Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

“ José leered knowingly. "You think only of your daughter," he said. "What about Saint Harry? He has mad blood in him, too. It is only a few years that 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 many lessons one learns from the Devil."
"You should know," returned Gallito, with his twisting, sardonic smile.
"Ah, the Devil is not all bad," said José defensively. "One can learn from him the lesson of perseverance, and perseverance is a virtue." ”

“ It is strange"—the old Spaniard, his austere spirit mellowed by his excellent cognac, fell into a mood of confidential musing, an indulgence which he rarely 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 to me. 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, José, she is an actress before she is anything else." ”

“ But this was not unusual; when matters of importance were transacted in the Gallito household Mrs. Gallito did not count.
But these disturbing conditions could not daunt Pearl's high spirits; she was like flame, and the light of her eye, the glow on her cheek, the buoyancy of her step were not all due to the ardor of her loving and the joy of being ardently loved. There was also the zest of intrigue.
And, oh! what a mad and splendid game she and Hanson played together! He rose to her every soaring audacity; they took almost impossible chances as lightly as a hunter takes a hurdle. ”

“ The studious abstraction, the ordered calm which characterized Seagreave's cabin, made fragrant by burning pine logs and fresh with the cold winds from the mountain tops, had altered by imperceptible and subtle gradations until the atmosphere was now strangely electrical, throbbing with vital life, glowing with warmth and color. In outer semblance nothing was changed, no more than was the appearance of the world outside, and yet beneath the surface of the lives in the cabin, as beneath the surface of the earth without, all the mighty forces of Nature were bent to one end. ”

“ The forces of life ready to burst through the harsh crust of the earth without and express themselves in the innocent glory of flower and grass and tender, green leaves, and the sound of birds, were now seeking expression through denser and more complex human avenues. All the love, all the longing which Seagreave had so sternly suppressed during these days he and Pearl had spent together, rose in his heart and threatened to sweep away in a mighty tide of elemental impulses all of those resolutions of restraint to which he had clung so hardly. ”

“ As for her, she was unfeignedly glad to see him.
"I sure have worried a lot about you this winter, Pearl," he said to her that evening as they two sat a little apart from the rest, Gallito, José, Hugh and Seagreave, who all clustered about the fire, while Pearl, as usual, had drawn her chair within the warm gloom of the pine-scented shadow.
"Ain't you silly!" She looked up at him with her heart-shattering, adorable smile.
"I am always about you," he said. "You're all I think of, Pearl, night and day." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brook trout, freshly caught that afternoon from the rushing mountain stream not far away from the cabin, and smoking hot from the frying pan; an omelette, golden brown and buttercup yellow, of a fluff, a fragrance, with savories hidden beneath its surface, a conserve of fruits, luscious, amber and subtly biting, the coffee of dreams and a bottle of red wine, smooth as honey.
"I hope you don't think that we're the kind of wolves that's always gatherin' round wherever there's a snack of food," murmured Mrs. Thomas softly as she took a seat beside Pearl. ”

“ The human desire for change is rooted in the conviction, a vain and deceptive one, that an entirely different environment must include or create a new world of thought and emotion. So for once the Pearl's desire was for the hills. She who had ever exulted in the wide, free spaces of the desert, who had found the echo of her own heart in its eternal mutation, its luring illusions, its mystery and its beauty, now turned to the austere, shadowed, silent mountains as if begging them to enfold her and hold her and hide her. ”

“ There was a touch of anxiety in his glance as he asked this question. The jealousy which he could never succeed in overcoming, and yet of which he was continually ashamed, bit like acid into his heart as he thought of Seagreave's fair youthfulness; the charm of his long, clear, blue eyes; the winning sweetness of his nature.
Pearl drew her brows together a little, her eyes gloomed through her long, silky, black lashes. "I don't like queer people," she said petulantly. "He always seems to be mooning about something, and most of the time he acts like you weren't on the earth." ”

“ He thought of Pearl's jewels. More than once he had seen her lift her fingers and caress the gems on her hand, just as the Spaniard sat and shook his buttons and nuggets of gold together, pouring them from one palm to another, his frowning gaze fixed on the ground before him.
"Yes, I'll write to Sweeney," continued Gallito. "It'll take a few days, though, before I can get his answer." He looked at the other man questioningly. "It might be a week in all. I don't want to keep you here that time. I could write you."
"Nothing to do just now," said Rudolf easily. ”

