第21章
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? Ihaven'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."