As the day drew near upon which Pearl expected to meet Hanson again all
things seemed, as if by some special arrangement with the Fates, to
accommodate themselves to her plans. She had intended to ask Seagreave
for the use of his private parlor among the pines, intimating that she
desired to retire thither to practice some new steps, and, lo! the night
before, after discussing weather probabilities with her father and José,
he had decided to spend the greater part of the day in the village
laying in a full stock of winter provisions.
Hughie also would be in the village, making arrangements for the event
of the evening and seeing that the piano was properly installed and
tuned. Gallito would of course be at the Mont d'Or, and as for José, he
had announced his intention of assisting Mrs. Thomas in the making of
some delicate and elaborate cakes, difficult of composition and of which
Pearl was especially fond, and also of constructing certain delicious
pastries. No one could think of José as merely cooking; the results of
his genius justified the use of such high-sounding words as "composing"
or "constructing." Thus, his morning would be fully occupied.
Propitious Fates! Her pathway was smoothed before her; yet, alas! such
is the perversity of the human mind, that as the morning dawned, as the
minutes ticked themselves away on the clock, as the hour drew near when
she should again meet Hanson, after all these months of separation, her
spirit grew heavier instead of lighter. There was a return of
listlessness and an indifference to his coming which constantly
increased. She even felt indifferent to her own appearance.
At last, reluctantly, she threw a lace scarf about her head and,
wrapping a long, crimson cloak about her, she left the cottage and took
her way slowly up the hill.
As it was yet far too early for her rendezvous she turned aside from the
main road and followed the narrow mountain trail which led to the cabin
occupied by Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas. The gypsy, in her usual
careless, almost masculine attire, stood in the door of her cabin gazing
out at the mountains in all their mellow and triumphant glory, the
evanescent glory of late autumn. A pick and fishing rod lay across the
door sill and a lean, flea-bitten dog dozed at her feet. Her arms were
akimbo and a pipe was thrust between her teeth.
Her quick ear caught the sound of Pearl's approach and suddenly her
blue, twinkling gaze dropped from the hills to the trail which led to
her door. Seeing who her visitor was, a smile of blended curiosity and
welcome crossed her face. "Howdy, Pearl," she called jovially, "come and
set a spell." She removed the pick and fishing rod and dragged the dog
out of the way. Through the open doorway Mrs. Thomas and José might be
seen in the room beyond, bending over a table, evidently deeply
engrossed in the composition of some cakes.
"I can only stay a minute; I got a notion to walk this morning." There
was a cool deviltry in the slanting gaze with which she surveyed the
other woman.
"Seagreave, I'll bet," returned Mrs. Nitschkan frankly. "It ain't in
either you or Marthy Thomas to let a man alone. What possesses you,
anyway?"
Pearl continued to regard her with that subtle, burning, mocking look.
"Your kind can never know," she taunted.
"Mebbe," said Mrs. Nitschkan laconically, "but you're different from
Marthy. She's just mush. She'll be thinkin' now that she's cracked about
José. If it wasn't him it would be your father, and if there wasn't no
man up here at all, she'd hoist that crêpe veil on her head, stick a red
or blue bow at her neck and go swingin' down to camp, tryin' to persuade
herself an' me that all she went for was a package of tea or some bacon.
But you're different, always a yellin' about bein' free and yet always a
tryin' to get tangled up."
Again Pearl laughed wickedly. "You tramp woman! Why would you rather
hunt bear or mountain lions than shoot squirrels? Because there's danger
in it." She laughed mirthlessly. "I guess it's for the same reason that
I got to hunt the biggest game there is--man, and he hunts me."
Mrs. Nitschkan relighted her pipe. "Bob Flick's your best bet," she
remarked impersonally.
"Talk about guns and fishing rods and dogs, something you know about,"
said Pearl scornfully, touching the dozing dog lightly with her foot. He
growled angrily, resenting the liberty.
