The Black Pearl

by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

  CHAPTER XI

  Had Gallito but known it, his theory of the unexpected was never moreperfectly demonstrated than it was upon the night Pearl danced and inthe days which followed. Hanson had left early the next morning with thefirm determination of returning almost immediately accompanied by one ormore detectives and of securing that much coveted prize, Jose. Also, hegloated over the prospect of seeing Gallito, Bob Flick and Seagreavearrested for conniving at Jose's escape and for harboring him during allthese months.

  But the unexpected did occur. As Seagreave had predicted, the snow beganto fall, and began the very night that Pearl danced in the town hall;and fell so steadily and uninterruptedly that the progress of the trainwhich bore Hanson down the mountains was considerably impeded. Thus, thevery forces of the air conspired for Jose, and ably were they secondedby other invisible and unknown agencies. Even before Hanson had reachedthe coast he found himself powerless "in the fell clutch ofcircumstance." He had taken cold in the mountains and for several weekswas too seriously ill even to contemplate with much interest his plan ofrevenge. And by the time that he had recovered sufficiently to giveconsideration to the matter again, a very little investigationconvinced him of the necessity for patience. So thoroughly had theseason and the elements conspired, that Colina was effectually cut offfrom the outer world, a camp beleaguered by snow, and Jose, for severalmonths at least, would be the prisoner of the mountains and not of man.

  But Colina was used to this experience. It was one which she hadregularly undergone every winter of her existence. Therefore, herinhabitants prepared for it and bore it with what equanimity they couldsummon. It was but a small camp so far up in the mountains that themines were practically only worked during the late spring, the summerand the early autumn months, for the water which ran the concentratingand stamp mills was frozen early in the winter and the mines werepractically closed down. One or two, like the Mont d'Or, were kept open,and worked a few hours a day, but no milling was done and the ore dumpsincreased to vast size.

  The railroad, a steep and tortuous way, was not, _per se_ a passengerline, but existed to carry the ore down to the smelters, therefore, whenthere was no ore to carry, it was a matter of indifference to the mineowners who controlled the line whether trains ran or not; in fact, theypreferred not from a strictly business standpoint, and truly they had anexcellent excuse in the heavy drifts which completely obliterated thenarrow, shining, steel path which led to the world beyond the mountains.

  The police officials whom Hanson consulted as soon as his returninghealth permitted him to do so, realized that in spite of their anxietyto secure the famous and slippery Crop-eared Jose, he was quite assafely imprisoned by the mountains as if they themselves had securedhim. There was no possible escape for him. All trails were blocked longbefore the railroad was, so there he was, caught as securely as a birdin a cage, and they, his potential captors, might sit down to acomfortable period of pleasant anticipation and await that thaw whichwas bound to come sooner or later. So much for Gallito's unexpected.

  As for those who would have been interested had they but known--thelittle group held in compulsory inaction by those white, encirclinghills--they accepted it as a part of the year's toll, no more to bemurmured at than the changing seasons, and as inevitable as were they.But it was an experience which Pearl had never known, and Seagreavelooked to see it wear upon her spirit, and daily experienced a newsurprise that there was no evidence of its doing so. Instead, she seemedto glow hourly with a richer and fuller life, a softer beauty. Butalthough an intimacy greater than he and she had yet known, would seemto be enforced by this winter of isolation and leisure, she did not, fora time, see as much of him as before. A constraint, almost like a blightupon their friendship, seemed to have fallen between them ever since thenight that she had danced. Seagreave did not come down to Gallito'scabin quite so frequently in the evenings, and, according to Jose, spentmuch time by his own fireside absorbed in reading and meditation; andwhen he did come it was usually late and, instead of talking to Pearl,he would listen in silence to Hugh's playing or else engage him inconversation.

  But this attitude on his part failed to cloud Pearl's spirits. She hadseen men taken with this not inexplicable shyness before, and she madeno effort to rouse Harry from his abstraction or to lure him from hismeditations; femininely, intuitively wise, she left that to time.

  But even in her moods of gayety the Black Pearl was never voluble, andher habit of silence was a factor in maintaining the mystery with whichSeagreave's imagination was now beginning to invest her, and duringthose winter evenings when she would often sit absolutely motionless foran hour at a time, her narrow eyes dreaming on the fire, the sphynx lookon her face, more than once he felt impelled to murmur:

  "'The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?-- I awaited the seer, While they slumbered and slept.'"

