Mayer was putting his affairs in order, preparatory to flight. A final interview with Chrystie would place him where he wanted to be, and that would be followed by a visit to Sacramento and a withdrawal of what remained of his money. He had a little over two thousand dollars left, enough to get them to New York and keep them there for a month or so in a good hotel. Before this would be expended he would have gained so complete an ascendancy over her that the control of her fortune would be in his hands. Payment of a gambling debt of three hundred and fifty dollars—owed him now for some weeks—had been promised on the following Monday. He would go to Sacramento on Saturday or Sunday, get this money on his return and then all would be ready for his exit.
He went over it point by point, scanning it closely, viewing it in its full extent, weighing, studying, determined that no detail should be overlooked. Outwardly his serenity was unruffled; his veiled eye showed its customary cool indifference, his manner its ironical suavity. Inwardly he was taut as a racer, his toe to the line, waiting for the starting signal. There were moments, pacing up and down his room, when he felt chilled by freezing air currents, as if icebergs might have suddenly floated down Montgomery Street and come to anchor opposite the hotel.
There were so many unexpected menaces—the man Burrage that he might run against anywhere, Pancha, a jealous virago—nobody knew what a woman in that state mightn't do—and Chrystie herself. In the high tension of his nerves she was indescribably irritating, full of moods, preyed upon by gnawings of conscience. He had already given her an outline of his plan, tentatively suggested it—you had to suggest things tentatively to Chrystie—drawn lightly a romantic picture of their flight on the Overland to Reno.
They were to leave on Tuesday night, reaching Reno the next morning and there alighting for the marriage. He had chosen the night train as the least conspicuous. Chrystie could be shut up in a stateroom and he on guard outside where he could keep his eye on the door—it was more like a kidnaping than an elopement. At other times he might have laughed, but he was far from laughing now. It wasn't someone else's distressing predicament, it was his own.
When he had explained it he had met with one of those maddening stupidities of hers that strained his forbearance to the breaking point. How could she get away without Lorry knowing—Lorry always knew where she went? She was miserable over it, sitting close against his shoulder on a bench opposite the Greek Church.
"How about going for a few days to your friends, the Barlows, at SanMateo?" he had said, his hand folded tight on hers.
"The Barlows!" she exclaimed. "The Barlows haven't asked me."
That was the sort of thing she was always saying and he had to answer with patient softness.
"I know that, dear one, but why can't you tell Lorry that they have. They're going to have a dance and a house party and they want you to come on Tuesday and stay over till, say Thursday or Friday."
She cogitated, looking very troubled. He was becoming used to the expression, it invariably followed his promptings to falsehood.
"I suppose I could," she murmured.
He pressed the hand tenderly.
"I don't want to urge you to do anything you don't like, but I don't see what else there is for it. It's not really our fault that we have to run away—it's Lorry's. You've said yourself that she'd make objections, not to our way of doing things, but to me."
Chrystie nodded.
"She would. I'd have a fight to marry you anyway."
No one was in sight and he raised the gloved hand and pressed it to his lips. Dropping it he purred:
"We don't want any fights. We don't want our joy marred by bickerings and interference."
Chrystie agreed to that and then muttered in gloomy repudiation ofLorry's prejudices:
"I don't see why she feels that way about you. Nobody else does."
"We won't bother about that. She doesn't have to love me. Perhaps later I'll be able to prove to her that her brother-in-law isn't such a bad chap after all." He shifted a little closer, flicking up with a possessive finger a strand of golden hair that had fallen across her cheek, and murmuring his instructions into the shell pink ear his hand brushed. "You tell her you've had an invitation from the Barlows to come down on Tuesday and stay till Friday. Say they're going to have a party. That being the case you'll take a good-sized trunk. Give the order yourself to the expressman and tell him to send it to the ferry and when you get there check it to Reno. Then you leave the house in time to catch the late afternoon train to San Mateo and as soon as you get out of sight order your driver to take you to the ferry. You'd better cross at once and do what waiting you'll have on the Oakland side."
"You'll be there?" she said, stirring uneasily.
"Yes, but I won't speak to you."
"Oh, dear"—it was almost a wail—"how I wish we could be married at home like Christians!"
"My darling, my darling, don't make it any harder for me. You never wanted anything in your life as much as I want to take your hand and call you mine before the eyes of the whole world. But it's impossible—you yourself were the first to say so. We don't want a family row, a scandal, all in the papers. Love mustn't be dragged through that sort of ignominy."