"You better leave Flip alone," cautioned Mrs. Nitschkan; "he's liable to
bite anybody but me. Always be kind to dumb animals, 'specially cross
dogs. And, say, Pearl, I been running the cards this morning. It was
such a dandy day that I didn't know whether I'd do some assessment work
or spend the day fishin'; the cards decided in favor of fishin'. I had
to get some light so's I could tell how to go ahead. How any one can get
along without a pack of cards! It's sure a lamp to the feet. If you wait
a minute I'll run 'em for you."
She vanished inside and returned immediately with a board and a
well-worn pack of cards. These she shuffled and, after Pearl had cut
them several times, she began to lay them out in neat rows on the board
on her knee, uttering a strange, crooning sound the while and studying
each card as it fell with the most absorbed interest.
"Um-mmm!" with a heavy sigh and shaking her head forebodingly. "You
better go home, girl, as fast as you can and shut yourself up in the
cabin all day. Did you ever see anything like that?" pointing to the
cards. "Trouble, trouble, nothin' but trouble. If it ain't actual murder
an' death, it's too near it to be any joke. Look how them spades turns
up every whipstitch. How can folks doubt!"
But the cards of evil omen lying there on the board before had roused
all of Pearl's inherent superstition and stirred her swift anger against
Mrs. Nitschkan. "Parrot-croaker!" she exclaimed angrily, and followed
this with a string of Spanish oaths and expletives. "Trouble is over for
me."
Mrs. Nitschkan was on her feet in a minute. The board and the cards fell
unheeded to the ground. Her small, quick eyes began to roll ominously
and show red, and her relaxed figure became immediately tense and alert
as that of a panther on guard.
"Trouble's just beginnin' for you," her voice was a mere guttural growl.
"A little more sass from you, you double-j'inted jumpin'-jack dancer,
and I'll jerk you to the edge of that cliff yonder and throw you down.
I'm feelin' particularly good right now," rolling up her sleeves and
showing the great knots of swelling muscles on her arms. "Get out of my
way."
With one big sweep of her arm she brushed her companion aside as if she
had been a fly; but with incredible rapidity Pearl recovered herself and
sprang directly before her.
"Then get me out," she taunted, "try it, try it. I'd slip through your
fingers like oil. It's no good to flash your over-sized man-muscles on
me; I'm made of whip-cord and whalebone. Do you get that?"
Mrs. Nitschkan's courage sprang from a sense of trained and responsive
muscles and of tremendous physical strength, but at the sound of that
cool voice, those mocking, unwavering eyes, there swept over her an awe
of the slighter woman's far higher courage. It was an almost
superstitious fear and respect which chilled the hot blood of her
passion, the instinctive obedience of the flesh to the indomitable
spirit. Reluctantly, against her will and in spite of her anger, the
fighting gipsy paid deference to the steel-like, unflinching quality of
the Pearl, when, rising above her slender physique, she faced unafraid
the brute strength which threatened her, and dominated the situation by
sheer consciousness of power.
The gypsy, chilled and subdued, confused by forces she could not
understand, fell back a step or two and Pearl seized this opportunity to
slip away, calling a careless good-by over her shoulder.
But the depression which had touched her from the time she wakened now
lay heavier on her spirit. Her mind reverted to the cards of ill omen
and she shivered with a faint chill of apprehension. And as she walked
on it seemed to her that the atmosphere was in tune with her mood.
The air was soft, and yet sharp enough to quicken the color in her
cheeks, but still indefinably wistful. The song of the wind among the
pines, that mountain wind which never ceases to blow, had a sort of
sighing pensiveness in its falling cadences. The deep, blue sky dreamed
over the russet tree tops and the yellow leaves filled the forest with
their flying gold.
And the spirit of the year seemed to have entered into Pearl. She was as
wistful as the day, as pensive as the sighing wind. She arrived early at
her destination. The sun lay warm in her little bower of encircling
pines and she sat down on a fallen log to await Hanson's coming. He
could not take her by surprise for, through a little opening in the
trees, she could see the trail, it was in plain view.