  Thus, more and more, he saw her as the image of beauty and of mystery,and ever more frequently he pondered on the nature of the message of thedesert. But had he come down to Gallito's cabin earlier in the eveninghe would not have found her brooding on the firelight. Usually, shedanced, keeping well in practice. She and Hughie would discuss by thehour new movements and effects, and not only discuss, but try them, andshe and Jose, who had a light foot, often gave Gallito the benefit ofseeing them in many of the old Spanish dances.

  But one evening when Seagreave came down, Pearl was not resting afterher exertions, but ran forward to greet him with unwonted vivacity, anddrew him toward a window in a dim corner of the room, out of earshot ofher father and Jose.

  "Oh!" she cried. "Look, look at what they have sent me from the camp fordancing for them. I had no idea it would be so much." She took a roll ofbills from her bosom and showed it to him. Her cheek was flushed, hereyes were like stars. "Why, even here, even up here," she cried, "I canmake money."

  "You look as if you enjoyed making money," he smiled.

  She looked up at him as if surprised, and then laughed. "Of course, ofcourse I do. Who doesn't?" Her touch on the bills was a caress. Sheseemed to find a joy in the very texture of them. He never dreamed for amoment that she took a delight in those rather crumpled and dirty bills.He merely took it for granted that she exulted in the visible expressionof appreciation of her art.

  "And what will you do with it?" he asked.

  "I will send it to my bank when I can get any letters through, and thenwhen this snowball is big enough I will invest it."

  "In mines?" still idly interested and smiling.

  She shook her head. "I leave that to my father, he is a good judge andhe is lucky at it, and my mother is always buying patches of land andtrading them off, usually to good advantage. But my specialty is unsetstones. I have some very good ones, really, I have. Oh," with a littleglance over her shoulder toward her father and Jose, "I will show themto you some day when Jose is not around. If he knew I had them he wouldsteal them just for the pleasure of keeping himself in practice."

  "How you love beauty," he said.

  "But they are valuable," she said. "Oh, yes, I love them, too. I love tolet them fall through my fingers, to pour them from one hand to another.Sometimes, when I am all alone here in the cabin, I sit and I open mylittle black leather bag and take them out and hold them in the palm ofmy hand, and I turn them this way and that way just to catch the light,and there is nothing so beautiful; in all the world there is nothing sobeautiful as jewels, except," she caught herself quickly, "the desert,of course."

  He sighed a little and stirred restlessly, the very mention of thedesert made him vaguely uneasy. He had listened to the call of themountains and obeyed it, and from that moment the desert, like theworld, had no place in his thoughts; but since the night that Pearl haddanced it had remained in his mind, and had become to him as a farhorizon. The desert has ever been a factor in the consciousness of man,not to be excluded, and although Seag
reave did not realize it, themoment had come in which he must reckon with it. He felt the fascinationand repulsion of its impenetrable mystery, of its stark and desolatewastes, whose spell is yet so potent in the imagination of man, thatmany have found in its barren horror the very heart of beauty. Hewondered if the uncontaminated winds which blew from out the ages acrossthe vast, empty spaces murmured a message of greater import than thatwhispered to him among the mountain tops, if the wings of light whichbeat unceasingly above its shifting sands lifted the soul to someundreamed of realm of eternal morning. Something that slept deep withinhim stirred faintly; the old passion to adventure, to explore rose inhis heart, his restless, reckless heart, which had, so he believed,found peace.

  The shadow deepened in his eyes, but he suddenly roused from thismomentary abstraction to find that Pearl was still speaking.

  "Yes, I love them because they are so beautiful, but I love them, too,because they are valuable."

  "Well, there is no question about your making all the money you wish,"he said, a slight weariness in his tone, "thousands and thousands. Theworld will fling it at you. It will cover you with jewels."

  She smiled, a faint, secretive smile of triumph. Ah, so he recognizedthat. She had made him feel and admit that she was one of the few greatdancers.

  Then, she, too, sighed. "If only," she said, forgetful of him andfollowing out her train of thought aloud, "if only when I get what Iwant, I wouldn't always want something else! Did you ever feel if youcould just be free, really free, you wouldn't want anything else in theworld?"

