Mrs. Wilson Woodrow - The Black Pearl

M >> Mrs. Wilson Woodrow >> The Black Pearl

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The night before he had been very anxious to see Pearl dance in public,
and, not daring to sit in the audience for fear of being recognized by
some chance wayfarer, he had gained Pearl's consent to watch the
entertainment from the safe seclusion of her dressing room.

Both Flick and Seagreave, who were in Gallito's confidence, believed
that the boy's fears were greatly exaggerated, but when they saw the
sheriff and all of his deputies in the hall their curiosity was aroused.
Flick had then gone over to speak to Hanson and Hanson's conversation
had convinced him that Pedro was really in danger and would be arrested
before the evening was over. They then devised the plan of having him
escape in Pearl's dancing dress and long cloak, meaning to drive him up
the hill and let him take his chances of eluding his would-be captors in
the forest surrounding Gallito's cabin. But he had slipped out of the
cart a short distance up the hill. Seagreave believed that there were a
pair of snow-shoes in the bottom of the cart, which had disappeared.
That was all any of them could say.

But when Seagreave pointed out to the sheriff that if no one remained in
either his or Gallito's cabin, it was extremely likely that both
dwellings would be looted before nightfall, also that without the fires
made and kept up the provisions would freeze and that with a guard over
him, he would be as easy to lay hands on as if he were down at the hotel
with the rest, the sheriff gravely considered the matter and was
disposed to yield the point. As Seagreave remarked, he certainly had not
mastered the art of flying and he knew no other way by which he might
escape. "Poor Pedro!" he sighed.

"You bet it's poor Pedro," said the sheriff grimly. "Why, you know as
well as I do, Seagreave, that there ain't no way on God's green earth
for that boy to make a getaway. Of course, he's given us a lot of
bother, what with that damned snow falling again last night and covering
up any tracks he might make, but we're bound to get him. Why, a little
army, if it had enough ammunition, could hold Colina against the world.
When you got a camp that's surrounded by canons about a thousand foot
deep, how you going to get into it, if the folks inside don't want you?
Now, take that, boy! How's he going to strike the main roads and the
bridges in the dead of night, especially when the bridges is all so
covered over with drifts that you can't see 'em by day? And, anyway, the
crust of the snow won't hold him in lots of places. 'Course he may
flounder 'round some, but there's no possible chance for him, and I'm
thinking that the coyotes'll get him before we do."

To this Seagreave agreed, and after the sheriff had further relieved his
feelings by some vitriolic comments upon Hanson, he granted him
permission to look after the two cabins, and indifferently ordered the
deputy in charge to go down the hill and get his breakfast at the hotel,
remarking with rough humor that he'd leave Seagreave the prisoner of the
mountain peaks and he guessed they'd keep him safe all right.

So the two men, their appetites sharpened by a night spent in searching
for the fugitive, took their way down toward the village, and it was not
long thereafter that Pearl, having secured permission to go up to the
cabin and make some changes in her clothing, wearily climbed the hill.
The lacks in her costume had been temporarily supplied by the
inn-keeper's wife, but these makeshifts irked her fastidious spirit.

She had suggested that Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas go with her, but
they were too thoroughly enjoying the limelight in which they found
themselves to consider trudging up to their isolated cabin. Mrs. Thomas,
in a pink glow of excitement, cooed and smiled and fluttered her lashes
at half a dozen admirers, while Mrs. Nitschkan recounted to an
interested group just where and how she had shot her bears.

"Say, have you took in the sheriff?" Mrs. Thomas found occasion to
whisper to Mrs. Nitschkan. "He's an awful good looker, an' I think he
got around that hall so stylish last night."

"What eyes he's got ain't for you," answered the gypsy cruelly. "He's
kept his lamps steady on Pearl."

"That's all you know about it," returned Mrs. Thomas with some spirit.
"He sat beside me at the table this morning and squeezed my hand twice
when I passed him the flap-jacks. He's a real man, he is, an' likes a
woman to be a woman, an' not a grizzly bear like you or a black panther
like that Pearl."