She thought so, too; she always agreed with him when he talked of love. But he had to come down to earth and the Barlows, finding it necessary to instruct her even in such small matters as how she was to get the letter from them. She was simply to tell Lorry such a letter had come and she had answered it, accepting the invitation. It was perfectly simple—didn't she see?
She saw, her head drooped, telling Lorry about that letter which was never to arrive and that answer which was never to be written, bringing back the old, sick qualms. There had to be more inspiring talk of love before she was brought up to the point where he dared to leave her, felt his influence strong enough to last till the next meeting. He wondered irascibly if all home-bred, nice young girls were such fools and realized why he'd never liked them.
That same afternoon Lorry had a visitor. While Chrystie was walking home, poised on the edge of the great exploit, at one moment seeing the tumult left by her flight, at the next that flight, wing and wing, through the golden future with her eagle mate, Lorry was sitting in the drawing-room talking to Mark Burrage.
He had not told Crowder that he was going, had not decided to go till the morning after he had seen Crowder and the two Chinamen. When they had gone he had sat pondering, and that question which he had not liked to ask Fong and which he had only tentatively put to his friend, rose, insistent, demanding a more informed answer. Was this man—more than objectionable, probably criminal—paying court to Lorry? It was a horrible idea, that haunted him throughout the night. He recalled Mayer's manner to her the evening of his visit, and hers to him. Not that he thought she could have been attracted to the man; she was too fine, her instincts too true. But on the other hand she was young, so unlearned in the world's ways, so liable to be duped through her own innocence. His thoughts swung like a pendulum from point of torment to point of torment and in the morning he rose, determined on the visit. It was to satisfy himself and if possible drop a hint of warning. He never thought of Chrystie. She was a child and on that evening Mayer had treated her as such, paying her only the scanty meed of attention that politeness demanded.
When he started for the house he had entered on a new phase in his relation to her. He was no longer the humble visitor, overawed by her riches, but someone whose business it was to watch over and take care of her. It bridged the gulf between them, swept away artificial distinctions. He forgot himself, his awkwardness, how he impressed her. These once important considerations ceased to exist and a man, concerned about a woman, feeling his obligations to look after her, emerged from the hobbledehoy that had once been Marquis de Lafayette Barrage.
She saw the change at the first glance. It was in his face, in his manner, no longer diffident, assured, almost commanding. Their positions were transformed, she less a fine lady, queening it amid the evidences of her wealth, than a girl, lonely and uncared for, he the dominating, masculine presence that her life had lacked. The woman in her, slowly unfolding in secret potency, felt his ascendancy and bloomed into fuller being. They were conscious of the constraint and shyness that had been between them giving place to a gracious ease, of having suddenly experienced a harmonious adjustment that had come about without effort or intention.
Over the smooth, sweet sense of it they talked on indifferent matter, items of local importance, small social doings, the Metropolitan Opera Company which was to open its season on the following Monday night. It was wonderful how interesting everything was, how they passed from subject to subject. They had so much to say that the shadows were rising in the distant end of the room before Mark came to the real matter of moment. It was proof of the change in him that he did not grope and blunder to it but brought it forward with one abrupt question.
"Who is Mr. Mayer that I met here the other night?"
"Well—he's just Mr. Mayer—a man from the East who's in California for his health. That's all I know about him, except that he lived a long time in Europe when he was a boy and a young man."
"How did you come to meet him?"
"Through Mrs. Kirkham, an old friend of Mother's. She brought him here and then we asked him to dinner." She paused, but the young man, his eyes on the ground, making no comment, she concluded with, "Did you think he was interesting?"
He raised his glance to hers and said:
"No—I didn't like him."
Lorry leaned from her chair, her eyebrows lifted, her expression mischievously confidential.
"Then we have one taste in common—neither do I."
She was surprised to see Mark flush, and his gaze widen to a piercing fixity. She thought her plain speaking had offended him and hastened to excuse it:
"I know that isn't a nice thing to say about a guest in your house, and I don't say it to everybody—only to you. Are you shocked?"
"No, I'm relieved. But I couldn't think you would like him."
"Why? All the other girls do."
"You're not like the other girls. You're—" He stopped abruptly, again dropped his eyes and said, "He's no good—he's a fake."
"There!" She was quite eager in her agreement. "That's just the impression he gives me. I felt it the first time I saw him."