Sitting down then to wait, she rested her elbow on her knee and her chin
in the palm of her hand. It seemed as if the power of anticipation were
gone from her. She wondered dully at her own languor, not only of body,
but of mind. In a few moments she would see again the man whom she had
passionately loved, and in parting from whom she had not dreamed it to
be within human possibility so to suffer, and yet, at the prospect of
meeting him again, her heart throbbed not one beat faster. She could not
even look forward to dancing that night with any excitement or pleasure.
She wondered what Seagreave would think of her when he saw her; she
would be a vision far more brilliant than any spirit of the autumn
woods, and she would wear her emeralds again, the emeralds for which Bob
Flick had squandered a fortune. She put up her hand and touched them
where they hung about her neck, concealed under her gown, for she wore
them night and day, never allowing them to leave her person. Good old
Bob! Seagreave had said there were only a few great dancers. Well, she
would show him. She could dance; no matter how critical he was, he would
have to admit that. And then her heart seemed suddenly to run down with
a queer, cold little thrill.
There was Hanson ascending the trail. He was only a few feet away, and
even as she jumped to her feet he saw her and waved his hand. He paused
a moment for breath and then hurried on.
"Pearl!" he cried, and caught her in his arms, covering her face with
kisses and crushing her against his heart. It seemed hours to her, but
it was really only a moment before she pushed him from her, slipped from
his arms, and stood panting and flushed before him.
"Pearl, O Pearl!" he cried again, and would once more have caught her
deftly to him, but again she slipped from him. "Sit down," she cried
petulantly, motioning to the fallen log. "You're out of breath, you've
had a long climb." She herself sat down and he followed her example,
encircling her with his arms; a tiny frown showed itself in her forehead
and she bent slightly forward as if to evade his clasp, folding her arms
about her knees.
"Gee! You bet it was a climb," he said, wiping his brow and still
breathing a little hard. "But I'd have climbed right on up to heaven if
you'd been there waiting for me. Lord, Pearl! if I'd had to wait much
longer to see you it would have finished me, I do believe. Oh,
sweetheart, you're lovelier than ever, and you're not going to punish
either of us any more, I can tell you that. You're coming down with me
and we're going to live, Pearl, live, just as I told you we would, down
there in the palms in the desert. Now I'm telling you again among the
pines, and this time you're going to listen and come. I guess we've both
of us pretty well found out that it's no use our trying to live apart
any longer."
Her crimson cloak had fallen from her shoulders, and Hanson, holding her
hand in his, had pushed up her sleeve and was kissing her arm, as he
talked, up as far as her elbow and down again to the tips of her
fingers. She did not even attempt to draw her hand away, she was still
in that state of apathy, where all her senses seemed dulled; and so she
let him babble on, murmuring his adoration and his rose-colored dreams
of the future.
"By George!" he exclaimed, in sheer, sincere amazement. "To think of
you, the Black Pearl, spending all these months up here in these dead
old mountains without even a moving-picture show to look at. You got an
awful will, girl."
She gazed with somber eyes beyond him. Life, did he say "life"? That was
what she asked, what she demanded, life as glorious and as rich in color
as a full-blown rose. And only a little while ago she had dreamed that
she could find it with him, that _that_ was what he offered to her. She
remembered the question that Harry Seagreave had asked her. "What does
life mean to you?" Ah, since that first night in the mountains life
seemed to have expanded into infinite horizons before her widening
vision. She dreamed over them, forgetful for the moment of the man
beside her, until he, turning in the full tide of his talk, pressed his
lips ardently, passionately to hers.
Taken by surprise, she uttered one of her fluent Spanish oaths and,
springing to her feet, stood with her body slightly bent forward, her
hands on her hips, gazing at him with her narrow, gleaming eyes. Her
apathy was gone, she was alive now to her finger tips.
