第10章

sez he, and without taken' no for an answer, ups and meanders through the hall, outer the kitchen inter the yard, ez if he was justice of the peace; and when he gets there he sez, 'Fetch out his hoss and harness up, and be blamed quick about it, and tell Ned Blandford that Dick Demorest hez got to leave town to-night, and ez ther ain't a blamed puritanical shadbelly in this hull town ez would let a hoss go on hire Sunday night, he guesses he'll hev to borry his.' And afore I could say Jack Robinson, he tackles the hoss up and drives outer the yard, flinging this two-dollar-and-a-half-piece behind him ez if I wur a Virginia slave and he was John C.Calhoun hisself.I'd a chucked it after him if it hadn't been the Lord's Day, and it mout hev provoked disturbance.""Mr.Demorest is worldly, but one of Edward's old friends," said Mrs.Blandford, with a slight kindling of her eyes, "and he would not have refused to aid him in what might be an errand of grace or necessity.You can keep the money, Ezekiel, as a gift, not as a wage.And go to bed.I will sit up for Mr.Blandford."She passed out and up the staircase into her bedroom, pausing on her way to glance into the empty back parlor and take the lamp from the table.Here she noticed that her husband had evidently changed his clothes again and taken a heavier overcoat from the closet.

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.

His prompt and decisive response to her appeal, as shown in this last bold and characteristic action, relieved, while it half piqued her.But the overruling destiny which had enabled her to bring him from his hotel to her mother's house unnoticed, had protected them while there, had arrested a dangerous meeting between him and herself and her husband in her own house, impressed her more than all.It imparted to her a hideous tranquillity born of the doctrines of her youth--Predestination! She reflected with secret exultation that her moral resolution to fly from him and her conscientiously broken promise had been the direct means of bringing him there; that step by step circumstances not in themselves evil or to be combated had led her along; that even her husband and mother had felt it their duty to assist towards this fateful climax! If Edward had never kept up his worldly friendship, if she had never been restricted and compassed in her own; if she had ever known the freedom of other girls,--all this might not have happened.She had been elected to share with Demorest and her husband the effects of their ungodliness.She was no longer a free agent; what availed her resolutions? To Demorest's imperious hope, she had said, "God knows." What more could she say? Her small red lips grew white and compressed; her face rigid, her eyes hollow and abstracted; she looked like the genius of asceticism as she sat there, grimly formulating a dogmatic explanation of her lawless and unlicensed passion.

The wind had risen to a gale without, and stirred even the sealed sepulchre of the fireplace with dull rumblings and muffled moans.

At times the hot-air drum in the corner seemed to expand as with some pent-up emotion.Strange currents of air crossed the empty room like the passage of unseen spirits, and she even fancied she heard whispers at the window.This caused her to rise and open it, when she found that the sleet had given way to a dry feathery snow that was swarming through the slits of the shutter; a faint reflection from the already whitened fences glimmered in the panes.

She shut the window hastily, with a little shiver of cold.Where was Demorest in this storm? Would it stop him? She thought with pride now of the dominant energy that had frightened her, and knew it would not.But her husband?--what kept him? It was twelve o'clock; he had seldom stayed out so late before.During the first half hour of her reflections she had been relieved by his absence;she had even believed that he had met Demorest in the town, and was not alarmed by it, for she knew that the latter would avoid any further confidence, and cut short any return to it.But why had not Edward returned? For an instant the terrible thought that something had happened, and that they might both return together, took possession of her, and she trembled.But no; Demorest, who had already taken such extreme measures, could not consistently listen to any suggestion for delay.As her only danger lay in Demorest's presence, the absence of her husband caused her more undefinable uneasiness than actual alarm.

The room had become cold with the dying out of the dining-room fire that warmed the drum.She would go to bed.She nevertheless arranged the room again with a singular impression that she was doing it for the last time in her present existing circumstances, and placing the lamp on the table in the hall, went up to her own room.By the light of a single candle she undressed herself hastily, said her prayers punctiliously, and got into bed, with an unexpected relief at finding herself still occupying it alone.

Then she fell asleep and dreamed of Demorest.