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 Iaccompanied 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.
