Demorest kept back a sigh, without changing his gentle smile. “I’m glad for your sake, dear. But is she not a little flighty and inclined to flirt a good deal? I think I’ve heard so.”
“She’s a young girl who has been severely tried, Richard, and perhaps is not to blame for endeavoring to forget it in such distraction as she can find,” said Mrs. Demorest, with a slight return of her old manner. “I can understand her feelings perfectly.” She looked pointedly at her husband as she spoke, it being one of her late habits to openly refer to their ante-nuptial acquaintance as a natural reaction from the martyrdom of her first marriage, with a quiet indifference that seemed almost an indelicacy. But her husband only said: “As you like, dear,” vaguely remembering Dona Rosita as the alleged heroine of a forgotten romance with some earlier American adventurer who had disappeared, and trying vainly to reconcile his wife’s sentimental description of her with his own recollection of the buxom, pretty, laughing, but dangerous-eyed Spanish girl he had, however, seen but once.
She arrived the next day, flying into a protracted embrace of Joan, which included a smiling recognition of Demorest with an unoccupied blue eye, and a shake of her fan over his wife’s shoulder. Then she drew back and seemed to take in the whole veranda and garden in another long caress of her eyes. “Ah-yess! I have recognized it, mooch. It es ze same. Of no change—not even of a leetle. No, she ess always—esso.” She stopped, looked unutterable things at Joan, pressed her fan below a spray of roses on her full bodice as if to indicate some thrilling memory beneath it, shook her head again, suddenly caught sight of Demorest’s serious face, said: “Ah, that brigand of our husband laughs himself at me,” and then herself broke into a charming ripple of laughter.
“But I was not laughing, Dona Rosita,” said Demorest, smiling sadly, however, in spite of himself.
She made a little grimace, and then raised her elbows, slightly lifting her shoulders. “As it shall please you, Senor. But he is gone—thees passion. Yess—what you shall call thees sentiment of lof—zo—as he came!” She threw her fingers in the air as if to illustrate the volatile and transitory passage of her affections, and then turned again to Joan with her back towards Demorest.
“Do please go on—Dona Rosita,” said he, “I never heard the real story. If there is any romance about my house, I’d like to know it,” he added with a faint sigh.
Dona Rosita wheeled upon him with an inquiring little look. “Ah, you have the sentiment, and you,” she continued, taking Joan by the arms, “You have not. Eet ess good so. When a—the wife,” she continued boldly, hazarding an extended English abstraction, “he has the sentimente and the hoosband he has nothing, eet is not good—for a-him—ze wife,” she concluded triumphantly.
“But I have great appreciation and I am dying to hear it,” said Demorest, trying to laugh.
“Well, poor one, you look so. But you shall lif till another time,” said Dona Rosita, with a mock courtesy, gliding with Joan away.
The “other time” came that evening when chocolate was served on the veranda, where Dona Rosita, mantilla-draped against the dry, clear, moonlit air, sat at the feet of Joan on the lowest step. Demorest, uneasily observant of the influence of the giddy foreigner on his wife, and conscious of certain confidences between them from which he was excluded, leaned against a pillar of the porch in half abstracted resignation; Joan, under the tutelage of Rosita, lit a cigarette; Demorest gazed at her wonderingly, trying to recall, in her fuller and more animated face, some memory of the pale, refined profile of the Puritan girl he had first met in the Boston train, the faint aurora of whose cheek in that northern clime seemed to come and go with his words. Becoming conscious at last of the eyes of Dona Rosita watching him from below, with an effort he recalled his duty as her host and gallantly reminded her that moonlight and the hour seemed expressly fitted for her promised love story.
“Do tell it,” said Joan, “I don’t mind hearing it again.”
“Then you know it already?” said Demorest, surprised.
Joan took the cigarette from her lips, laughed complacently, and exchanged a familiar glance with Rosita. “She told it me a year ago, when we first knew each other,” she replied. “Go on, dear,” to Rosita.
