"I wonder what makes Nick so late?" Carmen Gaylor thought, hovering in the
doorway between the dim, cool hall and the huge veranda that was like an
out-of-doors drawing-room.
Though she spoke English well--almost as well as if she had not been born
in Spain and made her greatest successes in the City of Mexico--Carmen
thought in Spanish, for her heart was Spanish, and her beauty too.
She was always handsome, but she was beautiful as she came out into the
sunset gold which seemed meant for her, as stage lights are turned on for
the heroine of a play; and there was something about Carmen which
suggested strong drama. Even the setting in which she framed herself was
like an ideal scene for a first act.
The house was not very old, and not really Spanish, but it had been
designed by an architect who knew Carmen, with the purpose of giving a
Spanish effect. He had known exactly the sort of background to suit her, a
background as expensive as picturesque; a millionaire husband had paid for
it. There were many verandas and pergolas, but this immense out-of-doors
room had wide archways instead of pillars, curtained with white and purple
passion flowers; and the creamy stucco of the house-wall, and the ruddy
Spanish tiles, which already looked mellow with age, were half hidden with
climbing roses and grapevines.
Three shallow steps of pansy-coloured bricks went all the length of the
gallery, descending to a terrace floored with the same brick, which held
dim tints of purple, old rose, gray and yellow, almost like a faded
Persian rug.
When Carmen had looked past the fountain across the lawn, down the path
cut between pink oleanders, where the man she expected ought to appear,
she trailed her white dress over terrace and grass to peer under the green
roof of the bamboo forest. It was like a temple with tall pillars of
priceless jade that supported a roof of the same gray-green, starred in a
vague pattern with the jewels of sunset. Carmen did not see the beauty of
the magic temple, though she was conscious of her own. She hated to think
that Nick Hilliard should keep her waiting, and there was cruelty in the
clutch she made at a cluster of orange blossoms as she passed a long row
of trees in terra-cotta pots on the terrace. Under the bamboos she
scattered a handful of creamy petals on the golden brown earth, and rubbed
them into the ground with the point of her bronze shoe. Then she held up
her hand to her face, to smell the sweetness crushed out of the blossoms.
Why didn't Nick come?
There was a short cut leading from the land which she had selected off her
own immense ranch to sell to Nick Hilliard, and this way he sometimes took
if he were in a hurry. But she knew that he loved the path between the
pink walls of oleander, and preferred to come by it, though it was
longer. He ought to have been with her at least ten minutes ago, for she
had asked him to come early. She had said in the letter which she gave old
Simeon Harp to take to Nick, "This is your last night. There are a great,
great many things I want to talk to you about." But there was only one
thing about which she wished Nick Hilliard to talk to her, and there were
two reasons why she expected him to talk of it to-night.
One reason was, because he was going East, and planned to be gone a month,
a dreadful plan which she feared and detested. The second reason concerned
the anniversary of a certain event. Some people would have called the
event a tragedy, but to Carmen it had made life worth living. Other
people's tragedies were shadowy affairs to her, if she had not to suffer
from them.
It was one of her pleasures to dress beautifully, in a style that might
have seemed exaggerated on a different type of woman, and would have been
extravagant for any except the mistress of a fortune. But never had Carmen
taken more pains than to-night, when she expected only one guest. Her
white chiffon and silver tissue might have been a wedding gown. She adored
jewellery, and had been almost a slave to her love for it, until she began
to value something else more--something which, unfortunately, her money
could not buy, though she hoped and prayed her face might win it. She had
quantities of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies--her favourite stones--but
instinct had told her that even one would spoil the effect she wished to
make to-night. She wore only a long rope of pearls, which would have
suited a bride; and as she stood in the shadow of her bamboo temple, the
pearls drank iridescent lights: green from the jade-coloured trees, pink
from roses trailing over arbours, and gold from the California poppies
thick among the grass.
Of course, any one of many reasonable things might have happened to delay
Nick. He was busy, busier even than when he had been foreman of the Gaylor
ranch a year ago, but Carmen could not bear to think that he would let
mere reasonable things keep him away from her, just this night of all
others. For exactly a year--a year to-day, a year this morning, so it was
already more than a year--she had ceased to be a slave, and she had had
everything she wanted, except one thing. Perhaps she had that too, yet she
was not sure: and she could hardly wait to be sure. Nobody but Nick could
make her so, and he ought to be in joyful haste to do it. He was not cold
blooded. One could not look at Nick and think him that, yet to her he
sometimes seemed indifferent. Carmen made herself believe that it was his
respect which held him back. How desperately she wanted to know! Yet there
was a strange pleasure in not knowing, such as she might never feel again,
when she was sure.
Suddenly, far off, there was a rustling in the bamboo forest. A figure
like a shadow, but darker than other shadows, moved in the distance.
Carmen's heart jumped. She took a step forward, then stopped. It was not
Nick Hilliard after all, but old Simeon Harp, the squirrel poisoner,
coming from the direction of Nick's ranch, bringing her a message, maybe.
She felt she could not possibly bear it if Nick were not coming, and she
hated him at the bare thought that he might send an excuse at the last
moment.
"What is it, Sim?" she called out sharply, as the queer, gnarled figure of
the old man hobbled nearer.
"Nothing, my lady," Simeon Harp answered in the husky voice of one who is
or has been a drunkard. "Nothing, only I was over at Nick's finishin' up a
bit of my work, and he said, would I tell you he was sorry to be late.
He's had somebody with him all afternoon, and no time to pack till just
now. But he'll be along presently."
