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 he 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.”