“ If she should guess, the world would know it."
"Lord, yes!" agreed Pearl uninterestedly. "You needn't be afraid of me," to José, "I don't tell what I know."
"That is true," commended Gallito, motioning her at the same time to the table.
It seems a pity to record that such a supper was set before a woman suffering from a wound of the heart. Women at all times are held to be lacking in that epicurean appreciation of good food which man justly extols; but when a woman's whole being is absorbed in a disappointment in love, nectar and ambrosia are as sawdust to her. ”

“ She was not aware of his scrutiny, but sat in complete absorption, her dark, shining head bent over them, lifting them, turning them this way and that to catch the firelight, letting them trickle through her long, brown fingers.
There, sparkling in the fire-glow, was the desire of the world, the white, streaming flame of diamonds, the heart's blood of rubies, and sapphires—the blue of the sea and the sky—all their life and radiance imprisoned in a dew-drop.
"How beautiful they are!" he cried involuntarily, but what he really meant was, "How beautiful you are!" ”

“ But with the passage of the storm his nerves had recovered their normal tone, and with the brilliance and freshness of the morning much of his optimism had returned.
He reached the approach to the foothills where the palms lifted their stately and magnificent height, long before Pearl, and there, walking restlessly back and forth, he watched the road with straining eyes. And then he saw her, at first a mere speck in the distance; then she became more and more distinct, for she rode fast. She waved her hand to him as she came nearer and his heart rose in a great bound. ”

“ Hugh edged along the step until he could lay his head against Pearl's knee. "But we're not blood relations, if you're curious to know." The insolence of his tone was barely veiled. "My mother was a circus woman that Mrs. Gallito knew. She deserted me when I was a baby, and Mrs. Gallito has been all the mother I ever had or wanted, and Pearl the only sister. I was born blind."
"Oh, Hughie," remonstrated Pearl, "you've got no call to say that. He don't see with his eyes," she turned to Hanson, "but I never saw anybody that could see so much." ”

“ Not so Gallito; his eyes had darkened, those fierce hawk's eyes; his face was livid. "Pearl," his voice grated in his throat, "you can't make a fool of both me and yourself like this. You are a fool of a woman like all the rest, and because I have the bad luck to be your father I must save you from your own madness. You've got your big chance, the chance you've been waiting for, and you're not going to throw it away now, just because you been staying up in that cabin alone with him until you've lost your wits about him." He indicated Seagreave with a contemptuous jerk of the thumb. ”

“ But at the sound of Seagreave's voice the color had come back to Pearl's cheek, the light to her eyes. Hands on hips, she swung her skirts and surveyed Bob Flick and her father with a scornful, slanting gaze. "I didn't know that there was anybody in the world that would dare ask me such questions, even you, Pop. And making arrangements with Sweeney without waiting to consult me! And ordering me to leave Colina on two or three hours' notice! Dios!" She spread her hands out on either side of her as if pushing away an impossible thing. ”

“ You shall have all the joy of your gift—its expression. I'm not such a selfish animal as to ask you to give that up, so that I can keep you—you beautiful, tropical bird—in a cage, just to gratify my sense of possession—and watch you mope and pine, because I've kept you from your flights. No, sweetheart, you shall dance, and have your big audiences that inspire you, and the applause you love ... and then you'll come back to me, and I'll be waiting for you and working—always working. I promise you that, Pearl. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It is only in the silence and light of the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, that light is music and music is color and color is fragrance, undifferentiated in the eternal harmony of beauty.
Pearl's eyes drank the desert, unconsciously seeking there in its haunting enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self. Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from the angle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. ”

“ And he was still further goaded by the knowledge that he was, in a measure, under surveillance, which he was sure was instituted by Gallito and Flick and connived at by Hughie; a watchfulness so subtle that it convinced him even while he doubted. He felt often as if he were stalked by some stealthy and implacable animal. This situation, imaginary or real, began to affect his nerves and he would undoubtedly have left had it not been for his mounting passion for Pearl, a passion fanned always to a more ardent flame by her tantalizing coquetries. ”