Pearl's progress up the hill was necessarily slow. The wagons had cut
the snow into great ruts which made walking difficult, and where it was
smoother it was exceedingly slippery. But her weariness soon vanished
under the stimulus of the fresh morning air. Even the exertion of
dancing the evening before and the night of excitement which followed
had left no trace. She was, indeed, a tireless creature and supple as a
whalebone. So, after a few moments' exercise in the exhilaratingly pure
air, the sparkle returned to her eye, the color to her cheek, and her
step had regained its usual light buoyancy.

Although March had come with its thaws, there was no suggestion of
spring in the landscape. From the white, monotonous expanse of snow rose
bleak, skeleton shapes of trees lifting bare, black boughs to the
snow-sodden clouds. Upon either side of the road lay a forest of
desolation--varied only by the sad, dull green of the wind-blown
pines--which stretched away and away until it became a mere blue shadow
as unsubstantial as smoke on the mountain horizon; and yet spring, still
invisible and to be denied by the doubting, was in the air, with all its
soft intimations of bud and blossom and joyous life; and spring was in
Pearl's heart as she hastened up the hill toward Seagreave. It brushed
her cheek like a caress, it touched her lips like a song.

When she was about a quarter of a mile up from the village she crossed a
little bridge which spanned a deep and narrow crevasse, a gash which
cleft the great mountain to its foundation. Pearl lingered here a moment
to rest, and, leaning her arms on the railing, looked down curiously
into the mysterious depths so far below.

The white walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold,
prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer
distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some
vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated
Pearl and she stood there trying to pierce the depths with her eye,
until at last, recalled to herself by the chill in the wind, she again
turned and hastened up the hill. But before seeking Seagreave and asking
him to share his breakfast with her, she followed the instincts of her
inherent and ineradicable coquetry and, stopping at her father's cabin,
made a toilet, slipping into one of her own gowns and rearranging her
hair. 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.

Seagreave had evidently seen her coming, for before she lifted her hand
to knock he threw open the door. "Ah," he cried, a touch of concern in
his voice, "I was just going down to the other cabin to make up the
fires before you came. If you stopped there you must have found it cold,
and you did stop," his quick eye noting the change she had effected in
her costume.

"Yes," she smiled, "they wouldn't let me come up the hill in Jose's coat
and my rose petticoats, and I felt like a miner in the clothes they lent
me." She had entered the cabin and had taken the chair he had pushed up
near the crackling, blazing fire of logs which he had just finished
building to his satisfaction. The bond of sympathy between Seagreave and
Jose was probably that they both performed all manual tasks with a sort
of beautiful precision. Gallito had characterized Harry's cabin as the
cell of a monk. It was indeed simple and plain to austerity, and yet it
possessed the beauty of a prevailing order and harmony. Shelves his own
hands had made lined the rough walls and were filled with books; beside
the wide fireplace was an open cupboard, displaying his small and
shining store of cooking utensils. For the rest a table or two and a few
chairs were all the room contained.

It was the first time Pearl had ever been in the cabin, and, although
she maintained the graceful languor of her pose, lying back a little
wearily in her chair, yet her narrow, gleaming eyes pierced every corner
of the room, with avid eagerness absorbing the whole, and then returning
for a closer and more penetrating study of details, as if demanding from
this room where he lived and thought a comprehensive revelation of him,
a key to that remote, uncharted self which still evaded her.

Seagreave himself, whose visible presence was, for the time, outside the
field of her conjecture, was busy preparing her breakfast, and now,
after laying the cloth, he placed a chair for her at the table and
announced that everything was ready. He seated himself opposite her and
Pearl's heart thrilled at the prospect of this intimate _tete-a-tete_,
the color rose on her cheek, her lashes trembled and fell.

"Where's Jose?" she said hastily, to cover her slight, unusual
embarrassment. "Tell me quick how you managed it. Neither Bob nor Pop
could tell me because someone was always with us."

"Ah," he said, "the gods were with us, but it was a wild chance, I
assure you. Fortunately, it was still snowing. Hugh and Jose were
already in the cart and everyone else had hastened home as fast as he or
she could go. The boys would not have waited for me if I had not dashed
out just when I did, and I was glad enough to escape, for I was afraid
they would make some mistake in the road, Hugh not being able to see,
and Jose familiar with the village only through our description of it. I
wasted no time in jumping into the cart and then drove like Jehu to the
Mont d'Or, fortunately on our way up the hill."

