The Black Pearl | Page 4

her ankles, slender for a dancer, and her arched feet in heelless black slippers. In contrast to her red frock was a string of sparkling green stones which fell low on her breast. Her long, brown fingers blazed with rings, and in her ears, swinging against her olive cheeks, were great hoops of dull gold. Her black shining hair was gathered low on her neck, her unsmiling lips were scarlet as a pomegranate flower, and exquisitely cut; and the fainter, duskier pomegranate bloom on her oval cheeks faded into delicate stains like pale coffee beneath her long, narrow eyes.
"She ain't done a thing yet; she ain't even showed whether she can dance a few bars or not, but, Lord! how she has got over!" was Hanson's unspoken comment. "Clean to the back seats. There's nobody else here."
Although still aimlessly moving with the rhythm of the waltz she no longer merely followed the music. She and it were one now. And Hanson, a connoisseur, familiar with the best, at least in his part of the world, recognized the artist whose technique is so perfect that it is absorbed, assimilated and forgotten; but its essence remains, nevertheless, a sure foundation upon which to build securely future combinations and improvisations.
The Black Pearl was generous to-night. She was the program--its one feature. She gave the audience its money's worth, judged by their standards, which were measured by time; and yet, when she finished, she gave one no idea of having exhausted her repertoire. In fact, she could not have defined that repertoire. Dancing was her expression, and the Black Pearl was conscious of infinite and unsounded phases of self.
Most of the features of the program were familiar to Hanson by her reputation. They included some old Spanish dances, some gypsy ones and others manifestly her own. But dancer though she was by nature and training, her personality dominated and eclipsed her art.
Hanson was not imaginative, but as he watched her he seemed to be gazing at some gorgeous cactus blossom opening its scentless petals to the burning sun. Beneath and beyond her stretched the gray wastes of the desert turning to gold under her feet, but still untrammeled and merciless, holding strange secrets close to its savage heart; now, exerting all its magic of illusion in delicate and exquisite mirages, all of its luring fascination which has drawn men to it from the beginning of the world; and now revealing itself desolate and unashamed in all of its repulsive, stark aridity.
The Pearl certainly made no effort to attract. If a glance from those narrow eyes enthralled, it stung too. It was the flame of wine in the blood, the flick of a whip on the raw, which roused in a man's heart, in Hanson's at least, the passionate disposition to conquer and subdue.
Finally she gave a slight signal to the musicians, her steps slowed, the music stopped, and she went over and sat down beside the woman, who had placed her violin on the piano, and then flung herself into a chair, where she sat, carefully dabbing her warm brow with her handkerchief.
The vague pictures which Hanson had been seeing vanished. "Gee! She got me going!" he said to himself, half dazedly, "hypnotized me sure." This, the manager. But the man exulted: "She ain't easy. She ain't easy."
The moment the Pearl stopped dancing the audience was on its feet applauding, and then, to a man, it eddied about her, casting banknotes into her lap. These she lifted in handfuls and gave to two men who had sat down beside her to count, while a third bent over them watching the operation.
Hanson, although he had drawn nearer her, still stood on the edge of the crowd, leaning against the bar. "So that's the Black Pearl!" he said presently to the bar-keeper.
"That's her," responded Jimmy equably. "Can't be beat. What'll you have?"
"Nothing, just yet. Say, those stones around her neck look good to me." Hanson narrowed his eyes.
"Good!" Jimmy laughed shortly, a characteristic, mirthful little chuckle. "I guess so. Bob Flick, up there beside Pearl, counting that money, he gave 'em to her after she found him when he'd been lost on the desert about three days. I'll tell you about it when I got more time."
Hanson had been conscious from time to time of the close but furtive scrutiny of the man whom the bar-keeper had designated as Bob Flick, and now he, in turn, made Flick an object of observation.
He saw a tall man of noticeable languor and deliberation of movement, doubtless so long studied that it had become natural. His face, with regular, rather aquiline features, was devoid of expression, almost mask-like, while the deep lines about the mouth and eyes showed that he lived much in the hard, brilliant, western sunlight.
Hanson was