Thus encouraged, Dona Rosita began, addressing herself first in Spanish to Demorest, who understood the language better than his wife, and lapsing into her characteristic English as she appealed to them both. It was really very little to interest Don Ricardo—this story of a silly muchacha like herself and a strange caballero. He would go to sleep while she was talking, and to-night he would say to his wife, “Mother of God! why have you brought here this chattering parrot who speaks but of one thing?” But she would go on always like the windmill, whether there was grain to grind or no. “It was four years ago. Ah! Don Ricardo did not remember the country then—it was when the first Americans came—now it is different. Then there were no coaches—in truth one travelled very little, and always on horseback, only to see one’s neighbors. 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. Ah, it took away the breath. All, except one American—he did not hurry, he did not go with the others, he came and stayed here at Buenaventura. He was very quiet, very civil, very sad, and very discreet. He was not like the others, and always kept aloof from them. He came to see Don Andreas Pico, and wanted to beg a piece of land and an old vaquero’s hut near the road for a trifle. Don Andreas would have given it, or a better house, to him, or have had him live at the casa here; but he would not. He was very proud and shy, so he took the vaquero’s hut, a mere adobe affair, and lived in it, though a caballero like yourself, with white hands that knew not labor, and small feet that had seldom walked. In good time he learned to ride like the best vaquero, and helped Don Andreas to find the lost mustangs, and showed him how to improve the old mill. And his pride and his shyness wore off, and he would come to the casa sometimes. And Don Andreas got to love him very much, and his daughter, Dona Rosita—ah, well, yes truly—a leetle.
“But he had strange moods and ways, this American, and at times they would have thought him a lunatico had they not believed it to be an American fashion. He would be very kind and gentle like one of the family, coming to the casa every day, playing with the children, advising Don Andreas and—yes—having a devotion—very discreet, very ceremonious, for Dona Rosita. And then, all in a moment, he would become as ill, without a word or gesture, until he would stalk out of the house, gallop away furiously, and for a week not be heard of. The first time it happened, Dona Rosita was piqued by his rudeness, Don Andreas was alarmed, for it was on an evening like the present, and Dona Rosita was teaching him a little song on the guitar when the fit came on him. And he snapped the guitar strings like thread and threw it down, and got up like a bear and walked away without a word.”
“I see it all,” said Demorest, half seriously: “you were coquetting with him, and he was jealous.”
But Dona Rosita shook her head and turned impetuously, and said in English to Joan:
“No, it was astutcia—a trick, a ruse. Because when my father have arrived at his house, he is agone. And so every time. When he have the fit he goes not to his house. No. And it ees not until after one time when he comes back never again, that we have comprehend what he do at these times. And what do you think? I shall tell to you.”
She composed herself comfortably, with her plump elbows on her knees, and her fan crossed on the palm of her hand before her, and began again:
“It is a year he has gone, and the stagecoach is attack of brigands. Tiburcio, our vaquero, have that night made himself a pasear on the road, and he have seen him. He have seen, one, two, three men came from the wood with something on the face, and he is of them. He has nothing on his face, and Tiburcio have recognize him. We have laugh at Tiburcio. We believe him not. It is improbable that this Senor Huanson—”
“Senor who?” said Demorest.
“Huanson—eet is the name of him. Ah, Carr!—posiblemente it is nothing—a Don Fulano—or an apodo—Huanson.”
“Oh, I see, Johnson, very likely.”
“We have said it is not possible that this good man, who have come to the house and ride on his back the children, is a thief and a brigand. And one night my father have come from the Monterey in the coach, and it was stopped. And the brigands have take from the passengers the money, the rings from the finger, and the watch—and my father was of the same. And my father, he have great dissatisfaction and anguish, for his watch is given to him of an old friend, and it is not like the other watch. But the watch he go all the same. And then when the robbers have made a finish comes to the window of the coach a mascara and have say, ‘Who is the Don Andreas Pico?’ And my father have say, ‘It is I who am Don Andreas Pico.’ And the mask have say, ‘Behold, your watch is restore!’ and he gif it to him. And my father say, ‘To whom have I the distinguished honor to thank?’ And the mask say—”
“Johnson,” interrupted Demorest.
“No,” said Dona Rosita in grave triumph, “he say Essmith. For this Essmith is like Huanson—an apodo—nothing.”
“Then you really think this man was your old friend?” asked Demorest.
“I think.”
“And that he was a robber even when living here—and that it was not your cruelty that really drove him to take the road?”
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. I should invite to my house some friend. They arrive, and one say, ‘I have not the watch of my pocket,’ and another, ‘The ring of my finger, he is gone,’ and another, ‘My earrings, she is loss.’ And I am obliged to say, ‘They reside now in the pocket of my hoosband; patience! a little while—perhaps to-morrow—he will restore.’ No,” she continued, with an air of infinite conviction, “it is not good for the menage—the necessity of those explanation.”
“You told me he was handsome,” said Joan, passing her arm carelessly around Dona Rosita’s comfortable waist. “How did he look?”
“As an angel! He have long curls to his back. His moustache was as silk, for he have had never a barber to his face. And his eyes—Santa Maria!—so soft and so—so melankoly. When he smile it is like the moonlight. But,” she added, rising to her feet and tossing the end of her lace mantilla over her shoulder with a little laugh—“it is finish—Adelante! Dr-rrive on!”
