“Who dare say that?” demanded Blandford, angrily.
“Your wife that was—Mrs. Demorest ez is—told it to her mother,” returned Ezekiel, lazily.
The blow struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined. For an instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' retrospect of his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS. He had been willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as her treachery to him, he had passively acquiesced in the results of that forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness had enabled him to extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before the world, without being able now to offer the real cause. The anguish of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it had survived, and would survive it. In the eyes of the man before him he was not a wronged husband, but an absconding petty defaulter, whom he had just detected!
His mind was quickly made up. In that instant he had resolved upon a step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its results. For five years he had clearly misunderstood his attitude towards his treacherous wife and perjured friend. Thanks to this practical, selfish machine before him, he knew it now.
“Look here, Corwin,” he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face, but a steady, merciless eye. “I can guess, without your telling me, what lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy—perhaps even of criminality before the law. You are not MY friend, or you would not have believed them; if you are THEIRS, you have two courses open to you now. Keep this meeting to yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it a secret also; or, tell Mrs. Demorest that you have seen Mr. Johnson, who is not afraid to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he is Edward Blandford, her only lawful husband. Choose which course you like—it is nothing more to me.”
“Wa'al, I reckon that, as far as I know Mrs. Demorest,” said Ezekiel, dryly, “it don't make the least difference to her either; but if you want to know my opinion o' this matter, it is that neither you nor Demorest exactly understand that woman. I've known Joan Salisbury since she was so high, but if ye expected me to tell you wot she was goin' to do next, I'd be able to tell ye where the next flash o' lightnin' would strike. It's wot you don't expect of Joan Salisbury that she does. And the best proof of it is that she filed papers for a divorce agin you in Chicago and got it by default a few weeks afore she married Demorest—and you don't know it.”
Blandford recoiled. “Impossible,” he said, but his voice too plainly showed how clearly its possibility struck him now.
“It's so, but it was kept secret by Deacon Salisbury. I overheerd it. Wa'al, that's a proof that you don't understand Joan, I reckon. And considerin' that Demorest HIMSELF don't know it, ez I found out only the other day in talking to him, I kalkilate I'm safe in sayin' that you're neither o' you quite up to Deacon Salisbury's darter in nat'ral cuteness. I don't like to obtrude my opinion, Squire Blandford, ez we're old friends, but I do say, that wot with Demorest's prematooriness and yer own hangfiredness, it's a good thing that you two worldly men hev got Joan Salisbury to stand up for North Liberty and keep it from bein' scandalized by the ungodly. Ef it hadn't been for her smartness, whar y'd both be landed now? There's a heap in Christian bringin' up, and a power in grace, Squire Blandford.”
His hard, dry face was for an instant transfigured by a grim fealty and the dull glow of some sectarian clannishness. Or was it possible that this woman's personality had in some mysterious way disturbed his rooted selfishness?
During his speech Blandford had walked to the window. When Corwin had ceased speaking, Blandford turned towards him with an equally changed face and cold imperturbability that astonished him, and held out his hand. “Let bygones be bygones, Corwin—whether we ever meet again or not. Yet if I can do anything for you for the sake of old times, I am ready to do it. I have some power here and in San Francisco,” he continued, with a slight touch of pride, “that isn't dependent upon the mere name I may travel under. I have a purpose in coming here.”