taking anarrow by-path in the direction of the cotton woods that could be seenabove the wall, he presently came in sight of the object of his searchmoving stealthily towards the house.
It was the work of a moment only todash 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 strangerrelaxed, and he fell back in bewildered terror.
"Edward Blandford! Good God!"
The pistol had dropped from his hand as he leaned breathless against atree. The stranger kicked the weapon contemptuously aside. Then quietlyadjusting his disordered dress, and picking the brambles from hissleeve, 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 makeme one this time," he said, pointing to the pistol.
Demorest passed his hand across his white face. "Then it's you--and youhave come here for--for--Joan?"
"For Joan?" echoed Blandford, with a quick scornful laugh, that made theblood flow back into Demorest's face as from a blow, and recalled hisscattered senses. "For Joan," he repeated. "Not much!"
The two men were facing each other in irreconcilable yet confusedantagonism. Both were still excited and combative from their latephysical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it wouldhave been impossible for either to have comprehended the other. In thefigure that had apparently risen from the dead to confront him, Demorestonly saw the man he had unconsciously wronged--the man who had it in hispower to claim Joan and exact a terrible retribution! But it was part ofthis monstrous and irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceasedto contemplate it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actualinterference of a man whom he no longer hated, but had begun to pity anddespise.
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 havegot to say to you."