The Black Pearl Part 17

"I!" Her glance was full of resentful pa.s.sion; tightly she closed her lips; but there was something about him which seemed to force her to reveal herself and, presently, she began again. "I am like a coyote with a broken paw. It goes off by itself and hides until it can limp around.

But life, real life, is all out there." She threw out her hands as indicating the world beyond the mountains. "If you call this life, you've never lived."

He ignored this, smiling faintly.

"What is real life to you?" he asked.

So compelling was his manner, for no one could shock Seagreave and no one could force him to condemn, that she almost said, "To love and be loved." But she resisted her impulse to voice this. "Until a little while before I came here, life meant to dance. I know, though, what it is to get tired of the very things you think you love the most. After I've stayed a while in the desert, I've just got to see the lights of the city streets, to smell the stage, and to dance to the big audiences; but after a bit, the buildings and the people begin to crowd on me and push me and I feel as if I couldn't breathe, then I've just got to get back to the desert again."

"Dancing is your expression," he said. "All of life is love and expression." And now there was a falling note in his voice which her ear was quick to catch. Almost she cried:

"Love! And yet you live here alone!"

"Yes," he went on, "we must have both. They are as necessary to us as breath. Without them--" he stopped, evidently embarra.s.sed, as if suddenly aware that he had been talking more to himself than to her and that in thus forgetting her, he had been more self-revealing than he would have wished.

She shook her head, plainly puzzled. "But you are young," she said, and stole another glance at him, adding a little shyly, "at least not very old, and I feel, I am sure that you too have a broken paw, but when that is well you will go back to your own country, to cities again. You couldn't stand it here always."

He looked at her, an enigmatic smile on his lips. "Couldn't I?" he said. Glancing again at her as he rose, he saw that she seemed weary, her lashes lay long on her pale cheek. "Oh," with a touch of compunction in his tone, "I have, as usual, talked far too much. You are tired and we must go. Jose," lifting his voice, "as soon as you finish that game."

"The Devil is indeed at your elbow," cried Jose, flinging down his cards, "and prompts all you say. We have just this moment finished a game and Gallito is the winner."

Gallito smiled with bleak geniality. "Has Jose been wise?" he asked, rising and replenis.h.i.+ng the dying fire.

"Fairly so," Seagreave smiled, "as far as he knows how to be. He has been up to some of his antics, though. They are beginning to say that this hillside is haunted."

While Gallito talked to Seagreave and Mrs. Nitschkan and Jose argued over certain rules of the game they had been playing, Mrs. Thomas sidled up to Pearl and stood looking at her with the absorbed unconsciousness of an admiring child.

"I s'pose," she began, swaying back and forth bashfully and touching the pink bow at her throat, "that it does look kind of queer to any one that's so up on the styles as you are to see me wearing a pink bow at my neck and a crepe veil down my back?"

Pearl looked up in wearied surprise. "It does seem queer," she said indifferently.

"'Course I know it ain't just citified," Mrs. Thomas hastened to affirm; "but the veil and the bow together's got a meaning that I think is real sweet." She waited a moment, almost pathetically anxious for Pearl to see the symbolism of her two incongruous adornments, but her listener was too genuinely bored and also too self-absorbed to make the attempt. "It's this," said Mrs. Thomas, determined to explain. "The pink bow kind o' shows that I'm in the world again and," bridling coquettishly, "open to offers, while this crepe veil shows that I ain't forgot poor Seth in his grave and can afford to mourn for him right."

But Pearl had not waited to hear all of these explanations. Without a word to the rest of the parting guests, and with a mere inclination of the head toward Seagreave, she had slipped away.

Alone in her small, bare room, undressing by the light of a single candle, the brief interest and curiosity which Seagreave had aroused in her faded from her mind. For hours she lay sleepless upon her bed, listening to the rus.h.i.+ng mountain stream not far from the cabin, its arrowy plunge and dash over the rocks softened by distance to a low, perpetual purr, and hearing the mountain wind sigh through the pines about the cabin: but not always did her great, dark eyes stare into the blackness; sometimes she buried her head in the pillow and moaned, and at last she wept, permitting herself the flood of tears that she had held in check all day. "Rudolf, Rudolf," was the name upon her lips.

