CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT was undoubtedly a blessing that in the present dejected and excited state of Mrs. Nitschkan's intimate friends their minds were taken from the subject of their grievance by the arrival of Garvin's visitors. Sleek, stout capitalists were common enough—they came and went every few weeks; but the presence of Miss Evelyn Alexandra Sourrier caused a tremendous commotion. This tall, fair, pretty girl with her classic repose, her smart outdoor costumes, her faultless grooming and her ease and charm of manner was something new in the experience of Zenith.
There was a noticeable slackening in household activities, and a marked increase in lengthy discussions held over side fences or front gates; and the ladies of Zenith found plenty to discuss. Each day there was a fresh expedition from the house on the flats, and each night from the open windows the sound of voices and laughter and music. The piano would be touched by light, skilful fingers, and a pure, sweet, soprano voice, not particularly strong, but charmingly cultivated, would float out to the listeners on the edge of the village.
By day there would be the rattle of traps, the stamp of horses' hoofs, for the English girl rode and drove with equal grace and assurance. Into many of these excursions Garvin strove at first to draw Frances; but when he saw that her real inclination was against it, he desisted, and the gaiety, the action, the colour of the life that was being lived on the flats flowed by her like a stream in which she had no part.
At first Frances calmly busied herself in picking up the various threads of her rather neglected duties, neglected in thought if not actually in deed, happy in the remembrance of the golden hours since Garvin's return; but as the days dragged into a week and she learned that his guests had so enjoyed their visit that they had consented to prolong it for a few days at least, the desolate, almost violent emptiness of her life frightened her. It was as if she had suddenly been plunged into some deep, almost unsuspected abyss, deprived of all she valued. She had also become vaguely conscious of all the furtive eyes that were so eagerly bent upon her, for intuitively and unerringly she knew that Zenith was spending a large part of its time wondering how she "took" Garvin's constant attendance on Miss Sourrier, and speculating as to "how things stood between Missioner and Walt."
It was after a night the greater part of which had been spent in these reflections, that Frances awoke very early one morning, awoke to count the days that Garvin had spent almost constantly in the society of Evelyn Sourrier.
There was a sore feeling of disappointment and resentment at her heart, an emotion which she knew to be unreasonable, but which remained to torment her in spite of her efforts to overcome it. In some way, she felt as if the tender, beautiful shoot of friendship between Walter Garvin and herself had been cut and that it bled—it bled within her heart. The room was still dark, although a pale, cold glimmer of dawn was beginning faintly to penetrate it. Frances lay upon her narrow bed gazing into the shadows, and as she thus lay, with wide eyes, Garvin's face grew slowly out of the gloom; that lined face, strong, sensitive, humorous, the tall figure with the slight droop to the shoulders. So, for a moment, vividly she saw him; behind him the shadows, between them the growing light of dawn. For a moment only he stood there smiling at her, and then—merely the shadows.
Frances never knew afterward whether it were a vision or some trick of her imagination, overwrought from a sleepless night; but in the second's space that he stood smiling at her, she awoke to a definite and full self-knowledge, and in that flash of revelation she saw herself as a silent plant, carefully, steadily putting forth its leaves, painstakingly growing a few inches, and fancying, in some half-sentient fashion, that it had achieved its purpose in existing; but now, through every branch, and leaf, and tendril, there swept, from some unfathomable, unsuspected depths of being, the tingling impulse of life, the tremulous certainty that the plant was to bear a blossom, an exotic and splendid late flowering. Ah, it was no tender shoot of friendship that Evelyn had bruised, it was the blossom of love!
This full understanding of what her emotions during the past weeks had meant was to her like a blinding flash of light. It was a shock so violent as to affect her physically. She sat up in bed and gazed about her with wild, frightened eyes. Mechanically she caught up the heavy mass of hair lying along her back and twisted it about her head with trembling fingers. Then letting it fall again, she sprang from her couch and ran to the window.
The pale light was growing, the first flush of rose trembled over the high peaks, the silver pines across the road swayed in the morning wind, and while Frances clung to the window, the rising sun sent one straight, flashing beam through the trees. Almost, she heard the high command of eternal morning: "Lift up your gates and sing!"
The breeze swept down from the silver pines and through her window. She drew in its imperishable freshness in one long breath that thrilled and vivified every nerve. Ah, her gates were lifted as high as heaven and the very soul of her sang! She abandoned herself to the exaltation, the ecstasy of those moments of entire self-knowledge. A sea of tenderness flowed from her heart, and she stretched out her arms to the spot where Garvin's figure had grown from the dusk.
