CHAPTER XIV
The dawns rose, the suns set, after the avalanche as before, and Pearl and Seagreave, alone in the cabin, isolated from the world of human beings, took up their lives together, together and yet apart, in the great, encompassing silence of this white and winter-locked world.
Winter-locked, yes, but all the mighty, unseen forces of Nature were set toward spring. Nothing could stop or retard them now. Under sullen, lowering skies; beneath the blasts which swept down from the peaks; in spite of flying snow; unseen, unsuspected, in the darkness and stillness and warmth of the earth, the transformation was going on. The tender, young banners of green were almost ready for the decking of the trees, and almost completed was the weaving of pink and blue and lavender carpets of wild flowers for the hillsides.
And the spring that had arisen glorious in Pearl's heart when she had realized that she and Harry were prisoners of the avalanche was still resurgent. For the first day or two of their isolation she lived, breathed, moved in the splendor of her heart's dream. It encompassed her with the warmth and radiance of a flood of sunshine.
In spite of her protests and appeals, Seagreave would not permit her to help much with the household tasks, but busied himself almost constantly with them, maintaining with a sort of methodical pleasure the inspired order of his cabin. It is possible that he gave to each task a more exhaustive and undeviating attention than even he considered necessary, and this to cover the sense of embarrassment he felt in adapting himself not only to this pervasive, feminine presence, but to the exigencies of an unwonted companionship hedged about with restrictions.
He often felt as if he were entertaining a bird of brilliant tropical plumage in his cabin, as if it had flown thither from glowing southern lands and brought with it sensuous memories of color and fragrance, and wafts of sandalwood.
Sometimes he and Pearl walked about on the barren hillside, constantly washed more bare of snow by the daily rains which had begun to fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and passions. No life at second hand for her. She was absorbed in the living.
But if in the day there were many tasks to be done, and Harry could occupy more or less time in the hewing of wood and carrying of water, and all of the practical duties which that phrase may stand for, there were long evenings when he and Pearl sat in the firelight, their speech and their silence alike punctuated by the wail of the mountain wind about the cabin and the singing of the burning logs upon the hearth.
And it was during those evening hours that Seagreave felt most the shyness which her constant presence induced in him. By day he busied himself in securing her comfort, but by night he was tormented by his own chivalrous and fastidious thought of her, by his desire to reassure her mind, without words, if possible, as to the consequences of their isolation.
But sometimes after he had lighted her candle and she had said good-night, and had entered the little room where she slept, he would either sit beside the glowing embers or else build up afresh the great fire which was never permitted to die out night or day during the winter months, his thoughts full of her, dwelling on her, clinging to the memories of the day.
José's personality had been neither ubiquitous nor dominating. Seagreave had noticed him no more about the cabin than he had the little mountain brook which purled its way down the hill; but now his housemate was feminine, and with every passing hour he was more conscious of it. At night, after Pearl had gone to bed, he felt her presence as definitely as though she were still there. Some quality of her individuality lingered and haunted the room and haunted his thoughts as the sweet, unfamiliar odor of an exotic blossom permeates the atmosphere and remains, even when the flower is gone.
And as for Pearl, whether she walked on the barren hillsides or dreamed by the fire, or stood at the window watching Harry chop wood or carry water from the rushing mountain brook, her mind held but one thought, her heart but one image—him.
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.
Without, the spring thaws which were to melt down the mountain of snow in the ravine below were no longer presaged, but at hand. The rain fell for hours each day, but the dull and weeping skies, the heavy air, oppressed Seagreave's spirits and made him now sad and listless, but for the most part curiously restless.
Strive as he would, he could not escape nor ignore it, this atmosphere of the exotic which filled his cabin, the atmosphere of Pearl's beauty and magnetism and of her love for him. He did not recognize it as that. He only felt it as some strange, disturbing element which, while it troubled his thought, yet claimed it. His growing love for her filled him with a sort of terror. It seemed to him a mounting tide which would sweep him, he knew not whither, and with all the strength of his nature he struggled to hold to the resolution he had made the first day they were alone in the cabin, not to press his love upon her until she had left the shelter of his roof and was back again with her father.