He rose, too. "Honey, what is it?" he questioned dazedly. "What's got
you now?"
"Don't touch me," she said tensely. "Don't dare to touch me."
He looked at her unbelievingly and then fell back a pace or two. "My
Lord! What's the matter with you?" he cried.
"I don't know," she muttered wildly. Her eyes still measured him, his
bold, obvious good looks, his ruddy self-complacency, his habitual and
shallow geniality, the satisfied vanity of a mouth steadily becoming
looser; the depiction of years of self-indulgence in the little veins on
his highly colored cheeks; the sagging lines of his well-set-up figure,
ever taking on more flesh.
So she saw him, not perhaps as he was, but in the light of her own harsh
and unmodified criticism, and mercilessly she reflected upon him all the
scorn she felt for herself. She did not consider or even remember that
with what strength of affection he possessed he had loved her; that,
after his constitution he had given her of his best, all he had to give,
in fact; that for her he had more than once faced danger, and just to
see her again was even now facing it, fearlessly.
He had grown to expect from her an infinite variety of moods, but
something in her pose, her expression, frightened him now. "Honey, what
are you driving at?" he asked, a little tremulously, and stretched out
his hand to lay it on her shoulder.
But again an oath whipped from her lips, her glance darkened. She drew
back from him with the horse-shoe frown showing plainly on her forehead.
He looked at her, his whole face broken up, his mouth trembling,
something like tears in his eyes. "Why, Pearl," he faltered, "ain't you
glad to see me? Why, here I been waiting all these damned, dreary
months, never thinking of any one but you, never even looking at another
woman, just dreaming of the moment when I could put my arms around you
again and know that you loved me and were mine."
A hard and bitter smile showed on her mouth. "Yours! Loved you!" she
cried. "My God! You!"
Her unmistakable, unconcealed scorn was like a dagger thrust in the
heart, and that stab of pain stirred his anger and restored him to
himself. His face went almost purple, his cold eyes blazed. "Say," he
cried roughly, "what are you driving at, anyway? Come down to cases
now." He caught her by the wrist. "What did you let me come up here for?
Just to make a monkey of me? Have you been treasuring spite against me
all these months, and is this your way of getting even?"
She dragged her hand away from him and stepped back. "I let you come, if
you want to know it, because I thought I was in love with you. Lord,
think of it!" she laughed drearily. "I haven't fooled you any worse than
I have myself."
He rubbed his hand across his eyes. "It ain't true," he said loudly,
positively, defiantly.
"Hush," she exclaimed, darting forward. "What was that?" There was a
sound as if some one had trod the underbrush not many feet away. She
listened intently a moment, a wild fear at her heart that Seagreave
might have returned unexpectedly. It was probably some animal, for there
was no further sound. "Oh," she cried, in involuntary relief, "it must
have been José!"
A gleam came into his eyes, a light of triumph as at the remembrance of
some potent weapon of which he had been carelessly forgetful. "And who
is José?" he asked.
She lifted her startled gaze to his, the question recalled to her her
own unthinking speech. "Oh, one of the miners," she said indifferently.
He knew her too well to fancy that he could trap her into any new
admissions, and he had no wish to arouse her suspicions. Therefore he
dropped the subject, especially as he felt fully answered.
He leaned against a tree and, drawing a cigar from his pocket, lighted
it, although the hand with which he did so trembled. "I guess some
explanations are in order between you and me," he said. "I guess it's
about time that you began to get it into your head that you can't make a
fool of me all the time. I'm ready and willing to admit that there was
some excuse for you down in the desert. I made a bad break there, which
I'm freely conceding was no way to treat a lady. But that don't explain
or excuse the way you've treated me this morning," he laughed bitterly.
"There's no way to explain it unless living here in the mountains has
gone to your head or unless there's another man. Is there?" his eyes
pierced her. "Is there?"