"The Mont d'Or!" she interjected in surprise. "But why did you stop
there?"

He shrugged his shoulders significantly. "It is Jose's shelter. He had
the keys of the engine room. Your father had sent them to him, and with
them he let himself in, and then locked the door behind him. We got a
fair start, of course, but it was only a few moments after we reached
here that three or four of the deputies were on our heels."

"Ah," she cried, "they thought you had driven him here."

"Naturally, and it is unnecessary to say that they spent several hours
in searching, not only this cabin, but your father's and Mrs.
Nitschkan's to boot, and also the stable yonder." He pointed to a little
shed farther up the hill where he kept his horse and cart. He held out
his coffee cup for her to refill and laughed heartily. "I have no doubt
that they will return at intervals during the day to see if there isn't
some tree-top or ledge of rock that they may have overlooked; but at
present they are too busy exploring every nook and cranny of the various
mines, especially the Mont d'Or."

She put down the coffee pot with a clatter and threw herself back in her
chair with a gesture of intense disappointment. "Then surely they will
find Jose!" she cried.

"Oh, you do not know," he exclaimed. "Wait; it was stupid of me not to
have explained. Your father is a wonderful man. He overlooks nothing. He
foresaw that in spite of all precautions, Jose--and other friends of
his," there was a trace of hesitation in his tones in speaking to her of
her father's chosen companions, "might be trapped here in the winter
time when they could not escape over the one or two secret trails which
he knows and which he has shown Jose. So, long ago, working secretly and
overtime in the Mont d'Or, he hollowed out a small chamber. It is above
one of the unworked stopes and its entrance defies detection."

"But are you sure?" she interjected earnestly. "Have you seen it
yourself?"

"Yes, I was with Jose the first time Gallito showed it to him. Then he,
your father, took us over the other parts of the mine and brought us
back to the same spot to see if we could discover the hiding place for
ourselves. I assure you we could not. Neither Jose nor myself liked
being baffled in that way, for it seemed to us that we went over every
inch of the ground, and your father stood there laughing at us in that
sarcastic way of his. Finally we gave up the search and Gallito marked
it, so that it might be found in a hurry. It is above one's head and the
wall is too smooth to climb in order to reach it--"

"How can Jose get in then?" interrupted Pearl.

"Jose has a key to your father's locker, and in that locker he keeps a
rope ladder. Jose throws up the ladder and the hooks catch on a dark,
narrow little ledge; climbing up to this, he finds a small opening; he
wriggles into this and finds himself in a small chamber which your
father always keeps well provisioned. From this chamber a narrow passage
leads up to the surface of the ground, thus providing two exits; but, of
course, the one above ground cannot be used now, owing to the snow."

Pearl, who had been listening breathlessly to this description of Jose's
hiding place, leaned back with a sigh of relief. "Then it looks as if
Jose might be all right for the present. I do hope so for all our
sakes."

She sat silent for a few moments, apparently turning over something in
her mind. When she spoke again her manner showed a certain
embarrassment. "Do--do you know," she asked rather hesitatingly, "how
they got the information?"

"No," he replied. "And that is what is puzzling all of us, but they have
so far refused to tell us."

Almost she uttered a prayer of thankfulness. She very strongly suspected
that the only way Hanson could have secured the information was through
her mother's inveterate habit of eavesdropping, a weakness of hers which
she had failed to hide from her daughter, and a feeling almost of
gratitude came over Pearl that so far Hanson had been decent enough to
spare that poor babbler.

She took a last sip of coffee and rose from the table. "I must go down
to the other cabin," she said, reluctance in her heart, if not in her
voice.

"I will go with you"--Seagreave rose with alacrity to accompany
her--"and get the fires builded. It should really have been done long
ago. But what am I thinking of? Wait a moment." He clapped his hand to
his pocket. "One never knows what avenues of cleverness and cunning a
great temptation may open up." He laughed a little. "On that wild drive
to the Mont d'Or I insisted on Jose removing your necklace and all your
rings with which he had decked himself. I dare say it cost him
immeasurable pangs, but he had no time to express them. As I was driving
he passed them over to Hugh, and when we reached here Hugh gave them to
me. He explained that in attempting to give them to you he might be
seen, and if he were it might lead to some embarrassing questions."