One evening the two sat in the cabin together, as usual, Seagreave on one side of the fire reading—that is, his eyes were upon the book and he seemed apparently absorbed in its contents—but in reality his entire thought was focused upon Pearl, who sat opposite him in a low chair, her hands clasped idly in her lap, and he struggled desperately to maintain his attitude of friendly comradeship when he addressed her.
The leaping of the flames on the hearth made quaint arabesques of shadow on the rough walls and the wind sighed and sobbed in the chimney. Thus they sat for an hour or two in silence and then Seagreave lifted his eyes and stole one of his swift and frequent glances at Pearl. Something he saw riveted his attention and he continued to gaze, forgetful of his book, of his past resolutions, of anything in the world but her.
She was just loosening the cord which bound the throat of a small black leather bag, and while he watched her she poured its contents into her lap and sat bending over a handful of loose and sparkling jewels. 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!"
She started and looked up at him in surprise. "Yes, they are," she said. "I have been gathering them for a long time. There are only a few, but every one is flawless."
"I never considered jewels before." He bent forward the better to see them. "I have often seen women wear them, but I just regarded them as a part of their decoration. Yet I can understand now why you love them. They are very beautiful, unset that way." He looked at her deeply. "But I believe it is for some reason deeper than that that they have a fascination for you. You are like them."
She let them fall like drops of rainbow water through her fingers; then she lifted her lashes. "Am I hard and cold like them?" She sent darting and dazzling full in his eyes her baffling, heart-shivering smile.
He did not answer at once, and she, still gazing at him, saw that he paled visibly, every tinge of color receding from his face; his eyes, deep and dark, held hers, as if reading her soul and demanding that she reveal the strange secrets of her nature.
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.
He arose and leaned his arm on the mantel-piece, still gazing at her as if he could never withdraw his eyes. "You are so—so beautiful," he stammered, scarcely knowing what he said. "The world will claim you. You have so much to give it and all your nature, all your heart turns to it. You will soon forget this hut in the mountains, and—and all that it has meant." He buried his head in his arms.
She, too, rose and laid the handful of her jewels on the table without another glance at them. "These mountains!" She threw wide her arms and drew a long, ecstatic breath. She came near to him and touched his arm. "I hated them once, I love them now." She smiled up at him, her darkly slumbrous, scarlet-lipped smile.
He leaned toward her as if to clasp her close, but the vows he had sworn to himself a thousand times since she had been in his cabin alone with him still held him. Slowly he drew back and with all the strength of his nature fought for self-control. He called upon every force of his will, and in that supreme moment his face hardened to the appearance of a sculptured mask; all of its finely-drawn outlines seemed set in stone.
She turned angry shoulders to him and stirred the stones on the table with impatient fingers until they rolled about, flashing darts of light. Symbols of power, of material and deadening splendor; eternal accompaniments of imperial magnificence! The sapphires sang triumph, the diamonds conquest, the rubies passionate and fulfilled love.
"They are what you really care for." He spoke huskily; his voice sounded thick and uncertain in his ears. "That and—and your wonderful dancing, and applause—and success and money. It's natural that you should—but it all makes me realize—clearly, that I can't even try to force myself into your life. There's no place for me. Even—even if you were kind—you sometimes seem to—to—to suggest that you would be—I'd be just a useless cog, soon to be dropped. It's all complete without me. But, for God's sake, I'm begging you, I'm begging you, Pearl, not to be kind to me for the rest of the time that we're here together."
"And what about me?" she flashed. "You've thought everything out from your own side, and you've just been telling it. Don't you think I've got a side, too? I guess so."
He looked at her in surprise, the emotion that had changed and broken his expression fading into wonderment and puzzle.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Kiss me, and I'll show you," she said audaciously. All the allurement, the softness and sweetness of the south was in her mouth and eyes.
"How can we go on like this?" His voice was a mere broken whisper. He yearned to her, leaned toward her, and yet refrained from holding her.
"Like this," she murmured, and threw her arms about him and laid her head on his heart, her face upturned to his.
"I told you"—so close was she held that she scarcely knew that she was breathing—"I told you—that if I once held you in my arms I'd never let you go."
"You may have told yourself; you never told me before. But I'm content."
"Content! That's no word for this," he cried between kisses. The mounting tide he had feared had become a mighty torrent sweeping away all his carefully built up mental barriers, and with that obliterating flood came a sense of power and freedom. All the youth in his heart rose and claimed its share of life and love and happiness.