She looked back at him with a hard, inscrutable smile, but she did not
answer.
Another man! He couldn't, wouldn't believe it. Why, it was only
yesterday that they two had met and loved in the desert. Again he fell
to pleading. "Oh, Pearl, be like what you were again. Don't stand off
from me that way, honey. It ain't in you to be so cruel and hard. Come
back to me, here in my arms. Have your spells; treat me like you please;
but come back to me. Oh, honey, come."
She looked beyond him, not at him, and then ground a little heap of
freshly fallen pine needles beneath her heel.
"What's the use?" she said curtly. "It's over. We can quit right here,
Rudolf. I'm done with you, for good."
His outstretched arms fell by his side, his jaw set. "I guess that's
right," he said viciously. "Any bigger fool than me could see that; and
I'm not going to waste any more time crawling around on my hands and
knees after you; I can tell you that. But you can't fool me on the other
man proposition."
"I'm not trying to," she interjected cruelly.
"Who is he?" his voice was ragged and uneven. "Not Flick, I'll bet my
hat. He's been your dog too long for you to fling him anything but a
bone. You'll never tell me, though."
"Not I," she answered indifferently.
"Then I'll just satisfy myself--to-night."
She started and frowned. "You're not staying for that," harshly. "It's
not safe."
"Oh, yes, I am staying for that, just to satisfy a little curiosity I've
got, and I guess I'll find it safe enough. I guess you've been playing
with kids so far in your career, Miss Pearl Gallito; but you'll find
that the old man's not quite so easy disposed of as you think. I've got
an idea that you'll be down on your knees trying to make terms with him
before we're precisely 'quit' as you've just said."
"Bah!" she said. "Wind, wind. You can't frighten me with threats. Stay
and watch me dance all you please. That's the only way you'll ever see
me again--from the audience." Without any appearance of haste, she
lifted her scarf from the pine branch on which she had thrown it and
twisted it slowly about her head, then picking up her crimson cape from
the ground, she shook the pine needles from it, wrapped it about her,
and without another word to him, without even a look, took her way down
the trail.
She did not believe that he meant what he said, she did not believe that
he meant to stay and see her dance that evening. The thought that he
would do so had annoyed her at first, but as she walked downward through
the wine-like amber air, she realized that she did not particularly
care. Her whole being seemed absorbed in the revelation which had come
to her in the first moment of her meeting with Hanson--her love for
Seagreave. In this new, exclusive emotion, the recent interview and all
that had led up to it became to her a mere unpleasant episode, upon
which her indifferent imagination refused to dwell. She wanted to be
alone, that she might fully realize this stupendous change in her
feelings and in her entire outlook upon life. As she thought upon it she
saw that it was no sudden miracle, wrought in the twinkling of an eye,
but an alteration of standards and emotion so gradual that she had not
been aware of it.
Back in the cabin she luxuriated, exulted in the fact that she would be
alone all day. She piled high the fire with logs, and threw herself in
an easy chair. Thus she could dream undisturbed, could lie watching the
leaping flames and vision for herself again that fair, regular, serene
face, that tall, strong, slender figure. She counted the hours until she
should see him again, until she should dance for him, for it was for
him, him alone, that she would dance.
Thus she passed the greater part of the day, and even resented the
intrusion upon her thoughts when her father returned a little earlier
than usual from the mine.
"I got a telegram from Bob to-day," he said. "All that was in it was,
'Coming up to see Pearl dance to-night.'"
"What!" she cried, showing her dismay. "What is he doing that for?"
"What he says, I suppose," returned Gallito, "to see you dance."
She frowned vexedly, but said nothing.
Her father spoke again. "How are you going down? You will not walk with
Bob and Hugh, Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas?"
"No," she answered carelessly, although a deeper crimson showed in her
cheek. "Mr. Seagreave said last night that he would take me down in his
cart."
Gallito nodded, apparently satisfied, and as José came in then to
prepare supper, the matter was dropped.
