The two men kept their secret.Mr.Poindexter convinced Mrs.
Tucker that the sale of Los Cuervos could not be effected until the notoriety of her husband's flight had been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept her fate.The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her to have realized a singularly extravagant sum, enabled her to quietly reinstate the Pattersons in the tienda and to discharge in full her husband's liabilities to the rancheros and his humbler retainers.
Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased.It seemed to her as if the clouds had suddenly one night struck their white tents and stolen away, leaving the unvanquished sun to mount the vacant sky the next morning alone, and possess it thenceforward unchallenged.One afternoon she thought the long sad waste before her window had caught some tint of gayer color from the sunset; a week later she found it a blazing landscape of poppies, broken here and there by blue lagoons of lupine, by pools of daisies, by banks of dog-roses, by broad outlying shores of dandelions that scattered their lavish gold to the foot of the hills, where the green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crest of pines.For two months she was dazzled and bewildered with color.She had never before been face to face with this spendthrift Californian Flora, in her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like prodigality.
The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath her feet; the few circuits of a plough around the outlying corral were enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain that almost hid the low walls of the hacienda.In this glorious fecundity of the earth, in this joyous renewal of life and color, in this opulent youth and freshness of soil and sky, it alone remained, the dead and sterile Past, left in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrection, like an empty churchyard skull upturned on the springing turf.Its bronzed adobe walls mocked the green vine that embraced them, the crumbling dust of its courtyard remained ungerminating and unfruitful; to the thousand stirring voices without, its dry lips alone remained mute, unresponsive and unchanged.
During this time Don Jose had become a frequent visitor at Los Cuervos, bringing with him at first his niece and sister in a stately precision of politeness that was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger.She returned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal acquaintance of Don Jose's grandmother, a lady who still regarded the decrepit Concha as a giddy muchacha, and who herself glittered as with the phosphorescence of refined decay.
Through this circumstance she learned that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of manner and sedateness was more the result of fastidious isolation and temperament than years.She could not tell why the information gave her a feeling of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately avoided her presence.The thought that he might be doing so from a recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs.Patterson caused a little tremor of indignation in her pulses."As if--" but she did not finish the sentence even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.
Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly wronged her less feverishly, less impatiently than before.For she thought she loved him now the more deeply, because, although she was not reconciled to his absence, it seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been before his one wild act separated them.She had never seen the reflection of another woman's eyes in his; the past contained no haunting recollection of waning or alienated affection; she could meet him again, and, clasping her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled dream without reproach or explanation.Her strong belief in this made her patient; she no longer sought to know the particulars of his flight, and never dreamed that her passive submission to his absence was partly due to a fear that something in his actual presence at that moment would have destroyed that belief forever.
For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at Los Gatos, and their seclusion from the world which knew of her husband's fault, had made her encourage the visits of Don Jose, until from the instinct already alluded to she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on the day that Don Jose usually called.But to her surprise the two men met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact as hostess was tried to the utmost to keep their evident antagonism from being too apparent.The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some other feeling she did not quite understand, produced a nervous excitement which called the blood to her cheek and gave a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, two circumstances not unnoticed nor unappreciated by her two guests.
But instead of reuniting them, the prettier Mrs.Tucker became, the more distant and reserved grew the men, until Don Jose rose before the usual hour, and with more than usual ceremoniousness departed.
"Then my business does not seem to be with HIM?" said Poindexter, with quiet coolness, as Mrs.Tucker turned her somewhat mystified face towards him."Or have you anything to say to me about him in private?""I am sure I don't know what you both mean," she returned with a slight tremor of voice."I had no idea you were not on good terms.
I thought you were! It's very awkward." Without coquetry and unconsciously she raised her blue eyes under her lids until the clear pupils coyly and softly hid themselves in the corners of the brown lashes, and added, "You have both been so kind to me.""Perhaps that is the reason," said Poindexter, gravely.But Mrs.
Tucker refused to accept the suggestion with equal gravity, and began to laugh.The laugh, which was at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like, was becoming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it was suddenly checked by Poindexter.