"Let me go," she said at last, and drew away from him, flushed as a dawn and rapturous as a sunrise.
"No, never again," and stretched out his arms, but she slipped behind the table, putting it between them. "Sit down," she commanded, "and build up the fire. I want to talk, talk a long time, all night maybe."
"I hope so," he said ardently, and, obeying her, stooped to place fresh logs on the embers. "But what is there to talk about? We've said and will continue to say all there is in the world worth saying. I love you. Do you love me?"
"Maybe you won't want to say that after you've heard me." She had leaned forward, her arms on her knees, her eyes on the flames which leaped from dry twig to dry twig of the burning logs and on the shower of sparks which every minute or so swept up the chimney.
"You hit it off pretty well when you said that all I really cared for was money and jewels and my dancing and the big audiences and all that." Her eyes had narrowed so that the gleaming light that shone through her lashes was like a mere line of fire. "You see, I got to play the game. I got to. Nothing but winning and winning big ever's going to suit me. I saw that when I was awful young. I sort of looked out on life and it seemed to me that most people spent their lives like flies, flying around a while without any purpose, trying to buzz in the sun if they could, and by and by dropping off the window pane."
"Nothing but winning will suit you," he said drearily. "You are only repeating what I told you." All the life, the passion had gone out of his voice. "And I'm no prize, heaven knows!"
"I ain't through yet," she said. "I never did talk much. I guess I'm going to talk more to-night than I ever talked in my life, but I always saw everything that was going on around me, and it didn't take me long to make out that all you'll get in life is a kick and a crust if you haven't got some kind of power in your hands."
"God, you're hard, hard as iron!" The room rang with the echoes of his mirthless laughter. "Five, three minutes ago, you were in my arms, soft, yielding, trembling, giving me back kiss for kiss, and now you sit there expounding your merciless philosophy."
"It ain't me that's merciless," she returned, apparently unmoved, "it's life. You think my dancing's great, so does everybody; so it is. Well, it didn't grow. I made it." Here she lifted her head with pride, and folded her arms on her chest. "Maybe you don't think it took some training. Maybe you don't think it took some will and grit when I was a little kid to keep right on at my exercises when I ached so bad that the tears would run down my cheeks all the time I was at them. My mother knew that you had to begin young and keep at 'em all the time, but mom never would have had the nerve to keep me to it. She used often to cry with me.
"When I was a girl I'd liked to have had a good time, just in that careless way like other girls, but I gave that up, too, so's I could work at my dancing. When I'd get tired and blue I'd look at the stones I'd begun to collect with the money I'd earned. I'm hard, yes, I guess you're right. I guess you got to have a streak of hardness in you to be one of the biggest dancers in the world, or to be the biggest anything, but"—here she ran across the room and was down on her knees beside his chair—"I'm not hard any longer. Those jewels there," pointing to the table behind her, "they don't mean a thing to me any longer, nor my dancing, either, nor money, nor applause, nor anything in the world but you."
He shrank away from her as if he feared the subduing magnetism of her touch. "The useless cog to drop away when you get tired of him! I told you your life was all rounded and complete."
"It's not," she cried passionately, "without love. Without your love. I've got it and you can't take it away from me."
He brushed the wing of hair back from his pallid face. "My love!" His voice seemed to drip the bitterness of gall. "Where in heaven's name is there any place for it?"
"There isn't much room for anything else," she returned, "and that's the truth. I've told you that all those things that you say make my life complete, don't mean that," she snapped her long fingers, "not that to me any more. I've told you that I'd give them all up for you if you asked me, but," and here she swept to her feet, as if upborne by a rush of earnestness so intense and deeply felt that it was in itself a passion, "but I'll give 'em up, for it's a lot to give, for the man I know you are and—and not for the man that's been shirking life."
Since the first moments after she had begun to voice her experiences, and what he called her merciless philosophy, he had crumpled down in his chair, and when she had sprung up, he had risen perfunctorily and wearily to his feet, but at her last words he had straightened up as if involuntarily every muscle grew tense, an outward and visible indication of his mental attitude. Inherited and traditional pride was in the haughty and surprised uplift of his head; a bright flush had risen on his cheek and his eyes sparkled with a thousand wounded and angry reflections.