She did not take up the thread of her various duties that morning, and her household affairs, to which she usually gave a dainty and fastidious attention, were, for the first time, neglected. She sat, for the most part, with folded hands, dreaming. Through knowing her own heart, she divined Garvin's; and in a belief of his love for her she basked in the golden content of the earth, basking in the autumn sun.
Her heart had at last demanded its toll. The primitive, elemental woman in her stirred in sleep, arose in grave clothes, bound, and confronting her, cried:
"Starved, atrophied, I yet demand my reckoning, my tithe of love, my joy of giving! This is my hour!" And listening to that voice, there stole over the Missionary a distaste for her work. Life, the common-place, ordinary life of woman, suddenly flashed upon her the jewel facets of a thousand new meanings. Her splendid worlds were as dead planets; even that far, transcendent country to which Mr. Campbell sometimes journeyed, and for which the soul of her yearned, became dim and undesirable.
She wanted the dear world of everyday; the warm, snug fireside of content, with its homely, happy duties of service. She dreamed of the soft, moist kisses of children on her cheek, their vague clutching hands at her bosom; of a man's arms enfolding her and of his kisses on her mouth. To live in his hopes, to help build his future—that was a woman's only life.
During the afternoon Myrtle Swanstrom—since a fortnight past, Myrtle McGuire—climbed the trail and knocked at the cabin door. So deliciously conscious was Myrtle of the importance of her new position that she exhibited it by various outward and visible signs: such as discarding her pink sunbonnet and wearing her Sunday hat, as a sort of matronly distinction.
"My, but it's warm!" she exclaimed as she seated herself carefully in a rocking chair, forbearing to take her accustomed seat on the step, this, too, as a concession to matronly dignity. After due respect had been paid the conventionalities, by inquiries concerning Frances's welfare, she skilfully turned the conversation into those channels wherein the fluid thought of Zenith was at present running.
"My! Did you ever see such goin's on as they're havin' over to Walt Garvin's? Why, they say there's the greatest load of provisions sent up from Denver every day; fruit and vegetables an' all kinds of delicacies that ever was. An' all those horses! Well, Walt can certainly afford it. Why, Missioner, Walt's gettin' richer 'n' richer every minute. They say that in a year or so, when his mines is more developed, he'll be one of the richest men in the whole country. Frank says he's thinkin' now about goin' into politics. Well, it didn't take long to forget poor Lutie, did it? Though 'course nobody expects a man to mourn like a woman, it ain't in 'em. Do you think the English girl's pretty?"
"Very," replied Frances briefly.
"Kind o' tall," belittled Myrtle; "but she's real nice. Folks expected her to be terrible proud, but she ain't; not a mite. 'Course she talks so low an' fast an' kind o' foreign that you can't hardly understand her; but she ain't so bad.
"Say, Missioner, Frank an' me wants you to come down some evening real soon an' take supper with us. I mos' got the house in order, an' it's awful cute. An', Missioner, Frank an' me's as happy as the day's long. When I think how crazy I acted—my! But then, girls ain't got any sense. It takes bein' married to settle 'em. An', Missioner,"—with real affection and loyalty,—"I ain't forgot how you tried to keep me straight an' make me see my duty. You don't know what it means to the women in this camp to feel that they's one woman they can come to an' kind o' talk things over with. Frank an' me owes a lot of our happiness to you, an'—oh, Missioner,"—with a long sigh,—"I am so happy!"
"Myrtle, I'm so glad." Frances spoke with heartfelt tenderness, and eternal sisterhood expressed itself in the smile that passed between them.
Myrtle suddenly leaned forward and gazed excitedly through the door. "I thought that was her dress," she explained. "Say, Missioner, it's the Pearl goin' up the hill with Bob Flick. Ain't it awful the way she traipses round with him? I don't see," with the severity of the newly wed, "how married women can carry on like that. Ain't they got their own husbands?"
But both the Pearl and Bob Flick were not only indifferent to gossip, but oblivious of it. Where the Black Pearl beckoned, Flick walked. If there was danger in the path they trod, he cared as little as she. O'Brien was away all day at the mines. Flick dealt faro bank all night; but during the afternoons he often stood by Mrs. O'Brien's gate, although he never entered her house, and together they would stroll through the village street and up the trails, entirely heedless of the eyes which peered curiously from every window and doorway.
