Heart's Desire Part 17

The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it herself, unconsciously.

"My friend," said she, "you're right. I reckon I'll have to sing."

"When?" said Tom Osby.

"Now," said Alice Strowbridge. She rose and stepped toward the piano open near the fire.

The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion. A splendid creature, bedecked, bejewelled, s.e.x all over, magnificent, terrible, none the less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands twined together in embarra.s.sment, as they did the first time she sang in public as a child. The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land. The red rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--half trembled. Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known in years--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. There sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place where men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that which was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her, what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floor she stopped, her hand at her throat.

"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding, "for me to do this-a-way. It's right embarra.s.sin' for a lady like you to try to oblige a feller like me. But, ma'am, all I can say is, all the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."

She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it. Tom Osby grew more confident, more bold.

"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the things you are singin' right then. Ain't that so?"

"We have many costumes," said she, simply. "We play many parts.

Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."

"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume to go along with that?"

"You mean--"

"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right _white_." He blushed and hastened to apologize. "Not sayin' anything against that dress you've got on," he said. "I never saw one as fine as that in all my life. I never saw any woman, never in all my life, like you. I--I--ma'am"--he flushed, but went on with a t.i.tanic simplicity--"I _worship_ you, right where you stand, in that there dress; but--could you--"

"You are an artist yourself!" cried she. "Yes! Wait!"

In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening.

In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared. The rich black laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone.

She was clad in simple white--and yes! a blue sash was there. The piled ma.s.ses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids. By the grace of the immortal G.o.ds all misdeeds were lifted from her that night. For once in many years she was sincere. Now she was a girl again, and back at the old home. Those were the southern mountains half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days, swinging up again. There was the gallery at the window of the old Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, the unspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more! The souls of a thousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came to her out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.

And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all, to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--she sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat crumpled up, shaken, undone.

She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she could not deprive herself of her own little triumph. Or perhaps, deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear. She sang first the leading _arias_ of her more prominent operatic roles.

She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance on a critical stage. "_n.o.bil signors_," she sang, her voice lingering. And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in her rendition. Melody after melody, score after score, product of the greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never definitely realized what privilege had been his. She slipped on and on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no florid triviality from any land. With a voice which had mastered the world, she sang the best of the masters of the world. So music, with all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there in the c.h.i.n.ks of the rude-hewn walls.

All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano broke, dropped, and paused. And then, with no more interlude, that great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie Laurie." At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.

Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery.

Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to the hotel. Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never got even so far as the door. The voice of Donatelli caught and held him as it had her other auditor. He stopped midway of the gallery, listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away, returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines. He started even at the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the little fire. He could not sleep. A face looked at him out of the dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.

The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a Face that was the Fairest.

He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time. It was Tom Osby, who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the rec.u.mbent figure on the camper's bed. Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that his companion was not asleep.

"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of pa.s.sengers back home with us."

"Pa.s.sengers?" A voice came from the blankets.

"Yes. Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin'

train from El Paso. Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow, Barkley, I believe his name is. I reckon he's attoreney for the road."

Deep silence greeted this. Tom reached forward and picked up a brand to light his pipe more thoroughly.

"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to take care of me."

CHAPTER XII

THE PRICE OF HEART'S DESIRE

_Concerning Goods, their Value, and the Delivery of the Same_

In the morning the travellers arose with the sun, and after breakfast Tom Osby began methodically to break camp as though preparing for the return up-country. Neither made reference to any event occurring since their arrival, or which might possibly occur in the near future. Dan Anderson silently watched his partner as he busied himself gearing up his horses. All was nearly ready for the start on their journey down the east side of the Sacramentos, when they heard afar a faint and wheezy squeak, the whistle of a railway train climbing up the opposite slope.

"There's the choo-choo cars," said Tom, "comin' a-rarin' and a-pitchin'. The ingine has to side-step and back-track about eight times to get up the grade. Didn't notice my old grays a-doin' that none, when we come up, did you? I'm the railroad for our town, and I've got that one beat to a frazzle. Now listen to that thing, Dan; that's the States comin' to find us out." Dan Anderson made no reply.

"Well, let her come," Tom resumed cheerfully; "I come from Georgy, and in that country, it ain't considered perlite to worry if you've got one square meal ahead. Which, by the way, reminds me that that's about all we've got ahead now. You just set here with the team a while, while I take a _pasear_ down the canon to see if I can get a deer for supper to-night. I hope the old railroad ain't scared 'em all away. Besides, we might as well stay here for a hour or so anyway, now, and see what the news is, since the cars has got in."

He tapped the muzzle of his old rifle against the wagon wheel to shake out the dust, and then took a squint into the barrel. "I can see through her," he said, "or any ways, halfway through, and I reckon she'll go off." Next he poked the magazine full of cartridges, and so tramped off down the mountain side.

Dan Anderson sat down on a bundle of bedding, and fell into a half dream in the warm morning sun. There was time even yet for him to escape, he reflected. He had but to step into the wagon, and drive on down the canon. Constance Ellsworth--if indeed it were true that she had come again so near to him--need never know that he had been there.

How could he learn if she had indeed come? How could he ever face her now? Surely she could never understand. She could only despise him.

Dan Anderson sat, irresolute, staring at the breakfast dishes piled near the mess-box ready for packing.

Meantime, in the dining room at Sky Top hotel, there was a certain flutter of excitement as there entered, just from the train, the party of Mr. Ellsworth, president of the new railway company now building northward. Ellsworth beckoned Porter Barkley to him for talk of business nature, so that Constance sat well-nigh alone when Madame Alicia Donatelli came sweeping in, tall, comely, sombre, and, it must be confessed, hungry. Donatelli hesitated politely, and Constance made room for her with a smile and gesture, which disarmed the Donatelli hostility for all well-garbed and well-poised young women of cla.s.s other than her own.

"And you're going up the country still farther?" asked Donatelli, catching a remark made by one of the men. "I wish I could go as well.

You go by buckboard?"

Constance nodded. "I like it," said she. "I am sure we shall enjoy the ride up to Heart's Desire."

"Heart's Desire?" repeated the diva, with an odd smile.

Constance saw the smile and challenged it. "Yes," she replied briefly, "I was there once before."

"What is it like?" asked Donatelli.

"Like nothing in the world--yet it's just a little valley shut in by the mountains."

"A man was here from Heart's Desire last night," began Donatelli. "You know, I am a singer. He had heard in some way. My faith! He came more than a hundred miles, and he said from Heart's Desire. I've wondered what the place was like."

The Donatelli face flushed hotly in spite of herself. A queer expression suddenly crossed that of Constance Ellsworth as well. She wondered who this man could be!

"It was just a couple of campers who travelled down by wagon,"

explained the diva. "Only one of them came up to the house. Their camp is by the springs, a half mile or so down the east side. He told me they had no music at Heart's Desire."

In the heart of Constance Ellsworth there went on jealous questionings.

Who was this man from Heart's Desire, who had come a hundred miles to hear a bit of music? What other could it be than one? And as to this opera singer, surely she was beautiful, she had charm. So then--