  "How could any one be more free than you are?" he laughed down at her.

  "I know, I know," she agreed, still speaking wistfully, "but I'd like tobe free of myself; myself is so strange, and there's so many of me."Then the veil of her instinctive reticence fell over her again and shebegan to talk of her recent attempts to get about on snow-shoes, Joseand Hugh having been her instructors, so far. Harry immediately offeredhis services, and she accepted them, agreeing to go out with him thenext morning.

  And as they talked Jose glanced at them from time to time, a touch ofmalicious laughter in his odd glancing eyes; there were few things thatescaped Jose.

  That evening, after Seagreave had gone home, when Jose and Gallito andMrs. Thomas and Mrs. Nitschkan had sat late over their cards, Gallitohad risen after a final game, mended the fire, poured himself a glass ofcognac, lighted another cigarette and, stretching himself in aneasy-chair, entered into one of those confidential talks which heoccasionally permitted himself with his chosen cronies. The earlier partof the evening Jose and Pearl had danced for a time together, and thenPearl had danced for a time alone and in a manner to please even herfather's critical taste. Now, in commenting on this, he remarked:

  "You see the change in my daughter. She is now cheerful, obedient andindustrious. When she came she was none of those things. She is, yousee, a good girl at heart, but her mother had almost ruined her. If menbut had the time they should always bring up the children of the family.It is only in that way that they can ever be a credit to one."

  Mrs. Thomas, who had been bending over the stove brewing a pot of coffeewhich she and Mrs. Nitschkan drank at all hours of the day and night,raised herself at the utterance of these revolutionary sentiments andlooked at Gallito in grieved and bewildered surprise; but Mrs.Nitschkan, who had been pouring cream into the cup of steaming coffeewhich Jose had just handed to her, first took a long draught and thenremarked with cool impartiality:

  "The trouble with you, Gallito, is that you can't bear for nobody, man,woman, child or devil, to get ahead of you. I guess I know somep'n'about the bringin' up of young ones myself."

  Here Mrs. Thomas sighed and shook her head with that exasperatedincomprehension which all women displayed when the subject of Mrs.Nitschkan's children came up for discussion. Educators discourse muchupon the proper environment and training of the young of the humanspecies, but theories aside, practical results seem rather in favor ofcasting the bantling on the rocks. For, in spite of Mrs. Nitschkan'sjoyous lack of responsibility, her daughters had grown up the antithesesof herself, thoroughly feminine little creatures, already famous forthose womanly accomplishments for which their mother had ever shown amarked distaste, while the sons were steady, hard-working, reputableyoung fellows, always to be depended upon by their employers.

  "It's nothing but your pizen luck, Sadie," murmured Mrs. Thomas.

  "We must allow that Providence has been kinder to you than most,"remarked Gallito sardonically.

  "It's a reward," said Mrs. Nitschkan with calm assurance, refilling herpipe with more care than she had ever bestowed upon her children. "It's'cause I ain't ever shirked an' left the Lord to do all my work for me."

  At this Mrs. Thomas, too overcome to speak, tottered feebly back fromthe stove and fell weakly into a chair.

  "No, sir," continued the gypsy with arrogant virtue, "the trouble withall the parents I know, includin' present company, is that they're tooeasy. I don't work no claim expectin' to get nothin' out of it, do I?And I don't bring a lot of kids into the world and spend years teachin''em manners--"

  She was interrupted here by a brief and scornful laugh from Mrs. Thomas,who, on observing that her friend was gazing at her earnestly andominously, hastily converted it into a fit of coughing.

  "Spend years teachin' 'em manners an' sacrifice myself to stay at homeand punish 'em when I might be jantin' 'round myself, not to have 'emturn out a credit to me."

  There was a finality about the statements which seemed to admit of nofurther discussion, but after Jose had escorted the two women to theircabin, he had returned for one of those midnight conferences withGallito over which they loved to linger, and the Spaniard had againexpressed his satisfaction in Pearl's changed demeanor.

  Jose's laughter pealed to the roof. "You have eyes but for mines andcards, Gallito. Though the world changes under your nose, you do not seeit. The moles of the earth--they are funny!"

  "Bah!" casting at him a scornful glance from under his beetling brows,"your eyes see so far, Jose, that you see all manner of things which donot exist."