This afternoon, after passing the Missionary's cabin, the two climbed upward for a time, following a narrow trail until they reached a huge, flat rock in the soft gloom of a row of encircling pine trees, whose tall, dark tops pointed upward like Gothic spires in the deep blue sky. Here they seated themselves, and Flick drew a large handkerchief of checkered silk from his pocket and slowly wiped his brow. Not being a discerning person, he had failed to notice that the Black Pearl's interest in him continued to be singularly desultory and impersonal. It was enough that she would meet and talk with him; but it was not possible for him to suspect that her conversations with him had become the gate by which she could escape the high, crowding mountains and wander again in the remote and shadowy wastes of the desert. That her manner toward him was of unchanged and careless indifference, and that her light coquetry was inherent and habitual, did not trouble him. She had always been that way since he had known her.
For a few moments they sat in silence, gazing down into the valley shimmering in sun-hazes below, silent for a time; the Pearl's mind busy, as usual, with the mirage of her fancy. Suddenly she drew her breath in sharply: "A person could breathe down there," she cried. "Say, wasn't that air good? It just seemed to put fresh life into you."
Flick looked at her curiously. "Pearl, where was you born an' raised?"
She glanced up quickly. "Oh, I do' know," evasively. "I been about a good deal, 'most everywhere; but it seems to me that I been lookin' fer it, Bob, forever; that somethin', I don't know what, that I always, always been a-dreamin' of an' longin' fer."
"I don't ketch what you're harpin' on," he said patiently. "I don't see how anybody could be more free than you was. 'Course, if you would go and get married"
"I wasn't never free," she said passionately. "There ain't nothin' free that's hobbled, even if the hobble's round your heart an' don't show."
"The mountains do seem to kind o' hedge you in," said the man, adopting what he supposed to be her point of view, "an' it sure don't seem right fer you to be caged up here. You"—he looked at her half fearfully, and slightly moistened his lips—"I'm a-goin' down the trail in a few days; come on an' go with me."
She shook her head. "I can't go junketing round with you, Bob; you're a-forgettin' Shock."
For a long time they sat in silence
"Oh, I ain't a-forgettin' Shock," he answered coolly. "If you go with me, Pearl, him an' me'll probably have it out sometime; but that ain't worryin' me none. Pearl, I ain't forgot the first time I saw you. It was in the back room at Chickasaw Pete's, an' you was a-shakin' dice with two or three of the boys, an' I joined the game. I never admired no one in my life like I admired you then, for I knew you wasn't shakin' 'em square; but you done it so slick that I couldn't tell how you managed it, an' you walked out in about twenty minutes with the best part of our money. You remember, Pearl?"
"Oh, I remember," the mysterious veil of reverie had fallen over her sulky eyes.
"An' the next time I seen you, you was dancin'. You had them emeralds twisted around your neck. Have you forgot how to dance?"
"No, I ain't forgot." She stirred her feet restlessly. "Oh, I ain't forgot." There was a moment of silence. "Bob, I always could talk to you, some way. I wonder why? With the other boys it was laugh an' carry on; but I could always sit down and talk sober an' serious to you. You never made a fool of yourself about me."
The man's face had grown grey. He attempted to speak once or twice before the words came. At last he laughed, one brief, harsh note.
"Maybe I didn't, Pearl. They was enough of 'em makin' fools of themselves about you, God knows! An' I see right from the start that you didn't give a damn for any of 'em; but I was always a fool about you in my heart. They's always plenty of men to go crazy about you, Pearl; to lie, an' steal, an' to kill each other fer you, an' make damn fools of theirselves generally. There's a-plenty that likes to show off that a-way; but there's only two or three in all your life that'll ever really love you, an' one of 'em's me."
He turned to meet her faintly astonished, cynical gaze. "It's true; it's God's truth!" he said doggedly, again drawing the handkerchief from his pocket with a trembling hand and passing it over his brow and his ashen face. "Oh, I always wanted you! Yes, I'd a stole an' lied an' fought fer you, too. You drove me as stark, starin' crazy as the rest of 'em; but that weren't all. There was somethin' in you, Pearl, that kind o' made me dream, an' that stayed with me; an' it don't let me think much about myself. It's about you. An' now I feel it this a-way. You ain't jus' quite yourself. You're a-feelin' the need of a little change. See? Well, you come down the trail with me of a Thursday."
It was several minutes before she answered. "I couldn't, Bob," and she added gently: "You've kind o' surprised me. I didn't know you felt that way for me, an' I'm awful sorry, honest, I am; but I couldn't go."
