The Black Pearl Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  Hanson walked away, more disturbed in mind by his interview with Gallitothan he would have thought possible an hour or two earlier. Something inthe finality of the Spaniard's voice when making those last predictions,his evidently sincere belief that his daughter would not appear underHanson's management, had impressed the latter in spite of himself,causing him seriously to question the extent of his influence overPearl, a weakness which he had not previously permitted himself.

  He strove with all the force of his optimistic will to throw off thedepression which deepened with each moment, assuring himself that he wastired, that all morning he had played a part, every faculty on thealert; and that this growing dissatisfaction and unrest were only theevidence of a natural reaction.

  He attempted to buttress his hope with mental argument, logical, evenfinal, but singularly unconvincing where Pearl was concerned, asanything logical and final must ever be. He tried to recall in detailstories he had heard of her avarice and her coquetries; he thought ofher jewels, her name, her wiles. Who was she to object to pastpeccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to reassurehimself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautifulas the sun on the desert, but her image rose on the dark of his mindlike a flame, veering and capricious, or as the wind, lingering,caressing, yet ever fleeing.

  He was tormented by the remembrance also of strange phases of her whichhe divined but could not analyze. Again, he would in fancy look deepinto her dark eyes, demanding that his imagination revive for him thosemoments when his heart had thrilled to the liquid languor of her gaze,and instead he saw only the world-weariness of that sphynx glance whichseemed to brood on uncounted centuries, and far back in her eyes,illusive and brief as the faint, half seen shadow on a mirror, hediscerned mockery and disdain.

  He took off his hat, baring his brow to the air, and drew long breaths,unpleasantly conscious of an increasing heaviness and sultriness in theair, according well with the oppression of his thoughts. When he arrivedat the San Gorgonio, he was glad to take refuge in his room and there,to relieve the tension of nerves strung almost unbearably high, hewalked back and forth and, after his fashion, swore volubly andunintermittently.

  At last, having exhausted his vocabulary as well as his breath, heturned to the window, struck by some impending change in the atmospherewhich had now revealed itself by a slight obscuring of the light in theroom. He looked out curiously, half fearfully, dimly but rebelliouslyaware that the world, his human world of personal desires andactivities, as well as all external nature was threatened by vast,unseen, menacing forces. The great, gray desert lay in crouchingstillness, a silence which filled the soul of man with horror. The sun,crimson as blood, hung in a sky over which seemed to have been drawn aveil of golden mist.

  "Must be something doing," muttered Hanson, and even as he spoke his eyewas taken by a movement on the horizon line, a billowing as if thedesert were rising like the sea. And truly it did. It lifted in wavesthat mounted almost to the sky and swept forward with a savage eagernessas if to bear down upon and engulf and obliterate the little oasis of avillage with its green productive fields, and reduce it again to thewastes of desolation from which it had been so painfully redeemed byman.

  For nearly three days the storm lasted, raging by day and by night. Thetrees bowed to earth and lifted themselves to bow again with the soundof many waters in their leaves; and in the voice of the wind everysavage, primeval menace alternated with every wail of human grief andanguish which has echoed through the ages. All desolation in the heartof man, "I am without refuge!" shrieked in its high cries, and, as iffailing to find adequate expression in these, it summoned its chorus ofdemons and rang with the despairing fury of all damned and discordantthings, until one bowed and covered the ears and muttered a prayer.

  And the sand! It sifted constantly through doors and windows, and seemedto fall in a fine continuous shower from the very roof. It coveredeverything with a white rime; it sifted into the hair, the eyes;breathing was difficult, the air was so chokingly full of it.

  The rooms, too, were ever paced by the restless feet of the wind,curtains swayed as if shaken by ghostly fingers; rugs and carpets roseand fell upon the floor, and, whether one sat alone or with others, theair seemed full of stealing presences, sad, and sometimes terrible; andof immemorial whispers that would not be stilled.

  The desert knows no time, its past and present are one, a thousand yearsis as a single day, and when it chooses to find its voice all yesterdaysand all to-morrows blend.

  Some day, when grief and horror shall be abandoned by man as utterly ashis dreams of cave-life; when his remembrances of wrestling with theforces of nature or commerce shall seem as remote as his warfare withbeasts, and tribes as savage as beasts; when he lifts his dull eyes anddares to dream only joy and beauty, then he will know that the graycries of the wind are but the emphasis to the singing of the sunlight,that the black storm-clouds are but the contrast Beauty offers to deepenand heighten the effect of her more ethereal hues, blue and rose andpearl.