  "I have far sight and near sight and the sight which comes to theseventh child," returned Jose with pride. "Therefore, seeing what I see,I say my prayers each day, now."

  A bleak smile wrinkled Gallito's parchment-like cheeks. "And to whom doyou pray, Jose, your patron saint, or rather sinner, the Devil?"

  Jose looked shocked. "You are a blasphemer, Gallito," he reproved, andthen added piously, "I say my prayers each day that I may, by example,help Saint Harry."

  "And why is Harry in need of your example?" said Gallito, holding up hisglass between himself and the fire and watching the deep reflections ofruby light in the amber liquid.

  "It goes against me to see an unequal struggle," sighed Jose. "He ishanging on desperately to his ice-peak, but the Devil has almostsucceeded in clawing him off."

  Gallito frowned. "This talk of yours is nonsense, Jose; but if there isanything in it, Harry may understand that any interest he may have in mydaughter can lead to nothing. She is a dancer before she is anythingelse, it is in her blood. Harry does not and never can understand her;only one of her own kind can do that. He is by nature a religious; hiscabin is the cell of a monk."

  Again Jose's eerie, malicious laughter echoed through the room.

  "Aye, laugh," growled Gallito; "but you see my daughter for the firsttime. You think because she smiles at Harry that she loves him; youthink because she is the only woman he talks to that he loves her; youdo not know her. She is young, she is beautiful and a dancer. She hashad many lovers ever since she put her hair up, and learned how shecould make a fool of a man with her eyes and her smile, and she has madethem pay toll. She always did that from the first." There was a note offierce pride in his harsh, brief laughter. "Yes, she would smile andpromise anything with her eyes, but she gave nothing. It isstrange"--the old Spaniard, his austere spirit mellowed by his excellentcognac, fell into a mood of confidential m
using, an indulgence which herarely permitted himself--"that Hugh, the child of a woman I never saw,reaches my heart more than my own daughter does. But Pearl is a study tome. I say to myself, 'She cares for nothing but money, applause,admiration,' and yet, even while I say it, I am not sure; I do not know,I do not know."

  Again he admired the glints of firelight reflected in his cognac glass."But this I do know, Jose, she is an actress before she is anythingelse."

  Jose leered knowingly. "You think only of your daughter," he said. "Whatabout Saint Harry? He has mad blood in him, too. It is only a few yearsthat he has been a saint; before that the Devil held full sway over him.And," he added pensively, after a moment's cogitation, "there are manylessons one learns from the Devil."

  "You should know," returned Gallito, with his twisting, sardonic smile.

  "Ah, the Devil is not all bad," said Jose defensively. "One can learnfrom him the lesson of perseverance, and perseverance is a virtue."

  Gallito waved his hand with a polite gesture. "You know more of him andhis lessons than I, Jose. I am always ready to grant that." He tookanother sip of cognac, blew a succession of smoke wreaths toward theceiling, and again resumed his midnight philosophizings. "What puzzlesme, Jose, is what is going to become of us in Heaven. We shall never becontent. Content is a lesson that no one has ever learned. Look at SaintHarry. He has Heaven right here. His time to himself, enough to live onwithout working, no women to bother him, your cooking; and it may be onthat that you will win an entrance to Heaven; it will certainly be onnothing else. But, if, as you say, he is interested in my daughter, heis throwing away all chance of keeping Paradise."

  "Do we not all do that?" said Jose dismally. "It is because a man cannotconceive of a Heaven without a woman in it. He thinks in spite of allexperience to the contrary that she is what makes it Heaven."

  "Yes, experience counts for nothing," Gallito sighed for himself and hisbrothers.

  But if Seagreave sat silent and absorbed when he came to Gallito's cabinin the evening, it did not bother Pearl. She was an expert in suchsymptoms. Sometimes he talked to her in a rather constrained fashion,but for the most part he sat on the other side of the room, listening toHugh's music.

  One evening when he sat listening he suddenly lifted his eyes and gazedat the Pearl, who sat almost the length of the room away from him. Thecabin was lighted only by the great log fire, and the leaping, ardentflames of the pine, mingled with the soft, glowing radiance of burningbirch, invested the room and its occupants with that atmosphere ofmystery and glamour, essential in flame-illumined shadow. And Hugh wasplaying the music the masters dreamed in the twilight hours when silenceand shadow permitted them, even wooed them to a more intimate revelationof the heart than the definite splendors of daylight inspired.