CHAPTER IX

Within a few days Hughie came up to Colina, and through the long, chilly evenings near the peaks the little, isolated group met in Gallito's cabin. It was understood in the village that Gallito did not care to have his seclusion invaded, and this unspoken desire was universally respected; indeed, it was not questioned. In the solitary places are many eccentrics; they have escaped the melting pot of the city, and in the freedom of the desert and the mountains have achieved an unfettered and unquestioned individuality.

Those who had business dealings with the old Spaniard knew that he was to be found in places more easy of access than his lonely cabin among the rocks and trees; at the mine, for instance, of which he was foreman, the Mont d'Or; or, on an occasional Friday evening, in the village saloon, where he mingled with the miners, engaging in the eternal and interminable discussions of local mining affairs. He also kept a horse in the village, a fiery, blooded creature, which he exercised every few days, taking long rides over the various mountain trails. He was universally respected, as his judgment of mines was known to be sound, and his ventures unusually lucky; but no one was ever rash enough to encroach upon the reserve which he invariably maintained.

So, with small fear of embarra.s.sing interruptions, although Gallito saw that all prudence was observed and every precaution taken, he and Jose, Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas sat over their cards, while Hughie played upon the piano and Harry Seagreave listened, with his eyes closed, to the music. He sometimes brought Pearl a cl.u.s.ter of the exquisite wild flowers which now covered the mountains, but he rarely made any but the briefest attempts at conversation with her, and after the first evening she showed no disposition to have him do so.

Instead of rousing from the depression which had overfallen her, she seemed, for a time, to sink the more deeply into it. Silent, listless, almost sullen, she pa.s.sed her days. There was but little incentive for her to go down into the village, and she took small interest in the miners' wives who dwelt there. For a time she was curious to see Mrs.

Hanson, but, learning through Hughie that that lady lived up near her mine on a mountainside two miles out of the village, and only occasionally, and at irregular intervals, visited the camp, Pearl realized the difficulties in the way of catching a glimpse of her and contented herself with Bob Flick's description of her.

Her mother wrote to her about once a week, brief, ill-spelled letters, always with an ardent inclosure from Hanson, and Pearl would lie out on the hillside during the long summer days reading, and re-reading them, and at night she slept with them next her heart. For the first few months Hanson was content to write to her and to extract what comfort he could from her notes to her mother. These he invested with cryptic and hidden meanings endeavoring to find a veiled message for himself in every line. But presently, growing impatient, he began to beg her for a word, only a word, but sent directly from her to him; yet, although the summer had waned to autumn, she remained obdurate, her will and her pride still stronger than her love.

Sometimes in the evening Hugh would beg her to dance, but she always refused. The desire for that spontaneous and natural form of expression was gone from her; and once when Hugh had persisted in urging her, she had left the room, nor appeared again all evening, so that it became a custom not to mention her dancing to her.

"Gosh a'mighty!" cried Mrs. Nitschkan robustly, looking up from a book of flies over which she had been poring, "think of getting a man on the brain like that."

Jose, who had been putting away the supper dishes, a.s.sisted by Mrs.

Thomas, who had regarded the opportunity as propitious for certain elephantine coquetries, stopped to regard the gypsy with that peering mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and curiosity which she ever evoked in him.

"But, Nitschkan," he asked, "were you never crazy about a man?"

"Marthy Thomas knows more about such goin's on than me," she returned equably; "but since you ask me, I was crazy once about Jack, and another awful pretty girl had him. But that wasn't all." She slapped her knee in joyous and triumphant remembrance, and the cabin echoed with her laughter.

"Ah!" Jose hastily put away his last dish and sat cross-legged on the hearth at her feet, looking up into her face with impish interest. "How did you manage him or her?"