  Hanson had stood the storm badly; inactivity was always a hardship tohim, also he was unused to such discomfort as he had to endure; and hisdepression and unrest induced by the suspense he suffered incontinually wondering how Pearl would take Bob Flick's news weregreatly increased by the fact that he could get no word to her, norreceive any from her.

  But on the third night the storm stilled and in the morning the desertshowed herself sparkling like an enchantress, exhibiting all of hermarvelous illusions of color and wrapped in a golden garment ofsunshine. She smiled with all the allurement of a radiant and beautifulwoman.

  Early in the morning, just as Hanson was preparing to send a note toPearl, he received one from her, asking him to meet her again within anhour or two, amid the palms. She did not suggest his riding thither withher. The note was brief, a mere line, and, study it as he would, hefound nothing in it to indicate what her attitude was toward him,therefore it did not allay his nervousness in the least as to how shewould meet him. But with the passage of the storm his nerves hadrecovered their normal tone, and with the brilliance and freshness ofthe morning much of his optimism had returned.

  He reached the approach to the foothills where the palms lifted theirstately and magnificent height, long before Pearl, and there, walkingrestlessly back and forth, he watched the road with straining eyes. Andthen he saw her, at first a mere speck in the distance; then she becamemore and more distinct, for she rode fast. She waved her hand to him asshe came nearer and his heart rose in a great bound. Slackening thespeed of her horse, she leaped from the saddle while it was still going,ran by its side, throwing the bridle over her arm, stopped, laughingand breathless, and cast herself into Hanson's waiting arms.

  "Pearl, Pearl," he cried, in a low voice, holding her close against himand kissing her upturned face again and again. "Oh, Pearl, it's been athousand years in hell since I saw you last."

  She laughed and, gazing eagerly into her care-free eyes andunreproachful face, his heart rose again in a great sigh of relief."That's the way a tenderfoot always feels about a sand-storm," she said."Well, we sure gave you some nice theatrical effects, didn't we? It'sthe biggest I've seen for many a long day. But you were bound to seesomething like that before you went away." She spoke with a fatalismapproaching Bob Flick's. "The desert never lets you go and forget her."Her eyes dreamed a moment.

  "She's like you in that, Pearl. My heavens! I wish you could seeyourself this morning. Beautiful ain't the word."

  "Am I beautiful, Rudolf?" She lifted her head from his shoulder andlooked at him with a soft, childlike expression, as if longing for hispraise.

  "I guess you know it," he said adoringly, stroking her shining blackhair, "but if you weren't, if you were as ugly as sin, it wouldn't makeany difference, you'd get us all just the same. All women like you gotto do is to look at a man and he'll follow you like a sheep. I don'tknow what it is, magnetism or something."

  "But I'm glad
I'm not as ugly as sin," she murmured, in smiling content."And I'm glad you're not, too." She reached up her arm and touched hishair caressingly. "I love that little touch of reddish gold in yourhair, and, yes, just that sprinkling of gray, and I love your blue eyes.I can't bear dark men. I am so dark myself."

  "You sure are, Pearl, thank the Lord! I never was very poetic, but Inever see one of these desert nights sparkling with their big stars,twice as big as natural, that I don't think of you."

  She smiled, delighted at his praise.

  "But, goodness!" he went on, "when ain't I thinking of you? I tell you,you been on my mind steady these last few days. Your Pop was so deadsure when I talked to him that you'd have nothing more to do with methat it got to worrying me, and I thought maybe you'd hold it against methat I hadn't told you about--about my being already tied up." Hescanned her face as if fearful of seeing it cloud and change.

  It did. The laughter faded from her eyes, her brow darkened. "I wish youhad told me," she said, "then I'd been a little better prepared for Popand Bob; but I guess they got as good as they gave."

  "I know I ought to have told you, Pearl," he said miserably, "and Imeant to, honey, but"--gathering her more closely in his arms--"I justcouldn't spoil those first few days; and, anyway, you drove everythingbut you out of my head. I just determined every time it came into mymind to tell you, that I wasn't going to spoil Paradise with anyrecollections of hell. Maybe I was all wrong, but that was the way Ifelt."

  "No, you were all right, Rudolf," she wound her arms about his neck."When the storm came it broke swift and sudden like the sand storm, andwe didn't live it all over beforehand, getting ready for it, anddeciding how we'd meet it when it came, and all that. We just enjoyedourselves. Lived and loved up to the moment when it broke, and that wasthe best way."

  "Gee! was there ever a woman like you!" lifting his glad, gay gaze tothe sky. "Why, Pearl, it most frightens me when I think how happy me andyou are going to be together."

