第29章
Mrs.Demorest was so fascinated by the company of Dona Rosita Pico and her romantic memories, that she prevailed upon that heart-broken but scarcely attenuated young lady to prolong her visit beyond the fortnight she had allotted to communion with the past.
For a day or two following her singular experience in the garden, Mrs.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.
"Besides, dear," said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, "it is four years since you've seen him, and surely the man has either shaved since, or else he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and then he would be more fully bearded."But Dona Rosita only shook her pretty head."Ah, but he have an air--a something I know not what you call--so." She threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and as far as a pair of soft blue eyes and comfortably pacific features would admit, endeavored to convey an idea of wicked and gloomy abstraction.
"You child," said Joan,--"that's nothing; they all of them do that.
Why, there was a stranger at the Oriental Hotel whom I met twice when I was there--just as mysterious, romantic, and wicked-looking.
And in fact they hinted terrible things about him.Well! so much so, that Mr.Demorest was quite foolish about my being barely civil to him--you understand--and--" She stopped suddenly, with a heightened color under the fire of Rosita's laughing eyes.
"Ah--so--Dona Discretion! Tell to me all.Did our hoosband eat him?"Joan's features suddenly tightened to their old puritan rigidity.
"Mr.Demorest has reasons--abundant reasons--to thoroughly understand and trust me," she replied in an austere voice.
Rosita looked at her a moment in mystification and then shrugged her shoulders.The conversation dropped.Nevertheless, it is worthy of being recorded that from that moment the usual familiar allusions, playful and serious, to Rosita's mysterious visitor began to diminish in frequency and finally ceased.Even the news brought by Demorest of some vague rumor in the pueblo that an intended attack on the stage-coach had been frustrated by the authorities, and that the vicinity had been haunted by incognitos of both parties, failed to revive the discussion.
Meantime the slight excitement that had stirred the sluggish life of the pueblo of San Buenaventura had subsided.The posada of Senor Mateo had lost its feverish and perplexing dual life; the alley behind it no longer was congested by lounging cigarette smokers; the compartment looking upon the silent patio was unoccupied, and its chairs and tables were empty.The two deputy sheriffs, of whom Senor Mateo presumably knew very little, had fled; and the mysterious Senor Johnson, of whom he--still presumably--knew still less, had also disappeared.For Senor Mateo's knowledge of what transpired in and about his posada, and of the character and purposes of those who frequented it, was tinctured by grave and philosophical doubts.This courteous and dignified scepticism generally took the formula of quien sabe to all frivolous and mundane inquiry.He would affirm with strict verity that his omelettes were unapproachable, his beds miraculous, his aguardiente supreme, his house was even as your own.Beyond these were questions with which the simply finite and always discreet human intellect declined to grapple.
The disturbing effect of Senor Corwin upon a mind thus gravely constituted may be easily imagined.Besides Ezekiel's inordinate capacity for useless or indiscreet information, it was undeniable that his patent medicines had effected a certain peaceful revolutionary movement in San Buenaventura.A simple and superstitious community that had steadily resisted the practical domestic and agricultural American improvements, succumbed to the occult healing influences of the Panacea and Jones's Bitters.The virtues of a mysterious balsam, more or less illuminated with a colored mythological label, deeply impressed them; and the exhibition of a circular, whereon a celestial visitant was represented as descending with a gross of Rogers' Pills to a suffering but admiring multitude, touched their religious sympathies to such an extent that the good Padre Jose was obliged to warn them from the pulpit of the diabolical character of their heresies of healing--with the natural result of yet more dangerously advertising Ezekiel.There were those too who spoke under their breath of the miraculous efficacy of these nostrums.
Had not Don Victor Arguello, whose respectable digestion, exhausted by continuous pepper and garlic, failed him suddenly, received an unexpected and pleasurable stimulus from the New England rum, which was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not the baker, tremulous from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustained by the invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg's Nerve Tonic? Nor had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maiden and maternal requirements.Unguents, that made silken their black but somewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming possibilities to the Senoritas; while soothing syrups lent a peaceful repose to many a distracted mother's household.The success of Ezekiel was so marked as to justify his return at the end of three weeks with a fresh assortment and an undiminished audacity.