"You can't manage a her no more'n you can manage a cat," bluntly. "You can't make a cat useful, and you can't make it mind; but,"

significantly, "you can manage a dog and train him, too. I had to learn that girl that'd corraled Jack that a pretty face and ruffled petticoats may catch a man, but they can't always hold him."

"What can hold 'em?" interrupted Mrs. Thomas, sighing heavily. "Not always vittles, and cert'ny not a loving heart."

Mrs. Nitschkan snapped her book impatiently. "Now, Marthy, don't you stir me up with that talk of yours, like men was the only prize packages in life. I can't see what these home-body women love to fool 'emselves so for. You're just like my Celora, Marthy. 'Mommie,' she says to me once, 'I wonder when the right man'll come along and learn me to love him?' Well, I happened to be makin' a dog whip jus' when she spoke, and I says, 'Celora, if you give me much of that talk I'll give you a hidin', big as you are. You got your man all picked out right now, and you mean to marry him whether he thinks so or not, and he can't get away from you no more'n a cat can from a mouse.'"

"No more than I can from you," Jose sprang to his feet with light agility and, leaning forward, made as if about to imprint a kiss upon her forehead.

But he had reckoned without his host. Mrs. Nitschkan's arm shot out before he saw it, and he was sent staggering halfway across the room. "A poor, peris.h.i.+n' brother tried that on me once," she remarked casually.

"It was in w.i.l.l.y Barker's drug store over to Mt. Tabor. Celora was with me--she was about four--and I just set her down on the counter and said, 'Now, Celora, set good and quiet and watch Mommie go for the masher real pretty.'"

"I don't see why you got to be so rough on the boys, Sadie," deplored Mrs. Thomas, rocking slowly back and forth in a large chair. "'Course we know they're devils and all, but if it wasn't for their goin's on, trying to s.n.a.t.c.h a kiss now and then, life would seem awful tame for us poor, patient women. And even the worst of 'em's better'n none at all.

Look at me! I had the luck to get a cross-grained, cranky one, as you know. Poor Seth!" She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. "But you got to admit, Sadie, that even he was white enough to up and die before I got too old for other gentlemen to take notice of me."

"What'd you want 'em to take notice of you for?" asks Mrs. Nitschkan abstractedly, her mind on her flies.

"It's easy enough for you to talk that way," Mrs. Thomas spoke with some heat. "You got the what-you-may-callems--accomplishments--that gets their notice. You're apt to skin 'em at cards, you can easy out-shoot 'em, and there ain't a lady miner in the mountains that can pa.s.s off a salted property as cute as you."

"What's the use of livin' in a world of tenderfoots if you don't use 'em?" growled Mrs. Nitschkan.

"'Course. And don't think I'm blaming you, Sadie; I ain't." Mrs. Thomas spoke more gently. "All I'm sayin' is that you can't understand the women that's born feeling the need of a strong right arm to lean on, and has nothing but a nice complexion and a loving heart to offer. The game's a hard one for them, 'cause there're so many others in the field.

It ain't always a complexion; sometimes it's a head of hair, or eyes, but whatever it is, compet.i.tion's keen. I leave it to you, Mr. Jose, if a lady can say to a gentleman the first time she meets him, 'I got a dandy temper,' or 'I can bake a pie that'll coax the coyotes down from the hills.' No, you got to let the hair or complexion do its work first and sort o' insinuate the rest as acquaintance grows."

"There's a man comin' up here to-morrow, Marthy, but he won't know whether you got a strand of hair or a tooth in your head; he'll never see you."

"Maybe he can't help it--not if I stand right in his way," said Mrs.

Thomas, with a coy glance from under her lashes at Jose.

"Oh, yes, he can," returned Mrs. Nitschkan. "No matter who's in the way he can't see but one person, and that's that sulky Pearl; for it's good old Bob Flick, one of the best ever."

Two or three times Bob Flick had come up and remained several days, and on these occasions Pearl had roused somewhat from her indifference to life. On his last visit, late in September, he had succeeded in persuading her to ride again, and had sent down to the desert for a horse for her. She would not admit at first that she enjoyed being in the saddle again, but to his unexpressed satisfaction it was obvious that she did.