  Beyond the zone of the firelight, the room was all in a warm gloom, richand dim. Pearl and Hugh had gathered fir branches, even some youngtrees, and had placed them about the walls, and in the warmth theiraromatic, delicious odor permeated and pervaded the cabin, and onediscerning those half-defined branches might easily imagine that thewalls stretched away into the dim forest.

  Pearl lay back in an easy chair, her narrow, half-closed eyes on theleaping flames. The wind, low to-night, the wind of eternity which blowsever in the mountains, sang about the cabin and blended with Hugh'smusic like a faint violin obligato. But even in this soft twilight ofblending and mingling and harmonizing, with pine branches above andbeyond her and shadowed gloom about her, Pearl never for a moment seemedthe spirit of the forest.

  With its dim depths for a background, she shone on it, as brilliant anddistinct from it as a flashing jewel on the breast of a nun. Her crimsonfrock caught a deeper warmth from the firelight, her black hair shonelike a bird's wing, the jewels on her fingers sent out sparkles of lightand flame. As Saint Harry continued to gaze at her the forest with allits haunting, dreaming witchery vanished, the high invitation of themountains, "Come ye apart," ceased to echo in his ears. The worldenvironed, encompassed her; he seemed to discern the yearning of herspirit for it, the airy rush of her winged feet toward it; and yet hereyes, those eyes which sometimes held the look of having gazed for ageson time's mutations, were turned toward the desert. Then Seagreave'smoment of vision passed and he turned to Hugh with an odd sinking of theheart.

  Hugh had ceased to play and sat silent now on his piano stool with thatmotionless, concentrated air of his, as if listening to something afar.

  "Hughie," said Seagreave softly, "what _are_ you and your sister,anyway?"

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

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

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

  Again he sat immobile, listening for a while and then began to play soplaintive and wistful a melody that Harry felt the old sorrow wake andstir within his heart and demand a reckoning of the forgetful years. Notrealizing that he did so, he arose and began to pace up and down theroom, nor remembered where he was until he looked up to see Pearlwatching him, surprise and even a slight curiosity upon her face.

  "Forgive me," he said, stopping before her, "for walking up and downthat way as if I were in my own cabin, but something in Hugh's music setme 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 thesubject. "Do you know that the crust on the snow is thicker than it hasbeen yet? How would you like to go out on your snow-shoes to-morrowmorning?"

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

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

  Pearl had rapidly acquired proficiency in her new accomplishment, andshe and Seagreave had covered several miles when, on their return, theypaused to rest a bit in the little bower of stunted pines. HereSeagreave 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 anddown the room last night when Hughie was playing? What was it in hismusic that made you forget all of us and even, as you said, forget thatyou 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 forgoteverything."

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

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

  She did not speak nor move, and yet her whole being was instinct with asudden tense attention. "Yes, a girl," she said insistently. "What wasshe like?" the words leaped from her, voicing themselves almost withouther volition.

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

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

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

  He sighed again and she glanced quickly at him from the corners of hereyes with a half scornful smile upon her lips. She knew that she did notsuggest violets, shy and fragrant and hidden under their own greenleaves; neither was there anything in the mountains to suggest thegardens in which roses grew. But he had left the violets and Englishroses long ago, because of that spirit of restlessness within him, andfinally he had come to these wild, savage mountains and was contenthere, where it was difficult even to picture the calm and repose of thegardens 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 acrossthe world to him, seeking him, reaching him, drawing him to her.

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

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

  Pearl rose and shook the snow from her cloak. "Forget it," she saidscornfully. The little horse-shoe frown showed between her brows, andher eyes as she looked at him were full of a sparkling disdain. "Thatgirl wasn't worth that," she snapped her fingers. "And here you've beenloping over the globe for years, because she turned you down. I shouldthink you'd feel like a fool." She spoke quite fearlessly, althoughSeagreave had thrown up his head and stood looking at her with a whiteface and compressed lips. "But that ain't the reason," she went onshrewdly. "I know men. You like to think you quit things because of thegirl," 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 arrowshot from a bow.