As for Pearl, her vexation of the moment was gone; it could have no
place in her mood of exaltation, and when, a few minutes later, she
greeted Bob Flick, he thought that he had never seen her more gay. All
through supper, too, her mood of gayety continued, but immediately after
that meal she drew Flick aside.
"Bob, I want to tell you something," she said. "No use Hughie, nor Pop,
nor any of the rest of them knowing anything about it," she hesitated a
moment, "but Hanson came up to-day."
There was no change in his impassive face, only a leap of hard light in
his eyes, and yet she knew that he was on guard in a moment. "Hanson?"
"Yes, and I saw him for a few moments," she lifted candid eyes to his,
"and, honest, Bob, it's all over. I never expect to see him again, and I
never want to."
He looked at her, as if trying to read her soul. "Say, Pearl, what is
this," he asked, "straight?"
"It's what I'm telling you," she looked back at him, nodding
emphatically, and then her face broke into a smile, her sweetest, her
most alluring smile. "Say, Bob, I got to thank you for a good many
things, not to speak of these," she touched the emeralds under her gown;
"but the biggest thing you've ever done for me yet was to keep me from
running away with Hanson."
Her sincerity was undoubted, and a flush of pleasure rose on his cheek,
and a light came into his eyes which only she could bring there. He
pressed her hands warmly, looking embarrassed and yet delighted. "You
never said anything in all your life, Pearl, that ever pleased me like
that."
She patted his arm lightly and caressingly, and smiled at him again,
under her lashes. She couldn't help that with any man. "You're awful
good to me, Bob; I guess you're the best and onliest friend I've got."
"I'm what you want me to be," he spoke a little sadly but very tenderly.
"It'll never make any difference to me what you do or what you don't do;
there'll never be any change in me."
She let her fingers lie in his clasp, but her glance was absent now, her
thoughts had flown again to Seagreave. "Goodness!" she exclaimed,
rousing suddenly and glancing at the clock, "I've got to make a hustle
for it."
She was ready half an hour later when Seagreave stopped at the door.
Hugh and Bob Flick had already gone, her father and José had settled
themselves for the evening over the cards, and Pearl stood before the
fire, a long, dark cloak covering her from head to foot and a black
mantilla over her head. José's eyes were full of longing.
"Oh, that I might go, too," he cried. "The Black Pearl may dance, dance,
after the spirit that is in her; may express her art, but I, although I
grow mad to express mine, must stay mewed up in these mountains with
nothing to do but cook and play cards and talk to a half saint and a
stale, old sinner. If Nitschkan and the petite Thomas had not come, I
should have died. Look at those!" he twinkled his long, delicate fingers
in the air, "there is not such another pair of hands on a combination
lock in all this world."
Seagreave and Gallito laughed, but paid no further heed to him, and
Harry turned to Pearl with a pretense of disappointment.
"I thought I should see a butterfly," he said, "a butterfly that had
flown up from the land of eternal summer, and you're only a chrysalis."
"It's too cold for butterflies up here," she laughed. "Wait until I get
down to the warm hall." But although she returned his banter, she did
not look at him, her eyes were downcast, and on the drive down the hill
she scarcely spoke. Seagreave was one of those rare persons who respect
another's mood of silence, and consequently he did not notice this new
constraint which had overfallen her.
The hall, lighted with bull's-eye lanterns, was crowded with people,
every one of the chairs taken and every inch of standing room occupied.
There was no platform, but the space upon which Pearl was to dance was
screened off by red curtains.
But even before she entered the little dressing booth prepared for her,
she hastened to peep through the curtains, scanning the audience with an
eager eye. Her face fell as she saw that Hanson, true to his promise,
was there, and on one of the front seats, not far from Seagreave and Bob
Flick, who were sitting together. His eyes were dull, his face flushed,
and he lurched flaccidly in his chair; he had been drinking heavily all
day.