  "Are we?" nestling closer to him. "How?"

  "How?" he repeated. "Why, we're going to be together first and last;ain't that enough? It is for me. But"--with drooping head and affectedlyhumble and dejected mien--"it couldn't be expected to be enough for you,could it?"

  "Hardly," she looked up at him through her long lashes.

  "Well, since that ain't enough for you," still with affectedresignation, "let me tell you this: You're going to dance to biggercrowds and higher class ones than you ever saw before, because you'regoing to be advertised proper, see?" And then, sketching out plans withhis former bold, optimistic confidence, "We're going to travel on theother side and travel in style, too, a big touring automobile. I guessyou can show those foreign managers something new in the dancing line.How would you like to see your name all over London and Paris? The BlackPearl! Eh?"

  She slipped away from him and took a few buoyant dancing steps. "Fine!"she laughed. "It sure sounds good to me." Floating nearer to him, shepinched his arm. "Ain't you the spellbinder!"

  He caught her with one arm. "Oh, Pearl," his voice falling toseriousness, "you don't know how happy you make me. Honest, I've been soplum scared these last few days, I been almost crazy. I didn't know, yousee, just how much influence your Pop and Flick might have over you, andI got locoed for fear you wouldn't see me and give me a chance toexplain."

  "Pop and Bob Flick kindly took the bother of explaining things off yourshoulders, didn't they?" with a short, vindictive laugh.

  "Darn 'em," bitterly. "I don't want to say anything about your Pop, butFlick's a sneaking coyote, and sooner or later he'll pay for snoopinginto my business. Oh, I've cursed myself more than once for letting himtell you, but I never loved a woman before, Pearl, and I couldn't takethe chances, honest I couldn't. I hadn't the nerve." There was apassionate sincerity in his voice.

  "They've been telling me you've loved many a woman." Her eyes gloomedand she slashed her skirt savagely with the riding crop she held.

  "You know," he whispered, "you know. I've been a fool. There have beenmany others, Pearl, I ain't going to deceive you, but--there's neverbeen but one."

  She softened and smiled at him, then her face darkened again. "Butthere's one that stands in the way--yet," she said gloomily.

  "In the way? What do you mean?" uncomprehendingly.

  "Why, that woman up in Colina? Don't she stand between you and me, now,for a while?"

  "Not much, she don't," emphatically, "not her!"

  A light flared in Pearl's eyes. "I knew Pop and Bob were up to some oftheir tricks! They been doing their best to ram it home that she'll diebefore she lets you get a divorce."

  "You bet she will," muttered Hanson, with concentrated bitterness, andstifled some maledictions under his breath. "I've tried every way,turned every trick known to sharp lawyers for the last six years, tryingto get free; but she's got money, you see, and she can keep her eye onme, so, in one way or another, she's balked me every time."

  Pearl threw herself from him and looked at him with wild eyes. "Then howare you going to get free now?" she cried. "What are your plans? Why isshe going to come around now, if she never has before?"

  "She ain't, honey, the devil take her!" He caught her back in his armsand held her as if he would never release her. "But what difference doesthat make to us?" he pleaded ardently. "We're going to let the whole lotof them go hang and live our lives as we choose."

  "Then Pop and Bob were right; and I never believed them, not for amoment. I thought you were too smart to stay caught in a trap like that.I thought you were so quick and keen to plan and were so full of ideasthat you could get around any situation." Again she flung herself awayfrom him and, with her face turned from him, stood looking out over thedesert.

  He bent toward her and, throwing his arms about her, again endeavored todraw her back into his embrace, but she resisted.

  "Pearl," he cried roughly, "what do you mean? You don't mean to say thatyou got any foolish ideas about it making any difference whether apreacher says a few words over us or not? Why, you can't feel that way.You've seen too much of life, and your folks have always been showpeople. They didn't hold any such ideas. Anyway, you got brains to thinkfor yourself. What joke you playing on me, honey? Oh, don't hold me offlike that, lift your head and look at me. I know you're going to laughin about a minute and then I'll know it's all a joke." Again he tried toput his arm about her and again she threw him off.

  "Let me alone," she cried harshly. "I'm thinking. Let me alone."

  "Pearl," he besought wildly; his face had suddenly grown flabby andwhite, his voice was broken with his desperate pleading. "Honey, youdon't want time to think. Why, there's nothing to think about. We'regoing off on the train this afternoon to be happy together, and we don'tgive a cent for anything else. We'd be married if we could. My Lord! Ishould say so! But since we can't, we'll make the best of it."

