Their Mariposa Legend Part 8

"I'm making a sketch of Pal holding the gaff," she ventured at length when the strain had become too uncomfortable.

"So I see."

This second tentative effort at conversation having flickered and gone out she bent again to her work, while Blair remained, looking down at her, in his eyes mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and resentment. What had he done, he wondered, to account for such a change? Or, perhaps, it was something he had not done. He tried again.

"Aren't we going for our ride this morning? It's a glorious day, and I have the refusal of the two best horses."

"No, I think not,--not this morning, thank you," she answered. In her voice was the same crisp sweetness. "I haven't time!"

With a shrug of pure bewilderment he backed away, then lingered a moment longer to watch the sketch take shape beneath her hurrying brush. That was the particular moment Miss Hastings chose for the final reckless stab.

"You're standing in my light," she said. "If you'd just as soon, please do go away, Mr. Blair. It makes me nervous to have people looking over my shoulder when I'm trying to paint."

This was just a trifle more than Blair at the moment was prepared to stand. His eyes grew dark.

"Certainly," he replied icily. "So sorry to have bothered you at all.

I only came down to tell you that I've decided to leave today. There's nothing more to keep me now, I think, and I'm rather anxious to get home. You'll find your check at the desk." And he sauntered away.

She did not go back to the hotel for luncheon. She had finished her sketch, yet, somehow, when the time came, she discovered that it would be quite impossible to enter the dining room. She found it equally impossible to take the afternoon boat herself. Instead, having clambered half way up the steep slope to the cavern, she watched from behind a flaming riot of wild nasturtians while, preceded by a hotel porter bearing bags and suit-cases, Blair boarded the Avalon for Los Angeles.

He was going away, then, without even a word of farewell.

The heart of the little art teacher turned cold within her, so cold that she sank numbly into the red and gold tangle; nor did she look up again until the steamer, dipping below the horizon, had left only a trail of smoke to show where it disappeared. She had not believed that he would do quite that!

When evening came she went stoically in to dinner. There was no reason any longer for staying away. Sternly she kept her eyes from the vacant place opposite. Yet somehow she could not persuade herself that he was really gone. More than once she caught herself watching the door, half expecting to see him stroll in with apologies for tardiness and take his empty chair. When again the orchestra drifted suddenly into the waltz to which they had danced, she rose abruptly and left the room.

Well, she would go herself in the morning. She would settle everything and pack her things at once. She went to the desk to ask for the check.

But there was nothing for her. No, the clerk a.s.sured her after much fumbling, Mr. Blair hadn't left anything, either in her box or his own.

But,--the man stole a covert glance at her downcast face,--he was still holding his rooms. Probably he meant to attend to it when he returned.

That he might not see the wild joy that leaped to her eyes, Miss Hastings turned with startling suddenness and fled upstairs. Safe in her own room she flung herself with tears and laughter on the bed. So that was the hand he was playing, was it?--the dear, wicked, unmanageable--!

Of course he would have to be punished,--well punished! but--she laughed aloud for pure joy--the world was a radiant place once more, and nothing of any sort really mattered, because he was coming back.

But the next day went by, and the next, and he had not come. Day after day pa.s.sed in an empty procession, yet no one of them brought that for which she waited. And there was nothing else to do. Work was out of the question. She could not sit still long enough. It became, instead, her sole occupation to linger each morning and afternoon on the verandah until the steamer from Los Angeles had rounded the point and crossed the bay in front of the hotel. Then, hidden behind the palms she would watch until the last straggling tourist had left the pier. But still he did not come.

Doubt in every tormenting guise a.s.sailed her. Perhaps he had changed his mind and decided later not to return. Yet the clerk had said he meant to come back! Perhaps her check, sent by mail, was even now in her box.

But she had not the courage to go again to the desk. Driven by alternate hope and fear she lost color, and she could not sleep. During seven miserable nights she planned to go back to Pasadena by the morning boat, and as many times she put it off. Yet, if he did return to find her waiting, what, then, would she have given him the right to think? But, on the other hand, if she went she might never see him again!

On the eighth day she took herself grimly in hand. No longer would she humiliate herself by any further delay. Wildenai had not waited, and even a school teacher can be as proud as an Indian princess! That very afternoon she would finish her sketch of the cavern. Then tomorrow she would go back to Pasadena and the long gray round of work. Desolately she wandered up the secret trail to Wildenai's bower. Never had her sympathy for the deserted princess been so keen. Perhaps, she mournfully considered, if the spirit of the Indian maiden still lingered there it might feel sympathy for her as well. Perhaps she, too, would find comfort in the spot where that other woman had paid an equal price for her impulsiveness.

The shadows in the little cavern were dark and cool and, laying aside her box of colors, for a long time she sat quite motionless, staring out to where the gulls drifted and glinted against the blue. She heard after a while the whistle of the approaching steamer but gave no heed. Lying back against the moss she had almost dropped asleep when something in the corner opposite attracted her attention. She sat up nervously and stared into the shadows. Was it only that the darkness was deeper over there, or was that really something propped against the wall? And had it moved?