Whether or not she had intended to produce this effect by her words, she was undaunted by it, and went on: "José tells me that you got a big place in England, just waiting for you to come and claim it, and you quit it and everything there because a girl turned you down. It was sure a baby act."
"I—" he began to interrupt her. There were few men who would have cared to ignore that chilled steel quality of Seagreave's voice or, for the matter of that, the chilled steel look on his face.
But there were certain emotions the Pearl had never known, and they included remorse and fear. "I ain't finished yet," the gesture with which she imposed his silence held her accustomed languor. "I got to say that the man—that's you—that fought all through the Boer war was no shirker, and the man who did some of the things you did in India—you got some kind of a medal, didn't you?—what was it José called you?—soldier of fortune—well, you weren't a quitter, anyway."
She stretched out her arms to him and smiled, her compelling heart-shattering smile. Ardor enveloped her like an aura; the beauty and color of her were like fragrance on the air. "That's the kind of man I want to marry, Harry, not a man that's willing to live outside of life and work, and stay dead and buried here in these mountains."
He did not bend to her by an inch. Her smiles and her ardor splintered against chilled steel and fell unheeded. "Is there anything else?" he asked, after a slight interval of silence, during which he had the appearance of waiting with a pronounced and punctilious courtesy for further words from her.
She made no answer, merely continued to look at him, but he, apparently unmindful and indifferent to that gaze, lifted his book from the table beside him and, still standing, because she did so, began to read.
For a moment or two she seemed dazed and then, with trembling fingers, she gathered up her jewels and placed them in the little black bag.
This task accomplished, she started with all the scornful grace, the indifferent languor of a Spanish duchess to sweep from the room, but in passing him and noting him still absorbed in his book, her hot blood flushed her cheek, her eyes glittered with angry fire. Her slight pause caused him to look up and, seeing the anger on her face, he smiled amusedly, insufferably. The next second she sprang at him like a cat and slapped him across his insolently smiling face, and then flung Spanish oaths at him with such force and heat that they seemed to splutter in falling upon the chill of the air. Then she flashed from the room.
But the maddening smile still lingered on his lips as he bent to pick up the book her blow had sent flying to the floor. And, still smiling, he stood for a moment caressing the white dents her fingers had left on his cheek. Finally he replenished the fire, filled and lighted his pipe and, drawing his chair near to the hearth, sat, thinking, thinking, the greater part of the night.
Pearl was out early the next morning, and walked halfway down the hill. When she returned to the cabin she found Seagreave sitting in his chair by the hearth as if he had not moved during the night; his haggard gaze was fixed on the dead ashes of the fire. Without speaking to him, Pearl stooped down and, with some paper and bits of wood, began to build up a blaze again.
He peered at her a moment as if she were a vision, then got up very stiffly as if he had not moved for hours, and began to assist her, mechanically following the usual routine of preparing breakfast.
When it was ready they sat down opposite each other as was their custom, and made a pretense of eating. With the exception of a perfunctory remark or so the meal passed in silence. Pearl evidently had no intention of apologizing for her behavior of the night before. Her manner toward him was that of one who had relegated him to the position of the tables and chairs, and intended to take no more notice of him.
Taking it for granted that that was the relation she wished sustained between them, Seagreave gravely adopted her attitude, and for the next few days if they spoke at all it was principally about the work that was going on down at the crevasse. Never had Harry occupied himself so constantly and so feverishly, for the most part outside the cabin, chopping and sawing diligently at a huge pile of wood, and in his intervals of leisure he spent a great deal of time down the hill by the mountain of snow, watching its almost magical vanishing.
"There is a great crowd down at the ravine to-night," he said to Pearl, one evening at supper. "They are working with torches, and I think they will probably have some kind of a bridge swung over by midnight. I managed to signal to them a while ago, and they know that we are safe now. If—if you want to sit up to-night," his voice sounded strained and perfunctory, "I think you could possibly get over before morning."
The shadow which had fallen upon her face in the last day or two deepened a little. "It will be cold out there at night." She caught at the first excuse which came into her mind. "It will be better to wait and go down after breakfast."
He acquiesced with a nod, but made no answer in words, and soon after he left the room, and she, later, peeping cautiously out from the curtain behind the window, saw him walking back and forth before the cabin.
