The Black Pearl Part 24

Hugh laughed and, leaning his elbow on the keys, rested his cheek on his palm. "I am a little brother of the wind," he said. "I was just listening to it singing to me out there; and Pearl, well, Pearl is a daughter of fire."

"What is it that you hear that I don't?" asked Harry. "I listen to the wind, too, sometimes for hours, up there in my cabin; but it's only a falling, sighing thing to me, sometimes a rising, shrieking one. What is this gift of music?"

"I don't know," said Hugh simply, "but if you will wait a moment, I will play you the song the wind is singing through the pines to-night. It is just a little, sad one."

Again he sat immobile, listening for a while and then began to play so plaintive and wistful a melody that Harry felt the old sorrow wake and stir within his heart and demand a reckoning of the forgetful years. Not realizing that he did so, he arose and began to pace up and down the room, nor remembered where he was until he looked up to see Pearl watching him, surprise and even a slight curiosity upon her face.

"Forgive me," he said, stopping before her, "for walking up and down that way as if I were in my own cabin, but something in Hugh's music set me to dreaming."

"You didn't look as if they were happy dreams," she said.

"Didn't I?" he spoke as lightly as he could; then he changed the subject. "Do you know that the crust on the snow is thicker than it has been yet? How would you like to go out on your snow-shoes to-morrow morning?"

She looked her pleasure. "That will be fine," she cried eagerly.

She was up betimes the next day, anxious to see whether more snow had fallen during the night; but none had. To her joy, it was one of those brilliant mornings when the sky seems a dome of sapphire sparkles, and the crust of the snow with the sun on it is like white star-dust overlaid with gold. The radiance would have been unbearable had not the bare, black trees veiled the sky with their network of branches and twigs and the pines softened the snow with their shadows.

Pearl had rapidly acquired proficiency in her new accomplishment, and she and Seagreave had covered several miles when, on their return, they paused to rest a bit in the little bower of stunted pines. Here Seagreave cut some branches from the trees for them to sit on and, gathering some dry, fallen boughs and cones, built a fire.

They enjoyed this a few moments in silence and then Pearl spoke. "Why,"

she asked with her usual directness, "why did you get up and walk up and down the room last night when Hughie was playing? What was it in his music that made you forget all of us and even, as you said, forget that you were not in your own cabin?"

"That was stupid of me and rude, too," he said compunctiously.

"Something that he was playing called up so vivid a memory that I forgot everything."

There was a quick gleam in her eyes; she was resentful of memories that could make him forget her very presence, hers. "What was it you were thinking of?" she asked. Her voice was low.

He looked out over the snow before he answered. "A girl," he said, and cast another handful of pine cones upon the fire.

She did not speak nor move, and yet her whole being was instinct with a sudden tense attention. "Yes, a girl," she said insistently. "What was she like?" the words leaped from her, voicing themselves almost without her volition.

He sighed and appeared to speak with some effort. "It was long ago," he said. "She was like violets or white English roses."

"And did you love her?" she asked, that soft tenseness still in her voice, "and did she love you?"

"I suppose every man has his ideal of woman, perhaps unconsciously to himself, and she was mine."

He sighed again and she glanced quickly at him from the corners of her eyes with a half scornful smile upon her lips. She knew that she did not suggest violets, shy and fragrant and hidden under their own green leaves; neither was there anything in the mountains to suggest the gardens in which roses grew. But he had left the violets and English roses long ago, because of that spirit of restlessness within him, and finally he had come to these wild, savage mountains and was content here, where it was difficult even to picture the calm and repose of the gardens he had left. He had said that he did not know why he had come, but Pearl did. She never doubted it. It was the call of her heart across the world to him, seeking him, reaching him, drawing him to her.

"And does it make you unhappy to think of her now?" she asked still softly.

"No," he said, "no, not now. But last night something in the music caused the years to drop away and I was back there again and she rose before me. Really, I felt her very presence. I saw her as plainly as I see you now."

Pearl rose and shook the snow from her cloak. "Forget it," she said scornfully. The little horse-shoe frown showed between her brows, and her eyes as she looked at him were full of a sparkling disdain. "That girl wasn't worth that," she snapped her fingers. "And here you've been loping over the globe for years, because she turned you down. I should think you'd feel like a fool." She spoke quite fearlessly, although Seagreave had thrown up his head and stood looking at her with a white face and compressed lips. "But that ain't the reason," she went on shrewdly. "I know men. You like to think you quit things because of the girl," she laughed that low, harsh, unpleasant laugh of hers. "You quit 'em because you got lazy, and anything like a responsibility was a bore.

That's straight."

Without another glance at him, she sped down the hill, like an arrow shot from a bow.

CHAPTER XII

As that long, white winter slowly wore away there were many in the camp who, although they had endured the strain of a wearing monotony through many previous seasons, nevertheless suffered greatly from it; and, in consequence, as the clock of the year began to indicate spring an almost riotous joy was felt and expressed when it was announced through the camp that the Black Pearl had again consented to dance for them.

It was considered a truly fitting celebration of the fact that there had already been one great thaw, and, although there was every possibility of things freezing up again, yet nevertheless spring had at last loosed her hounds and they were hard on winter's traces. In fact, one belated train, after hours spent on the road, had succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng through, an evidence that they all would soon be running with their accustomed, if rather erratic regularity, and there was naturally a tremendous excitement and jollification in the camp at this arrival of the first mail bearing news from the outside world.