  He paused and looked at her, but there was something inflexible in herattitude, some almost threatening aloofness that made him hesitate toclasp her as he longed to do for fear he should meet another and finalrebuff. He waited a moment or two, but, as she did not speak, he beganagain.

  "I know you're joking, Pearl, but it's awful hard on me"--he wiped thesweat from his brow. "You haven't got any such fool ideas. Of course youhaven't. They're for dead ones, old maid country school teachers, andpreachers and things like that, hypocrites that have got to make theirliving by playing the respectable game. But we're not that kind, Pearl,we're alive, and we're not afraid. We're going to be happier than twopeople ever were in this world. Pearl, speak to me. I don't wonder thatyour mother complains about the way you shut yourself up and never say aword. Speak to me. Tell me what you're thinking."

  "I'm thinking a lot of things," she answered, but without turning herhead to look at him, "and I ain't through yet. Now I've got to studyingon this matter, I'm a-going to think it out here and now."

  "But what is there to think about?" in a sort of exasperated despair."Oh, Pearl, how can you be so cruel!
I know you ain't got any of thefool ideas of the dead ones I was talking about. You couldn't have; notwith Isobel Montmorenci for a grandmother, and Queenie Madrew for amother, and the same kind on your Pop's side of the house. You didn'thave any Sunday-school bringing up and I know it. Then what you playingwith me like a cat does with a mouse for? It ain't fair, Pearl, it ain'tfair."

  She turned and faced him now with an impatient gesture of the hands.Some expression on her face, the set of her mouth, the horse-shoe frownon her forehead gave her a fleeting resemblance to her father, aresemblance that momentarily chilled his blood.

  "For goodness' sake keep quiet a minute," she cried irritably. "You gaveme a jolt a while ago, telling me you couldn't get free, and I want aminute or two to take it in."

  "But you don't think hard of me for that," he implored. "Oh, Pearl--"but she had again turned to her contemplation of the desert, andrealizing that further speech might bring her swift anger upon him hewalked hastily away.

  Several yards from her he paused and again wiped his brow. "Oh, God!" hemuttered, lifting his face to the sky, "what does a man know aboutwomen, anyway?"

  As for Pearl, she scarcely knew that he had ceased to speak to her. Shehad been thinking, as she averred, thinking back over the years. She hadbeen dancing professionally ever since she had been a child. As a slim,tall, young girl, still in skirts to her shoe tops, her mother hadtraveled with her, and, although this evidence of chaperonage irked her,she had with her quick intelligence early seen its value. All about hershe saw the struggling flotsam of feminine youth, living easily,luxuriously to-day, careless of any less prosperous morrows, and, whenthose swift, inevitable morrows came, she had seen the girlish, exoticqueens of an hour, haggard, stripped of their transient splendor,uncomprehending, almost helpless.

  She saw readily enough that it was not only her superior talents andtraining, the hard work and hard study which she gave to her professionwhich set her above the butterflies and apart from them, but hermother's constant presence during those early years was of almost equalvalue.

  All this she realized at an age when strong impressions are indeliblyretained. Her value, the tremendous value of an unsmirched virtue, awoman's greatest asset in a world of desire and barter, became to her apossession she cherished above her jewels, above the money she couldearn and save and the greater sums she dreamed of earning or winning byany means--all means but one.

  Her observations of the women about her who gave all for so little, hermeditations upon them, and the conclusions she drew from their maimedlives only emphasized the resisting force of her nature. She was notborn to be a leaf in the current, whirled by the force of waters into asafe haven or an engulfing whirlpool as chance might decide; she mustdominate the currents.

  And with the temptations of her youth, and her ardent emotionaltemperament, would also come the remembrance of those haggard girls withtheir pinched blue lips, the suffering in their eyes, their delicatefaces aged and yellowed and lined and spoiled, weeping with shakingsobs, telling her pitiful stories, and begging her for money, for a wordwith the management. And, when they had gone, she had turned to herlooking-glass and gazed at herself with conscious pride and delight.Contempt, not pity, stirred her heart for the draggled butterflies whosegauzy irridescence was but for a moment; and before her mirror sheconstantly renewed her vows that never would she barter her bloom, herfreshness, her exquisite grace for what those girls had to show.

  She had seen a great French actress roll across the desert in herprivate car, to meet in every city the adulation of thousands and it hadstimulated her ambition enormously. She was by nature as insatiable asthe horse-leech's daughter; she would take all--love, money, jewels inreturn for her barren coquetries. The fact that she was "straight," asshe phrased it, gave her sufficient excuse for her arrogant domination.

