The Black Pearl

by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

And Pearl looked up eagerly. "But when can we go, when?" she cried and stretched out an imploring hand to touch his knee. "To-morrow? No, to-day. You said yesterday, father, that you would be going back at once. Oh, to-day! The afternoon train—" She looked eagerly from one man to another.

"Yes, to-day," agreed Bob Flick. "You can go as well to-day as to-morrow, Gallito."

The Spaniard had been thinking with thrust-out jaw and narrowed eyes, now he threw out his hands and lifted his brows. "Have it so, then," he said. "The train leaves this afternoon. Go, Pearl, and pack your things. I promised Hughie that he should go back with me, but he had better wait a few days until his mother can get her sister to stay with her. You had better tell him, Pearl."

After she had gone into the house the two men sat in silence for a few minutes and then Flick lifted his relieved face to the sky. "If there's any God up there," he said, "I'm thanking him for that unexpected you were talking about, Gallito."

"Ah, that unexpected!" returned Gallito. "It is more comforting than many religions. More than once when I have been in a tight place I have relied on it and not vainly. You will go with us this afternoon, Bob?"

Flick hesitated a moment. "I can't," he said. "I've got a lot to do at the mines here, but I can come up soon if you think it will be all right."

The old man smiled in his most saturnine fashion and sighed dismally. "I will make a special offering to the church if you come often," he said. "I can see black days ahead of us. She does not like the mountains."

"Oh, she'll not stay long," Flick consoled him. "The summer, perhaps; but she will be ready to sign up with Sweeney before fall. She can't stay off the stage longer than that. You'll see."

Gallito sighed again and pessimistically shook his head. He was far from anxious to assume the responsibility of restoring his daughter's spirits, and had hoped that Flick would relieve him of that duty, but, since that was not to be, he accepted the situation with what philosophy and fortitude he could muster and hurried the feminine preparations for departure so successfully that he and Pearl actually got away on the afternoon train.

This fact was communicated to Hanson by Jimmy early that evening. Hanson had returned to the San Gorgonio before noon and had remained in his room until nightfall. As the day wore on and he recovered in some measure his self-control, he began to view the situation in a different light from that in which it had first appeared to him, although, in strict adherence to fact, he could not be said to have viewed it in any light at all in that first hour or two. It was all dense darkness to him, a black despair not unmingled with anger and a sense of injury. But as he sat alone in his room with its windows looking out over the desert, his naturally confident and optimistic spirit gradually asserted itself. Again and again, and each time more positively, he assured himself that all was not lost yet by any means. He had been unfortunate enough, yes, and fool enough, to make a bad break; a break that he, with all of his experience, should have known better than to make to any woman. Yet he felt that, even admitting that, he could not justly blame himself. The Pearl had not only surprised but frightened him by the way she had taken a fact which he thought she fully understood—that marriage was out of the question for him. He was so crazy about her that he had lost his head, that was the long and short of the matter, and had made a fool of himself and hash of the situation; but temporarily, only temporarily. For, and to this belief he clung more and more hopefully, the Pearl was too deeply in love with him definitely to close the affair between them for just one break. He would not, could not believe that. It was true enough that he had aroused her passionate and violent anger, but the more violent the anger the sooner it will evaporate, and strange and complex as the Pearl was, she was yet a woman; and no woman on earth could long hold resentment against the man she loved. She had, he was able to convince himself, regretted her mad action in first threatening and then riding away from him long before she had reached home; and, without doubt, it was only that high and haughty pride of hers which kept her from returning to him before she had traversed half the distance. But the course of action he had decided upon was sure to win. He would give her a few hours to get over her anger, to regret it and to reproach herself for causing him pain, and then he would give her a little more time to long and ache for him to return to her. He would wait until evening, and then he would go boldly to the Gallito house and, no matter what efforts were made to frustrate their meeting, he would see her alone. Ah, and she would fly to him, if he knew her aright. All the opposition in the world could not keep them apart, it would only strengthen her determination. And then, how he would beg her forgiveness, how he would plead his love, with passionate and irresistible eloquence; and, if he knew the heart of woman, she would yield.