"Maybe I ain't made it plain to you," he pleaded. "Maybe you didn't understand. I mean it this a-way," in laborious explanation. "I ain't tryin' to take you away fer myself. It's because I see you ain't happy that I'm a-askin' you to go. All I'm a-askin' is to look after you, an' see that you're comfortable. You kin think of me as a kind of human dog. You'll let me set around when it don't bother you none; an' when you get tired of me you kin kick Fido out, and it'll be back to the kennel fer his. That's all I'm a-askin', Pearl."
She drew in her breath and looked at him strangely, with something new in her glance, something that he had never seen there before.
"God, Bob! But you're a good fellow!" she said in an awed voice. "I didn't suppose there was any of your kind on the earth; but you don't understand."
"I kin learn," he said humbly. "Try me an' see if I can't."
She smiled at him her heart-shattering, cynical smile. "I don't see how you're a-goin' to learn somethin' that I don't understand myself," she answered; "an' that's me. There's so many of a person," resentfully, "so terrible many of a person. There's a somethin' in me that's tired, somethin' that's played the game fer a thousand years an' knows there ain't nothin' in it; an' there's somethin' in me that's got to live, an' that somethin' says, 'Everything comes to you so easy, reach out an' enjoy it'; an' maybe that's the reason that it don't never seem of no account. 'Cause it always comes so easy."
The pine needles fell about them. New arrows of sunlight pierced the soft gloom, and for a time they sat in the silence of the hills, the Pearl's wistful eyes searching the past.
"You was a-talkin' about my jewels a while back, Bob," she began suddenly. "Well, the night before I was married I give 'em all to Father Gonzales. It was in that dark little chapel, with just a candle or so burnin' before the shrines; an' it was so still, an' smelled faint of incense. An' you kind o' felt things, things you hadn't never known. Well, I give him my emeralds, an' I says: 'Make some poor souls happy with what you can get for these, Padre.' Then he handed out a line of talk that sounded mighty good to me. He says: 'This deed that you done, my daughter, redeems your soul. Live clean an' happy from now on,' he says, 'an' forget the past.' Oh, but his words felt warm to my heart! 'That's what I want, Padre,' I says; 'that's what I want.' I stripped the rings off my fingers, an' I piled 'em up in his hands; an' I cried, Bob. Lord, how the tears run down my face, an' I don't know when I'd ever cried before! Well, he took an' laid the rings on the altar, an' he said: 'These offerings an' your tears washes your soul white. Go in peace, my daughter, an' sin no more.' An' I believed him." There was despair in her voice. "But it was a lie, all a lie, jus' like everything else. I can't find no happiness. There's too many of me; an' yet, I know there's somethin', somethin' that I've missed, an' I don't know how nor where to find it. You all always laughed at me 'cause I didn't know how to tell it; I jus' called it bein' free."
Flick turned on her with sudden passion. "An' you won't never find it as long as you stay with Shock O'Brien. They tell me," he clinched his hands on his knees and the dark purple crept up slowly under his skin, "they tell me he ain't no scruples against knockin' you 'round as he feels like. I'd"
She sprang to her feet, livid with fury. "They say, they say" She broke into a torrent of oaths. "Yes, Bob Flick," growing calmer, "it's true. He's hit me, an' he's hit me more'n once. But why? 'Cause he was jealous."
"I don't see what difference that makes," he muttered.
"You don't? I suppose not,"—with infinite scorn,—"but any woman would. Why, he loves me so much that it drives him plumb off his head to see another man look at me. An' when he gets that way he ain't no idea what he does. An' he ain't never raised a bruise on me, not once, that he ain't cried like a baby an' broke his heart over it when he come to himself. Maybe you think, Bob Flick, 'cause I kind of like to talk over old times with you, that I'd go off with you an' leave him. Why, I'd see you dead in the ditch first. Maybe you think 'cause I kind of hate the mountains and the flat old life here that I'm tired of Shock. Well, you got another good long guess comin'."
She swept by him, drawing her skirts contemptuously from his shoe, and started down the trail. Then her mood changed, she turned and smiled cajolingly at him, and ran back to stretch out a conciliatory hand.
"Don't pay no 'tention to me, Bob. You're one of the best ever, an' I know you mean kind, no matter how I take on. But, my Lord! I got to run. Shock'll be home, an' no supper fer him. So long."
She hastened down the hill, the cheap pink gown falling in long folds of beauty about her Diana-like grace, the last rays of the sun brightening her sun-burned hair—and never a thought for the man who sat motionless watching her.