He was wondering dully as he sat there if she would enter in the same
indifferent manner that she had adopted the first night he had seen her
down in the desert. Probably she would; it had been very effective.
But the time for conjecture was over. The curtains were drawn aside, and
Hugh sat down at the piano and began to play a seductive, sensuous
accompaniment. Then through a crimson curtain at the rear Pearl flashed
in as if blown by the mountain wind. The chrysalis had cast aside its
shell and this tropical butterfly had emerged. Her skirts were of yellow
satin, and from a black bodice her beautiful bare shoulders rose half
revealed and half concealed by her rose-wreathed, white _manton de
Manila_. In her black, shining hair, just over one ear, was a bunch of
scarlet, artificial blossoms.
She floated about the floor for a moment or two like a thistle-down
blown hither and thither by the caprice of the wind, scarcely seeming to
touch the ground, upborne by the music-tide. Throughout her career she
was always at her best when she took those first few moments about the
stage and waited for her inspiration.
Then she drifted nearer to Hughie and murmured, "The Tango." He changed
his tempo immediately, and almost without a pause of transition she
began that provocative measure--the dance of desire. Thrilling with the
joy of expressing her love, her beautiful new love for Seagreave,
through her art, she danced with a verve, an abandon, a more spontaneous
impulse than she had ever shown before. The Tango! She made it a thing
of alluring advances, of stinging repulses, of sudden, fascinating
withdrawals and exquisite ardors.
When the applause had finally died down, the hall was still noisy with a
babel of voices; those who could, moved about in the crowded space, and
little groups formed and broke up. Bob Flick, speaking to this or that
acquaintance, felt some one touch him lightly on the arm, and turned
suddenly to see Hanson standing beside him.
"Hello, Flick," with a sort of swaggering bravado, "our old friend, the
Black Pearl, is going some to-night, ain't she?"
"I don't know you," drawled Flick, the liquid Southern intonations of
his voice softened until they were almost silky, "and," his hand shot
back to his hip with an almost unbelievable rapidity, "I'll give you
just three minutes to apologize for mentioning Miss Gallito's name, for
speaking to me, and for being here at all."
Hanson's face had turned a sickly white, more with anger than fear.
"Considering the argument you stand ready to offer," he said, "there's
nothing to do but to apologize my humblest on all three counts. I had
hoped that you'd remember me and be willing to introduce me to your
friend." He turned a cynical and evil glance upon Seagreave, who was
talking to some one a few feet away. "But since you won't, I'll go, just
adding that you and your friend, there, are likely to meet me soon
again."
There was a touch of scorn in Flick's faint smile. "The three minutes
are up," he said, and without a word Hanson turned and sought his seat.
The curtains parted now and Hugh again sat down to the piano, but his
music had changed; it was no longer sensuous and provocative, but
strange, and curiously disturbing, with a peculiar, recurring,
monotonous beat.
It was the voice of the desert full of a savage exultation in its own
loneliness and forsaken isolation, and through it rang a cry of deep,
disdainful triumph, as if it said: "All puny races of men, come to me;
embroider my vast surfaces with the green of your fields and gardens,
build your houses upon my quiescent sand and dream that you have
conquered and tamed me. And I abide, I abide. Silent, brooding,
unwitting of your noisy incursions, I lie absorbed in my dream under my
own illimitable skies. But soon or late, when the moment comes, I wake,
I rouse, I see my inviolate desolations invaded. Then I gather my
strength, I drown you with my torrential rivers, I torture you with my
burning sun, I obliterate you with my flying sand. So shall my cactus
bloom once more, my jeweled lizards crawl unmolested and the cry of the
coyote echo again through the vast, soundless spaces of my desolation.
Then to my looms, to my looms and out of emptiness and silence and
space and light to weave all mysteries of color and all illusions of
beauty."
