Bret Harte

“ It was nearly nine o'clock when the two friends, accompanied by the sheriff of the county, left San Buenaventura turnpike and turned into a thicket of alders to wait the coming of the carriage they were to henceforth follow cautiously and unseen in a parallel trail to the main road. The moon had risen, and with it the long withheld wind that now swept over the distant stretch of gleaming road and partly veiled it at times with flying dust unchecked by any dew from the clear cold sky. Demorest shivered even with his ready hand on his revolver. ”

“ In the figure that had apparently risen from the dead to confront him, Demorest only saw the man he had unconsciously wronged—the man who had it in his power to claim Joan and exact a terrible retribution! But it was part of this monstrous and irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceased to contemplate it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actual interference of a man whom he no longer hated, but had begun to pity and despise. ”

“ Dona Rosita shrugged her plump shoulders. “You will not comprehend. It was because of his being a brigand that he stayed not with us. My father would not have object if he have present himself to me for marriage in these times. I would not have object, for I was young, and we have knew nothing. It was he who have object. For why? Inside of his heart he have feel he was a brigand.”
“But you might have reformed him in time,” said Demorest.
She again shrugged her shoulders. “Quien sabe.” After a pause she added with infinite gravity: “And before he have reform, it is bad for the menage. ”

“ 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 turned, and in his preoccupation laid his hand for an instant upon Demorest's shoulder with the absent familiarity of old days. Unconscious as the action was, it thrilled them both—from its very unconsciousness—and impelled them to throw themselves into the new alliance with such feverish and excited activity in order to preclude any dangerous alien reflection, that when they rose a few moments later and cautiously left the garden arm-in-arm through the outer gates, no one would have believed they had ever been estranged, least of all the clever woman who had separated them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Demorest ran hurriedly down the steps in the direction of the outcry. Joan followed more cautiously. At the first turning of the path Dona Rosita almost fell into his arms. She was breathless and trembling, but broke into a hysterical laugh.
“I have such a fear come to me—I cry out! I think I have seen a man; but it was nothing—nothing! I am a fool. It is no one here.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The energy and presence of his passion was so infectious that it momentarily swept away Demorest's doubts of the past. “And I will help you, before God, Blandford,” he said eagerly. “And Joan shall, too. She will find out from Rosita how far—”
“Thank you,” interrupted Blandford, dryly; “but your wife has already interfered in this matter, to my cost. It is to her, I believe, I owe this wretch's following Rosita here. She already knows this man—has met him twice in San Francisco; he even boasts of YOUR jealousy. You know best how far he lied.” ”

“ Demorest plied her with questions regarding the apparition she had seen, and finally extorted from her the admission that she could not positively swear to its being the real Johnson, or even a perfectly consistent shade of that faithless man. When Joan pointed out to her that such masculine perfections as curling raven locks, long silken mustachios, and dark eyes, were attributes by no means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionally seen among other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, Dona Rosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. ”

“ 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, 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. ”

“ Demorest, with repressed impatience.
“It is equally evident, Joan, that this stranger is a man who does not dare to approach your friend in her own house, nor more openly in this; but who, with her connivance, uses us to carry on an intrigue which may be perfectly innocent, but is certainly compromising to all concerned. I am quite willing to believe that Dona Rosita is only romantic and reckless, but that will not prevent her from becoming a dupe of some rascal who dare not face us openly, and who certainly does not act as her equal.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Demorest's dream of a few days' conjugal seclusion and confidences with his wife was quickly dispelled by that lady. “I came down with Rosita Pico, whose father, you know, once owned this property,” she said. “She's gone on to her cousins at Los Osos Rancho to-night, but comes here to-morrow for a visit. She knows the place well; in fact, she once had a romantic love affair here. But she is very entertaining. It will be a little change for us,” she added, naively. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And suddenly, as if in one day, it was changed; there were strange men on the roads, and one was frightened, and one shut the gates of the pateo and drove the horses into the corral. One did not know much of the Americans then—for why? They were always going, going—never stopping, hurrying on to the gold mines, hurrying away from the gold mines, hurrying to look for other gold mines: but always going on foot, on horseback, in queer wagons—hurrying, pushing everywhere. ”