"Come," said Gallito harshly, pushing back his chair, "it is time you went home. The ladies," indicating Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas, who had been getting on their capes and hoods, "are waiting for you to escort them."

CHAPTER X

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 Jose, 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 Jose, he had announced his intention of a.s.sisting 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 Jose 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 Jose 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 Jose. 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 crepe 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 a.s.sessment 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 whipst.i.tch. How can folks doubt!"

But the cards of evil omen lying there on the board before had roused all of Pearl's inherent superst.i.tion 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 sa.s.s 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 superst.i.tious fear and respect which chilled the hot blood of her pa.s.sion, 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.sionately 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, pa.s.sionately 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 const.i.tution 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 d.a.m.ned, 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."