In the years that followed she never knew how long she sat there after the stones had been lifted away, holding in her lap those shreds of torn white doeskin. Still caught together, though in tatters, by long strings of sh.e.l.ls and beads, they shone, a ghostly film of white from out the dimness. A breath, and the whole would have crumbled into dust. Yet the beads, she noticed, were still perfect as when strung by slim brown fingers centuries before. Only half believing it was not all of it a dream, she lifted them strand after strand. Then, suddenly, she gave a little cry. Somewhere from out the torn folds a slender chain had slipped. Trembling with a curiosity that bordered close on terror, she carried it to the light, and there it glowed, a glancing stream of crimson, in her hand.

"Wildenai's necklace!" she breathed, and hid her face.

There came the sound of a step outside. The manzanita branches were pushed impatiently aside and he stood before her.

The journey across the channel from Los Angeles had seemed twice as long as when he made it a few weeks before, and he had hurried all the way from the hotel straight to the little cavern. But now that he had found her again, there seemed to be plenty of time for everything, and he stood quite silent looking down at her. He was glad he had found her there, glad, in a curious, unreasoning way, for the quiet of the late afternoon, for the faint fragrance of the Mariposa lilies blooming just beyond the ledge. Yet he let her know nothing of this in what he said.

"So here you are, after all! I thought I should find you here."

She had not heard him come and was startled into a cry.

"You!" she gasped, and lifted eyes in which the telltale signs of tears were still quite evident, so evident that, with a woman's instinct to hide them, she caught up the necklace and held it toward him.

"See what I've found!" she exclaimed.

But he paid no heed. Instead, manlike, he proceeded, quite unconsciously, to say the one thing that could hurt her most.

"I looked for you at the hotel first, then I came on up here. I knew you wouldn't go till I came!"

The color that had flooded her face at the sound of his voice faded again. She was quite white as she asked quietly:

"How could you know I would stay?"

He laughed easily, settling himself confidently on the moss at her side.

"Because I hadn't paid you yet," he answered gaily. "Don't you think that was clever of me, Wildenai?"

"I would rather you did not call me that," she told him coldly, "It sounds irreverent." And she dropped her eyes, which had filled again miserably, to the film of white in her lap. Then, with a pitiful attempt to hurt him in return: "Of course you realize that I really don't know much about you. I don't want you to think that I distrusted you exactly--" she marvelled at herself that she could say such things to him, but went recklessly on. "The check wasn't there,--and so, well, it seemed wisest to wait. They said you were coming back, and I couldn't afford to lose it; so I stayed. Just a matter of business, you see!"

She finished in a tone which, except for a suspicious tremble, was satisfactorily disagreeable.

But Blair's armor, since his return, seemed proof against such thrusts as she could give.

"Won't play Indian at all, then?" he retorted teasingly. "But of course not! How could you when you happen to come from the other side of the house? However," he continued whimsically, "there are such things as English roses, you know. I've always loved them, too, even when they were th.o.r.n.y!"

He pulled absently at a fern growing near, while, suddenly, for no particular reason, the color glowed again in the cheeks of the little art teacher. She smiled, half unwillingly.

"But don't pull up the wild flowers here," she warned him, "You'll have the forester after you! When did you get back?" she added. "Where have you been so long?" burned on her lips, but she scorned to ask it.

"About an hour ago," he replied amiably. "The boat was late."

"I was beginning to think you'd given up coming at all." She could not keep it back. "The duke never bothered to, you know."

But this blow, like the first, failed to reach any vulnerable spot.

Blair did not flinch.

"No, naturally he didn't! He was English, and you can't depend upon the English, I've discovered. But there's not the slightest reason for linking me up with him. The princess never ran away now, did she? And I--" He paused, then without looking at her he began again.

"Seriously, I'm sorry if I seemed to be deserting. I--well, honestly, I didn't know what else to do. You suggested it yourself, you remember!

And I'd promised my father to look after some business for him in Los Angeles while I was out here. You see, he--our family, have lived in the East for a long time now, but we used to own pretty much all of Los Angeles county some three centuries ago, when the Spanish were here, and--" Again he broke off abruptly. "Do you want to know about me?" he demanded.

Miss Hastings leaned breathlessly toward him. Her heart was beating wildly.

"Oh, please!" she begged.

"Perhaps I should have told you at the first," he began, "or at least after you told me who you were, but--anyway, I didn't. I'd never told anyone before and I didn't much suppose I ever would. There's a reason, though, why I'm particularly interested in this legend, too, a reason just as good as you've got. I'm--well, I'm one of Wildenai's great, great grandsons!"

And then, because she sat quite silent there in the shadows, and motionless except for fingering something white that lay in her lap, he waited uneasily. Was she angry again, he wondered, or perhaps she was only laughing!