He drew from his pocket first the emeralds and then the rings, laying
them carefully upon the table, where they formed a glittering heap.

"I don't think it is possible that Jose withheld anything," Seagreave
continued. "He would not dare, and I am quite sure that neither Hughie
nor I dropped even a ring when he gave them to me. Still I would be very
much obliged if you will look them over and see if they are intact."

At the sight of her treasures Pearl uttered an exclamation of pleasure
and fingered them lovingly, laying the emeralds against her cheek with a
gesture that was almost a caress. "Thank you. Oh, it was good of you to
think of them at such a time and rescue them for me." Her soft, sliding
voice was warm with gratitude. "They are all here." She slipped the
rings on her fingers, her eyes dreaming on them. She fastened the
emeralds about her neck and hid them beneath her gown, pressing them
against her flesh as if she found pleasure in their cold contact.

She lifted her eyes to him; her smile was languourously ardent;
impulsively she caught his hand and held it for a moment against her
cheek. He started and she felt him tremble. Then hastily he withdrew his
hand, murmuring at the same time a confused, almost inarticulate
protest; but Pearl did not wait to hear it. She had risen abruptly and,
catching up her cloak and wrapping it hastily about her, had opened the
door before he could reach it and had stepped out into the snow.

Seagreave, who had paused a moment to close the door behind them, heard
her utter a sharp exclamation and turned quickly.

"Dios!" she cried. "Dios! What is it?"

She had fallen back against the wall of the cabin and was gazing about
her with a strange and startled expression. Seagreave's eye reflected it
as he too stared about him with a look not yet of alarm but of wild,
deep wonder. For the moment, at least, all things were the same. Above
them the peaks towered whitely in the sullen, gray sky. On a level with
their eyes, the illimitable forests of bare, black trees mingling with
the denser and more compact shapes of the evergreens, stretched away
over the hillsides, casting their long blue shadows on the snow-covered
ground until they wore blurred indistinguishably in the violet haze of
distance. Unchanged, and yet so strong was the presage of some
unimagined and disastrous event, that when a long shiver ran through the
earth Pearl screamed aloud, and, stumbling toward Seagreave, reached out
gropingly for his hand.

For the second that they waited the earth, too, seemed to wait, a
solemn, awe-filled moment of incalculable change, a tense moment, as if
the unknown, mysterious forces of nature were gathering themselves
together for some mighty, unprecedented effort.

Then shiver after shiver shook the ground, the earth trembled as if in
some deep convulsion, the white peaks seemed bowing and bending--then a
roar as of many waters, the air darkened and earth and sky seemed filled
with the mass of the mountains slipping down--down to chaos.

Pearl had ceased to scream and had fallen to her knees, clinging
desperately to Seagreave. Her face was blanched white with terror, and
she was muttering incoherent prayers.

As for Harry, he had forgotten her, forgotten himself, and was living
through moments or centuries, he knew not, which, of wonder and horror.

And what a sight! It was not simply a great mountain of snow slipping
thunderously down to the valleys beneath; but in its ever gathering
momentum and incredible velocity it tore great rocks from the ground and
either snapped off trees as if they had been straws, or wholly uprooted
them, and now was a fast-flying mass of snow, earth, trees and rocks
whirling and hurtling through the air.

A huge rock had, as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the
avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry
and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had
missed them by only a few paces.

Not realizing her immunity even after the air had begun to clear, and
still panic-stricken and fearful of what might still occur, Pearl
continued to moan and pray until Seagreave, who had been so dazed that
he had been almost in a state of trance, again became aware of her
presence and, partially realizing her piteous state of terror, lifted
her in his arms and, wrapping them about her, endeavored to soothe her
and allay her fears, although he had not yet sufficiently recovered
himself to know fully what he was doing, and was merely following the
instinct of protection.