“I don’t want to destroy your belief in the connection of your friend with the road agents,” said Demorest grimly, “but if he belongs to their band it is in an inferior capacity. Most of them are known to the authorities, and I have heard it even said that their leader or organizer is a very unromantic speculator in San Francisco.”
But this suggestion was received coldly by the ladies, who superciliously turned their backs upon it and the suggester. Joan dropped her voice to a lower tone and turned to Dona Rosita. “And you have never seen him since?”
“Never.”
“I should—at least, I wouldn’t have let it end in that way,” said Joan in a positive whisper.
“Eh?” said Dona Rosita, laughing. “So eet is you, Juanita, that have the romance—eh? Ah, bueno! ‘you have the house—so I gif to you the lover also.’ I place him at your disposition.” She made a mock gesture of elaborate and complete abnegation. “But,” she added in Joan’s ear, with a quick glance at Demorest, “do not let our hoosband eat him. Even now he have the look to strangle me. Make to him a little lof, quickly, when I shall walk in the garden.” She turned away with a pretty wave of her fan to Demorest, and calling out, “I go to make an assignation with my memory,” laughed again, and lazily passed into the shadow. An ominous silence on the veranda followed, broken finally by Mrs. Demorest.
“I don’t think it was necessary for you to show your dislike to Dona Rosita quite so plainly,” she said, coldly, slightly accenting the Puritan stiffness, which any conjugal tête-à-tête lately revived in her manner.
“I show dislike of Dona Rosita?” stammered Demorest, in surprise. “Come, Joan,” he added, with a forgiving smile, “you don’t mean to imply that I dislike her because I couldn’t get up a thrilling interest in an old story I’ve heard from every gossip in the pueblo since I can remember.”
“It’s not an old story to her,” said Joan, dryly, “and even if it were, you might reflect that all people are not as anxious to forget the past as you are.”
Demorest drew back to let the shaft glance by. “The story is old enough, at least for her to have had a dozen flirtations, as you know, since then,” he returned gently, “and I don’t think she herself seriously believes in it. But let that pass. I am sorry I offended her. I had no idea of doing so. As a rule, I think she is not so easily offended. But I shall apologize to her.” He stopped and approached nearer his wife in a half-timid, half- tentative affection. “As to my forgetfulness of the past, Joan, even if it were true, I have had little cause to forget it lately. Your friend, Corwin—”
“I must insist upon your not calling him my friend, Richard,” interrupted Joan, sharply, “considering that it was through your indiscretion in coming to us for the buggy that night, that he suspected—”
She stopped suddenly, for at that moment a startled little shriek, quickly subdued, rang through the garden. 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.”
“But where did you see anything?” said Joan, coming up.
Rosita flew to her side. “Where? Oh, here!—everywhere! Ah, I am a fool!” She was laughing now, albeit there were tears glistening on her lashes when she laid her head on Joan’s shoulder.
“It was some fancy—some resemblance you saw in that queer cactus,” said Demorest, gently. “It is quite natural, I was myself deceived the other night. But I’ll look around to satisfy you. Take Dona Rosita back to the veranda, Joan. But don’t be alarmed, dear—it was only an illusion.”
He turned away. When his figure was lost in the entwining foliage, Dona Rosita seized Joan’s shoulder and dragged her face down to a level with her own.
“It was something!” she whispered quickly.
“Who?”
“It was—him!”
“Nonsense,” groaned Joan, nevertheless casting a hurried glance around her.
“Have no fear,” said Dona Rosita quickly, “he is gone—I saw him pass away—so! But it was he—Huanson. I recognize him. I forget him never.”
“Are you sure?”
“Have I the eyes? the memory? Madre de Dios! Am I a lunatico too? Look! He have stood there—so.”
“Then you think he knew you were here?”
“Quien sabe?”
“And that he came here to see you?”
Dona Rosita caught her again by the shoulders, and with her lips to Joan’s ear, said with the intensest and most deliberate of emphasis:
“No!”
“What in Heaven’s name brought him here then?”
“You!”
“Are you crazy?”
“You! you! You!” repeated Dona Rosita, with crescendo energy. “I have come upon him here; where he stood and look at the veranda, absorrrb of you. You move—he fly.”
“Hush!”
“Ah, yes! I have said I give him to you. And he came, Bueno,” murmured Dona Rosita, with a half-resigned, half-superstitious gesture.
“Will you be quiet!”
It was the sound of Demorest’s feet on the gravel path, returning from his fruitless search. He had seen nothing. It must have been Dona Rosita’s fancy.
“She was just saying she thought she had been mistaken,” said Joan, quietly. “Let us go in—it is rather chilly here, and I begin to feel creepy too.”
Nevertheless, as they entered the house again, and the light of the hall lantern fell upon her face, Demorest thought he had never but once before seen her look so nervously and animatedly beautiful.