“ Then, throwing a long cape about her and adjusting her mantilla, she closed the door behind her and turned into the narrow trail which led at sharp right angles to the road to Saint Harry's cabin. It was, Pearl reflected, almost like walking through the tunnel of a mine; the snow walls on either side of her were as high as her head. Occasionally the green fringes of a pine branch tapped her cheek sharply with their rusty needles. Then the tunnel widened to a little clearing where stood the cabin, picturesque with the lichened bark of the trees on the rough-hewn logs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He is by nature a religious; his cabin is the cell of a monk."
Again José's eerie, malicious laughter echoed through the room.
"Aye, laugh," growled Gallito; "but you see my daughter for the first time. You think because she smiles at Harry that she loves him; you think because she is the only woman he talks to that he loves her; you do not know her. She is young, she is beautiful and a dancer. She has had many lovers ever since she put her hair up, and learned how she could make a fool of a man with her eyes and her smile, and she has made them pay toll. ”

“ José nodded, and whispered behind his hand, so that the two mountain ladies might not overhear him. "Believe it or not, many have loved me. But women like extremes, too; if they love rascals, they also adore saints. They see the saint standing there in his niche, so calm, so peaceful and composed, entirely forgetful of them, and this they cannot endure. Their brains are on fire; they spend their time scheming and planning how they can claw him down from his pedestal. They burn candles and pray to all the saints in Paradise to help them, and they offer hostages to the Devil, too. ”

“ I guess all men are alike!"
Hanson bent forward earnestly. He had an end to gain and he meant to gain it. "Now look here, Mrs. Gallito," he said. "You don't want to condemn me unheard. You're not that kind of a lady. I knew that the first minute I set eyes on you. Now understand I'm not trying to persuade you that I'm any better than I am, but I just want you to believe that I'm not quite so black as I'm painted, not as black as your husband and Bob Flick want to paint me, anyway." ”

“ 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. ”

“ At last Seagreave roused himself from his stunned contemplation of it and bent himself to the task of coaxing Pearl to lift her head and gaze upon it, too.
At last she did so, but at the sight of that bare and unfamiliar hillside her terrors again overcame her. "Come," she cried, dragging at his arm, "we must go—go—get away from here. Dios! Are you mad? It is the end of the world. Come quickly." ”

“ Hanson was not imaginative, but as he watched her he seemed to be gazing at some gorgeous cactus blossom opening its scentless petals to the burning sun. Beneath and beyond her stretched the gray wastes of the desert turning to gold under her feet, but still untrammeled and merciless, holding strange secrets close to its savage heart; now, exerting all its magic of illusion in delicate and exquisite mirages, all of its luring fascination which has drawn men to it from the beginning of the world ”

“ For the moment Pearl forgot the inevitable game. "Frightened you!" she cried. "It is the mountains that frighten me; but the desert is always different. It—" she struggled for expression, "it is always you."
Something in this seemed to strike him. "Perhaps I have that to learn." Again he meditated a few moments, then looked up with a smile. "You must tell me all that you find in the desert and I will tell you all that I find in the mountains. It will be jolly to talk to a woman again." ”

“ Gallito nodded as if content. "That will be best."
"Best for both," agreed José, a flicker of mirth on his face. "My constant companionship is good for Harry. It is not well to think you have shown the Devil the door, kicked him down the hill and forgotten him; and that he has taken his beating, learned his lesson and gone forever. It is then that the Devil is dangerous. It is better, Gallito, believe me, to remain on good terms with him, to humor him and to pass the time of day. ”

“ One evening when he sat listening he suddenly lifted his eyes and gazed at the Pearl, who sat almost the length of the room away from him. The cabin was lighted only by the great log fire, and the leaping, ardent flames of the pine, mingled with the soft, glowing radiance of burning birch, invested the room and its occupants with that atmosphere of mystery and glamour, essential in flame-illumined shadow. ”

“ He walked down the hill with her to Gallito's cabin, but on their way they spoke little. Her mind was full of Hanson's coming, and of the revelation of dancing which she meant to show him and, incidentally, Saint Harry. It was not until later in the day that she remembered how impersonal, according to her standards, her conversation with Seagreave had been. Not once, either by word or look had he told her that she was beautiful and to be desired. A new experience for her; never before had she encountered such an attitude in any man. ”