It was impossible for him to realize the mundane again immediately after
these undreamed of and supernormal experiences. Holding Pearl, who still
clung to him frantically, cowering and trembling against him, he leaned
upon the rough, projecting walls of his cabin and gazed with awed and
still unbelieving eyes into this new and formless world, yet obscured
with flying snow.

Gradually as the air cleared he saw that a new world, indeed, lay before
them. "Look, look, Pearl," he cried, hoping to rouse her from her state
of blind fright. "It has been an avalanche and it is over now."

"No, no," she moaned, and buried her head more deeply in his shoulder.
"I dare not look up. It will come again."

"No, it doesn't happen twice. It is over now and we are safe and the
cabin is safe."

And yet, in spite of himself, he sympathized with her fear more than he
would have admitted either to himself or her. Anything seemed possible
to him now. He had looked upon a miracle. He had seen those immutable
peaks, as stable as Time, bend and bow in their strange, cosmic dance,
for the change in the position of one had created the illusory effect of
a change in all.

"Come, look up, Pearl," he urged. "It is all over and everything is
changed. Look up and get accustomed to it."

Everything was indeed changed. For a few yards before the cabin his path
with its white, smooth walls was intact, but beyond that lay an
incredibly smooth expanse of bare earth. The road was obliterated; the
vast projecting rock ledges which had overshadowed it had disappeared.
They had all been razed or else uprooted like the rocks and trees and
carried on in that irresistible rush. The light poured baldly down upon
a hillside bare and blank and utterly featureless. But far down the road
where the bridge had spanned the canon there rose a vast white mountain,
effectually cutting them off from all communication with the village
below.

Nothing remained of familiar surroundings. This was, indeed, a new
world. 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."

"Where?" asked Seagreave gently.

"Home," she cried wildly. "To the church. We can at least die
blessedly."

Seagreave shook his head, his eyes on that white wall--that snow
mountain which rose from the edge of the crevasse and seemed almost to
touch the sky. "Listen, Pearl," he spoke more earnestly now, as if to
force some appreciation of the situation upon her mind. "This cabin is
the only thing upon the mountain. The avalanche has carried everything
else away."

"Not my father's cabin, too," she peered down the hill curiously, yet
fearfully, in a fascinated horror. "Oh, but it is true. It is gone. Oh,
what shall we do? But we must get down to the camp. Come, come."

But for once Seagreave seemed scarcely to hear her. He had leaned out
from the sheltering wall and was scanning with a measuring and
speculative eye the white heap that rose from the edge of the canon and
seemed almost to touch the lowering and sullen sky.

"Thank God, the camp is safe," he murmured. "The canon must have saved
it, or else it would have been wiped off the earth just as Gallito's
cabin has been. But it has swept the bridge away, of course."

"Oh, come." Pearl dragged at his sleeve. "I can't stay here. I am
afraid."

"Pearl," and there were both anxiety and tenderness in his voice. "You
must understand. Try to realize that there is no way to get down."

"But there must be some way," she insisted, "with snow-shoes--"

He shook his head gently but definitely. "There is no way. We might as
well face it." He cast another long look at the sky. "It is the season
for the thaws, the big thaws, but, even so, it will take time to melt
down that mountain out there. No, it is useless to argue," as Pearl
began again her futile rebellion against the inexorable forces of
nature, "but what am I thinking of?" in quick self-reproach. "You must
not stay out here in the cold any longer. Come." He threw open the cabin
door.

But if Pearl heard him she gave no sign, but still leaned weakly, almost
inertly, against the walls of the cabin, gazing down the hillside with
dazed and still frightened eyes.

Seeing her condition, Seagreave wasted no more words, but lifted her in
his arms and carried her into the room they had so recently left. There
he placed her in a chair and pushed it near the fire and she sat
shivering and cowering, her hands outstretched to the blaze.

The light from the fire streamed through the room and Pearl, cheered and
restored more by that homely and familiar radiance than by any words of
comfort he might have uttered, gradually sank further and further back
in her chair and presently closed her eyes. It seemed to him that she
slept. At first her rest was fitful, broken by exclamations and starts,
but each time that she opened her eyes she saw the familiar and
unchanged surroundings, and Seagreave sitting near her; and, reassured,
her sleep became more natural and restful.

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