  Unfortunately for Hanson, there was no particular temptation in what hecould offer in the way of professional advancement. She was perfectlycognizant of her own ability, aware that its resources were scarcelydeveloped. Already her field widened continually. She was in perpetualdemand with her public, and therefore with her managers.

  But she loved Hanson. In all of the love affairs in which she had beeninvolved she had never really cared before, and now only her strong willkept this attraction from proving overmastering. And here came thestruggle. The right or the wrong of the matter, the morals of it, didnot touch her. It was the clash of differing desires, a clash betweenpassion and this secret, long-cherished pride of virtue.

  "Honey, honey," he was back at her side again; his voice was hoarse andragged, but for that very reason it moved her. All at once theprimitive woman, loving, yielding, glad and proud to yield, stirred inher, rose and dominated her hard ambition. She lifted her head a littleand, still with it turned from him, looked at the pagan glory of theday. Her eyes closed with the delight of that moment. She felt herresistance breaking down, the weakening and softening of herresolutions. Was she at last to know the splendor of loving and giving?

  "Ain't you played with me long enough, Pearl?" his voice was in her ear,a broken, husky whisper. "What's the use? Why, of course," grasping athis usual self-confidence, "I'm a fool to get scared this way. You'veshowed me that you care, you have, honey; and I guess," with a nervouslaugh, "the Black Pearl hasn't got any damn fool scruples such as I'vebeen frightening myself out of my skin by attributing to her."

  Imperceptibly, almost, her whole body stiffened. Her soft, relaxed,yielding attitude was gone. But she remained silent, the same ominous,brooding silence that the desert had held before the storm, had Hansonbut noticed. He did not. He was still pleading: "Why all the time youbeen keeping me on the anxious seat, I been telling myself that theBlack Pearl--"

  "Yes, the Black Pearl," she interrupted him with her low, unpleasantlaugh. "Don't you care a little that I got that name, Rudolf?"

  "Care!" He wound his arms about her now and buried his face in the greatwaves of her inky, shining hair, wildly kissing the nape of her neck;but with a deft twist of her lithe body she slipped almost away fromhim, although his arms still held her. "Care? Of course I care. Butwhat's that got to do with it when I love you like I do? Pearl, if youwere a good deal blacker than you're painted it wouldn't make anydifference to me."

  He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, thistime escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her facewas turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashessweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the BlackPearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawlinginflections were gone; it was strangely tense.

  "I guess so, damn it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got ahunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in thedesert. Before God, I don't care anything about your past or yourpresent, if you'll only love me for a while."

  With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterwardlike the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, thestorm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, adusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at eachcorner of the mouth.

  "You fool!" Her voice was a muffled scream. "Oh, you fool! Sweeney couldhave told you better, any man on the desert could have told you better.The Black Pearl! Why, I've been called the Black Pearl since I was ababy, almost. It's my hair and my skin and my eyes."

  "'I'll show you what I'll do.'"]

  He didn't believe her, but he saw his blunder at once; cursed himselffor it, and, mad to retrieve himself, began incoherent explanations andexcuses. "Of course," he stammered, "of course, I--I--was just fooling,you know. But, well, what does it matter, anyway? Oh, Pearl, girl! Don'tlook at me like that. Don't!"

  "I'll do worse than look at you, if you come any nearer me," shethreatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mindto without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quickmovement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, from her boot.r />
  Hanson went a little whiter, but he was no coward. "Come on then, finishit for me," he said. "Your eyes are doing it anyway. Oh, Pearl!" he fellagain to desperate pleading, "you won't turn me down just for amistake?"

  "Me, the Black Pearl, held cheap!" she muttered and raised her stag-likehead superbly, "and by you! You that pick up women and drop them whenyou're tired of them. Me, the Black Pearl." She turned quickly and ranto her waiting horse, loosening the tether with quick, nervous fingers.Hanson followed her.

  "Pearl, you ain't going to leave me?"

  But she was already in the saddle.

  He caught at her bridle and held her so. "Pearl, I made a mistake"--hewas talking wildly, rapidly--"but you ain't going to throw me down justfor that--you can't. Think how happy we've been this last week--thinkhow we've loved each other. Why, you can't turn me down, just for onebreak, you can't."

  "Can't I?" she said, her teeth still showing in that unpleasant way."Can't I? Well--if you don't get out of my way I'll show you what I'lldo. Slash you across your lying face." Her arm was already uplifted,riding crop in hand. "Let me go!" Her voice was so low that he hardlyheard it, but full of a thousand threats. Then, swerving her horsequickly to one side, she jerked the bridle from his slack fingers andwas off across the desert.