It was an hour or two later when he opened the door and entered. She did not hear him. She was standing, her elbow on the mantel-piece and her cheek on her hand, looking down into the fire. His footsteps roused her from her reverie and she looked up, in that moment of surprise, forgetful of self and therefore self-revealing. Thus she stood for one fleeting second, holding him with her smile, her whole being seeming to rush out and meet and encompass him and embrace him. Then her eyelashes drooped long and black on her cheek, and her face was all aflame with color.
He stood still a second, breathing hard. Then from the shadow he hurled himself into that zone of glowing firelight where she stood. A white flame passed over his face and lighted his eyes with that burning, incandescent glow that only those cold, blue eyes can show. Primeval, all preliminary bowing and scraping in the minuet of wooing ignored, he saw his heart's desire and seized it, lifting the Pearl in his arms, crushing her against his breast, until she, dazed for the moment, lay captured and captive.
But her second of surprised, involuntary non-resistance served her well. Harry looked into her eyes and forgot his vigilance; and with a twist Pearl slipped through his arms and was across the room. She stood against the wall of the cabin, her head thrown back, a smile on her white lips, her eyes daring him.
Seagreave took no dares. It was a part of his creed. He was across the room in a step, his arms outstretched as if to clasp her.
But Pearl held him with her eyes until at least she covered her face with her hands and wept and leaned toward him, and again Seagreave caught her in his arms with a murmur of passionate and inarticulate words. "I love you, I love you," he whispered, his lips seeking hers.
"Pearl, forgive me. I—I—forgot myself, forgive me. Why, you are as safe here as in your father's cabin. It will never happen again. I'll never touch you again unless you let me. Why, Pearl," with a tremulous attempt at a joke, "for the rest of the time that we're here you can keep me locked up in the other room if you want to, and just pass my food through the door now and then when you feel like it."
"Oh, Harry," she was still sobbing, "I'm such a devil. All my life I've been trying to see what I could get. I set out to make everything and everybody pay me, and I never got anything but chaff; money and jewels and applause—all chaff. The only happiness is giving, and I want to give, give, give to you. That's what I been longing to do ever since I loved you, and all I could do was to call you names—a quitter and a shirker." She wept afresh. "And the worst of it is I mean it, I wish I didn't, but I do."
"But you were right," he said, "good and right, too. You hurt my man's vanity, and I got nasty—sarcastic, you know. I've got you to thank forever for bringing myself right home to me—showing me to myself. I was a morbid, love-sick boy, who indulged in so much self-pity that he thought he was a very fine romantic figure, running off from his responsibilities and burying himself in the ends of the earth."
"I was jealous, too, of that girl you quit things for, that girl that was like violets and white roses. I ain't like 'em."
"Jealous! You! It wasn't long that I remembered her, but you were right again—I liked that life. I'd got used to it. The other kind seemed impossible to me—I've been a quitter and a shirker—just what you called me—but I'm going back home to take it all up again, or if you would rather, I'll stay here and work mines in these mountains, or help reclaim the desert—if you'll marry me, Pearl."
"But I'm the Black Pearl—a dancer. I don't see how I can begin to be anything else now; but I will, I'll be anything you ask me, Harry," throwing her arms about his neck, "I will."
He laughed and held her closer still. "I'll never ask you to be anything else. 'The Black Pearl—a dancer,' that's enough for me. 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. But," fixing determined eyes on her, "I'll not dangle around after you, and patch up your rows with your managers, and engage your maids, nor be known as the Black Pearl's husband, by the Lord, no! I'll do my own work in the world, and stand and fall by my own merit, if there's any in me. But kiss me, Pearl, kiss me."
"Then it's the last kiss till to-morrow," she smiled, "for it's past midnight now."
The morning dawned, a blare of sunlight. Pearl, glancing from the window just before they ate their early breakfast, could see that bridge was in place. Both she and Harry were quiet. It was the last meal together in the cabin, and more than once tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks as she made a pretense of eating. "They're happy tears, Harry, honest, they are," she assured him. "I guess I'm kind of locoed at the thought of seeing Pop and Bob and Hughie again. Come on, let's hurry down now and meet them." She stood up and drained her coffee cup and then threw her cape about her. "Come on." She held out her hand to him and smiled.