Harp was an Englishman, with some fading signs about him of decent birth,
decent education and upbringing, but such signs were blurred and almost
obliterated by the habits which had degraded him. He would have been dead
or in prison or the poorhouse years ago if Carmen had not chosen to rescue
him, more through a whim than from genuine charity. Her mother's people
had been English, and somehow she had not cared to see an Englishman
thrown to the dogs in this country which was not hers nor his. In days
when her word was law for the infatuated and brutal man whose death
anniversary it now was, this bit of human driftwood--failure, drunkard,
rascal--had been found trespassing on the ranch. If Carmen had not chosen
to show her power over old "Grizzly Gaylor" by protecting the poor wretch,
Harp would have met the fate he probably deserved. But she had amused
herself, and saved him. Sick and forlorn, he had been nursed back to
something like health in the house of one among many gardeners. Since then
he had been her slave, her dog. He called her "my lady," and she rather
liked the name. She liked the worshipping admiration in the red-lidded
eyes which had once been handsome, and she believed, what he often said,
that there was nothing on earth he wouldn't do for her. Once or twice the
thought had pierced her brain like a sharp needle, that perhaps he had
already done a thing for her--a great thing. But it was better not to
know, not even to guess. Fortunately the idea had apparently never
occurred to any one else, and of course it never could now. Yet there had
been a very curious look in Simeon Harp's eyes a year ago when---- ... Not
that it proved anything. There was always a more or less curious look in
his eyes. He was altogether a curious person, perhaps a little mad, or, at
any rate, vague. Especially was he vague about his reasons for leaving his
native land to emigrate to America. He said it was so long ago, and he had
gone through so much, that he had forgotten. There are some things it is
as well to forget. Since Carmen had known him, Simeon Harp had tried his
luck as a water diviner, but failing, sometimes when he most wished to
succeed, in that profession, he had now definitely settled down as
squirrel poisoner to the neighbourhood. Those pests to farmers and
ranchmen, ground squirrels, had given the strange old man a chance to
build up a reputation of a sort. As a squirrel poisoner he was a brilliant
success.
"Who gave you permission to call Mr. Hilliard 'Nick'?" Carmen asked, not
very sternly, for she was pleased to have news from the other ranch. After
all, if Nick had had a visitor he might not be to blame.
"Why, everybody calls him 'Nick'," explained Simeon, huskily. "But I
won't, if it isn't your will, my lady."
"Oh, I don't care, if _he_ doesn't. Only----" she broke off, slightly
confused. Even to this old wretch she could not say, "It isn't suitable
that you should use my future husband's Christian name as if he were down
on the same level with a man like you." She could not be sure that Nick
would be her husband, though it seemed practically certain. Besides, if
Hilliard was "Nick" to everybody, it was a token of his popularity; and
Nick himself was the last man to forget that he had risen to his present
place by climbing up from the lowest rung of the ladder--the ladder of
poverty. She could not imagine his "putting on airs," as he would call it,
though she thought it might be better if he were less of the
"hail-fellow-well-met," and more of the master in manner among his own
cattlemen, and particularly with the wild riff-raff that had rushed to his
land with the oil boom.
"Who was with him--some man, I suppose?" she asked of the squirrel
poisoner, who stood quietly adoring her with eyes dimmed by drink and
years. He had so settled down on his rheumatic old joints that he had
become dwarfish in stature as well as gnarled in shape, and looked a
gnomelike thing, gazing up at the tall young woman.
"Oh, yes, it was a man, of course," Simeon assured her. "There couldn't be
any women for him who knows you, it seems to me, my lady. And you were
never as handsome as you are this night. It warms the heart to set eyes on
you, like the wine you give me on your birthdays, to drink your health."
Carmen was pleased with praise, even a squirrel poisoner's praise. She
could never have too much.
"You needn't wait for my birthday," she laughed. "I don't mean to have
another for a good long time, Sim! You can have some of that wine
to-night."
"Thank you, my lady. It's an anniversary, too," he mumbled, lowering his
husky voice for the last words. But Carmen heard them. "You remember
that!" she exclaimed, without stopping to think, or perhaps she would not
have spoken.
"Oh, yes, my lady, I remember," he said. "There's reasons--several good
reasons--why I shan't forget that as long as I live. You see, things was
gettin' pretty bad for you, and so----"
"Don't let's talk of it, Sim!" she broke in sharply.
"No, my lady, we won't," he agreed. "I was only goin' to say, things bein'
so bad made what happened a matter for rejoicin' and not sorrow, to those
who wish you well. That's all--that's all, my lady."
"Thank you, Sim. I know you're fond of me--and grateful," Carmen said.
"Things _were_ bad. I don't pretend to grieve. I shouldn't even have worn
mourning, if Madame Vestris, the great palmist in San Francisco, hadn't
told me it would bring me ill luck not to. I'm glad the year's up. I hate
black! This is a better anniversary than a silly old birthday, Sim!"
"Yes, and that reminds me, my lady," said Simeon, "that I've put together
enough perfect skins of the squirrels I've killed without the dope to make
the grand automobile coat I've been promisin' you so long. Got the last
skin cured to-day, as it happened. Maybe, that'll bring you _good_ luck!"
"Oh, I hope so!" she cried.
"Here's Nick--Mr. Hilliard," Harp announced, nodding his gray head in the
direction of the oleander path, to which Carmen's back was turned as she
stood.
She wheeled quickly, and saw a tall young man coming toward her, with long
strides. Instantly, she forgot Simeon Harp, and did not even see him as he
hobbled away, pulling on to his head the moth-eaten cap of squirrel fur
which he always wore, summer and winter, as if for a sign of his trade.