The messages for Pearl included a letter from her mother and one from Bob Flick, but none from Hanson. Bob Flick announced that his patience was worn thin and that he would be up on the first train bearing pa.s.sengers. Mrs. Gallito's letter was full of commiserations for her daughter on her enforced detention, and she evidently regarded the nature of that durance as particularly vile.

"Pearl, how you been standing it up in that G.o.d-forsaken hole where you can't even keep warm is what beats me. Seems to me I went to church once, oh, just for a lark, and the preacher talked about some plagues of Egypt, all different kinds, you know. It was real interesting. I always remembered it. But in looking back over plagues I've seen, the very worst of all was snow. I'm afraid, when I see you again, you'll be all skin and bone and shadow. I do hope you won't be sick like poor Hanson.

I had an awful sad letter from him; seems he took cold and's been at death's door."

Pearl rustled the paper impatiently. She was not interested in this news. Hanson occupied her thoughts so little that she did not even pause to wonder how he was. The very sight of his name in the letter stirred a vague irritation in her. Absorbed in her love for Seagreave, Hanson had become to her as a forgotten episode.

However, her mother dropped the subject and took up the more interesting one of Lolita. "That bird certainly has mourned for you, Pearl. I guess she'd have just about pined away if it hadn't been for Bob Flick."

But Pearl was not the only recipient of letters from the outside world; all of the little group, with the exception of Jose, had received their quota, even Mrs. Nitschkan. But the bulk of the mail, which Gallito brought up from the village postoffice and gravely distributed, fell to Mrs. Thomas. Almost without exception, these envelopes were addressed in straggling, masculine characters which suggested painful effort and seemed to indicate that the writers were more used to the pick and shovel than to the pen. But although Mrs. Thomas had to spell out the contents of each missive with more or less difficulty, her giggles, blushes and occasional exclamations showed how much pleasure they afforded her.

Mrs. Nitschkan, however, after glancing carelessly at the large, yellow envelope which was addressed to her in a clerkly hand, cast it carelessly aside and went on a.s.siduously cleaning and oiling her gun.

But the sight of it aroused Mrs. Thomas's curiosity, and after glancing at it once or twice over the top of her own letters, she could not forbear to ask:

"Ain't you going to read your letter, Sadie?"

"Mebbe. Sometime. By an' by. When I get good an' ready," returned the gypsy indifferently and abstractedly, squinting with one eye down the barrel of her gun. "What do I want with letters? I got two bear an' a mountain lion before the snow flew."

Mrs. Thomas laid aside her letters for the moment, and, lifting a large pot of coffee from the stove, poured out a cupful for her friend and then one for herself. "Here, Sadie," she coaxed, "rest yourself with a cup of coffee. I'll set down the sugar and cream an' whilst you're drinking it, open your letter. Come now, do. Maybe it's from a gentleman."

"It sure is," replied Mrs. Nitschkan, laying her gun carefully across her knee, wiping her hands on the cloth with which she had been polis.h.i.+ng it, and then dropping several lumps of sugar into the cup, she poured herself a liberal allowance of cream. "It's a bill for that double-j'inted, patent, electrical fis.h.i.+n' rod that I sent East for, clean to New York City, for a weddin' present for Celia."

Mrs. Thomas gave a faint, scornful laugh at the thought of this most incongruous gift for Mrs. Nitschkan's pretty, feminine daughter. "A fis.h.i.+n' rod for Celia!" she exclaimed, "when all she ever thinks about is cookin' an' sweepin' an' sewin' all day."

"That's it," Mrs. Nitschkan radiated self-approbation and satisfaction.

"It made a nice show at the weddin', didn't it? And it has sure been useful to me since."

But Mrs. Thomas had again absorbed herself in her correspondence, and it is doubtful if she heard these last words. "Say, Sadie," she cried presently, a ripple of joyous excitement in her voice, "listen here to what Willie Barker says, 'If you don't come back soon, I'm a-going to lay right down an' die, or maybe take my own life.'"

"Then you'll stay right on here," said Mrs. Nitschkan shortly but emphatically. "Such a chanst as that's not to be missed."

Mrs. Thomas pouted, "But, honest, can't we pretty soon leave these old prospects that you're a-nursin' along to salt an' get ready to palm off on some poor Easterner?"

The gypsy took a long draught of coffee, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. "Your ungratefulness'll strike in and probably kill you, Marthy Thomas. Here I burdened myself with you to save your life insurance and the nice little property Seth left you from a pack of wolves in the camp that's after them, an' not you, an' what thanks do I get? All these months I been workin' like the devil to convert you an'

Jose, an' as far as either of you's concerned, I might a darned sight better have put in my time tryin' to save the soul of a flea. You couldn't even let a poor, G.o.d-forsaken robber like Jose alone. Don't you know that if you get a thousand husbands they'll all treat you as bad or worse'n Seth did?"

"He's an angel in heaven right now an' don't you dare say a word against him, Sadie Nitschkan," cried Mrs. Thomas defensively, "but he was a devil all the same."

"They'll all be devils," returned Mrs. Nitschkan fatalistically. "They's no man can stand seein' a feather pillow around all the time an' not biff it, especially when it can turn on a gallon of tears any time of the day or night."

Mrs. Thomas made no effort to refute this last aspersion. Instead, she began to weep loudly and unrestrainedly. "Bob Martin says in his letter that he hopes I'm havin' a pleasant time," she sobbed. "He don't know the loneliness, not to say the danger, of being snowed up in these mountains with a woman that ain't got no more feelin' than to skin you alive whenever she's a mind to. I ain't afraid of gentlemen, even husbands, but sometimes when you get to jawin' me, Sadie, with a gun in your hand, it makes my poor heart go like that, an' I crawl all over with goose-flesh."