"Lord!" cried Bob Flick to Seagreave, "he's playing the desert. I've
seen her look just like the music sounds. That's a sand storm; there's
no other sound in the world like it." He turned his eyes full of a
puzzled wonder on Seagreave. "How can he play all that so that you and I
can see it, when he can't see it himself?"
"But he does see it," insisted Seagreave; "never think that he doesn't,
and sees it through finer avenues of sight than mere material organs of
vision. He sees the mountains, too. Why, he can play the very shadows on
the snow for me."
During the Spanish dances Seagreave had not shared the excitement of the
audience, and thus had maintained his usual serenity. He had been
intensely interested and appreciative and admiring; but emotionally
unmoved; but now, as this troubling music of Hughie's seemed to express
the dominion of unsuspected but potent earth-forces, primitive, savage
and forever irreclaimable, his calm became strangely disturbed. Dimly he
realized that should every desert on the globe finally be subdued by the
plow, the irrigating ditches and the pruning hook, they would still
remain as realities in the mind of man, forever clouding his aspirations
toward the mountain peaks and the stars. For the desert must ever remain
an unsolved enigma, never to be reduced to a formula, never to be
explained by any human standards; now whispering to man of the
mysteries of the soul and revealing to him more of the infinite than his
finite senses may grasp; and now mocking him with illusions, her
beautiful mirages wrought of airbeams and sunlight, and transforming him
into a beast of greed with her haunting intimations of hidden and
inexhaustible treasure.
Thus Hughie's music; and presently Pearl floated out. She had changed
her Spanish costume for the one of scarlet crêpe in which Hanson had
first seen her, a crown of scarlet flowers on her dark hair. Her very
expression, too, had changed, her eyes were elongated, her features
seemed delicately Egyptian; the brooding sphynx look was on her face.
"She's great, ain't she?" asked Bob Flick.
Seagreave nodded. He had never seen her superior in technique. It took
character, he appreciated that, to have endured the years of tiresome,
mechanical practice, and to have undertaken it so intelligently that she
had achieved her marvelous results; and she had, beside, youth and
beauty and magnetism. All this alone would have made her a great dancer,
but as he recognized, she had more, much more to bring to her art; a
complex nature which, in its unsounded depths ever held a vision of
beauty, and a sense of this vision which amounted to unity with it, and
therefore gave her the power of expressing it. Her mind, too, was
plastic to all primitive impulses and to Nature; she blended with it.
She was but little influenced by persons, her will was too dominating,
her intelligence too quick, and--but here his analysis ceased.
The Pearl was dancing to Hugh's strange music, she was dancing the
desert for him--Seagreave. He knew it was for him, although she never
glanced in his direction. And as she danced, he grew to realize that
this feat was not an intellectual one. She was not portraying the spirit
of the desert as gleaned from study and observation and melted in the
crucible of her poetic imagination and molded by her fancy until it was
a thing of form in her thought. The Black Pearl danced the desert
because in her was the power to be one with it and live in its life
through every cell of her being. It was a matter of feeling with her,
one phase of her affinity with the forces of earth; but because she had
the artist's constructive imagination, she could put it into form and
dance it, and by projecting her own feeling into it, convey it to
others.
The world with its round of outworn, hackneyed appeals, its wearisome
repetitions of crude and commonplace joys, its tawdry and limited
temptations, had long ago fallen away from Seagreave--and left him
nothing, but to-night a voice that he had long ignored, the voice of
life, commanded him.
"If the desert seems forever to claim her own, what is that to you! Your
work is to reclaim and in the face of a thousand defeats and desolations
still to reclaim, with the eternal faith that for you the wastes shall
blossom like the rose. Work, no matter how brokenly, how futilely. To
build houses of sand is better than to sit in profitless dreams and live
in an animal content."
When later he drove Pearl up the mountainside, almost in silence, as
they had come, after his few words of admiration and appreciation of her
dancing, there was a shadow for the first time in Harry's clear eyes, a
shadow which did not pass.