"Then why do you have him here?"
The note of reprimand was unconscious, but to the young girl it was plain and her heart thrilled in response to its authority.
"We needed an extra man for our dinner—the dinner that you refused to come to."
She laughed at him in roguish triumph, and it was indescribably charming.He joined in, shame-faced, mumbling something about his work.
"So you see, Mr. Burrage," she said, "in a sort of way it was your fault."
"It's not my fault that he keeps on coming."
"No, I guess that's mine. I ask him and he has to pay a call. He'sverypolite about that."
She laughed again, delighted at this second chance, but now he did not join in. Instead he became gravely urgent, much more so than so slight a matter demanded.
"But look here, Miss Alston, what's the sense of doing that? What's the sense of having a person round you don't like?"
She gave a deprecating shrug.
"Oh, well, it's not as bad as all that. I have really nothing against him; he's always entertaining and pleasant and makes things go off well. It's just my own feeling; I have no reason. I can't discriminate against him because of that."
Mark was silent. It was hateful to him to hear her blaming herself, offering excuses for the truth of her instinct. But he had agreed with Crowder not to tell her, and anyway he had satisfied himself as to her sentiments—she was proof against Mayer's poisonous charm. At this stage he could enlighten her no further; all that now remained for him to do was to give her a hint of that guardianship to which he was pledged.
"It's a big responsibility for you, running a place like this, letting the right people in and keeping the wrong ones out."
"It is, and I don't suppose I do it very well. It was all so new and I was so green."
"Well, it's not a girl's job. You ought to have a watch dog. How wouldI answer?"
She smiled.
"What would you do—bay on the front steps every time Mr. Mayer came?"
"That's right—show my teeth so he couldn't get at the bell. But, joking apart, I'd like you to look upon me that way—I mean if you ever wanted anyone to consult with. You're just two girls—you might need a man's help—things come up."
The smile died from her lips. She was surprised, gratefully, sweetly surprised.
"Oh, Mr. Burrage, that's very kind of you."
"No, it's not. The kindness would be on your side, the way it has been right along. I'd think a lot of it if you'd let me feel that if you wanted help or advice, or anything of that kind, you'd ask it of me."
Had she looked at him the impassioned earnestness of his face would have increased her surprise. But she was looking at the tassel on the chair arm, drawing its strands slowly through her fingers.
"Perhaps I will some day," she murmured.
"Honest—not hesitate to send for me if you ever think I could be of any service to you? Will you promise?"
A woman more experienced, more quick in a perception of surface indications, might have guessed a weightier matter than the young man's words implied. Lorry took them as they were, feeling only the heart behind them.
"Yes, I'll promise," she said.
"Then it's a pact between us. I'll know if you ever want me you'll call on me. And I'll come; I'll come, no matter where I am."
The room was growing dim, dusk stealing out from its corners into the space near the long windows where they sat. Their figures, solid and dark in the larger solidity of the two armchairs, were motionless, and in the pause following his words, neither stirred or spoke. It was a silence without embarrassment or constraint, a moment of arrested external cognizances. Each felt the other as close, suddenly glimpsed intimate and real, a flash of finer vision that for an instant held them in subtle communion. Then it passed and they were saying good-by, moving together into the hall. Fong had not yet lighted the gas and it was very dim there; Mark had to grope for his hat on the stand. He touched her hand in farewell, hardly conscious of the physical contact, heard his own mechanical words and her reply. Then the door opened, shut and he was gone.
Lorry went upstairs to her own room. Her being was permeated with an inner content, radiating like light from a center of peace. She closed her eyes to better feel the comfort of it, to rest upon its infinite assurance. She had no desire to know whence it rose, did not even ask herself if he loved her. From a state of dull distress she had suddenly come into a consciousness of perfect well-being, leaving behind her a past where she had been troubled and lonely. Their paths, wandering and uncertain, had met, converging on some higher level, where they stood together in a deep, enfolding security.
She was still motionless in the gathering dusk when Chrystie entered the room beyond, filling it with silken rustlings and the tapping of high heels. Lorry did not know she was there till she came to the open door and looked in.
"Oh, Lorry, is that you? What are you doing sitting like Patience in a rocking chair?"
"I don't know—thinking, dreaming."
Chrystie withdrew with mutterings; could be heard moving about. Suddenly she exclaimed, "It's a glorious afternoon," and then shut a drawer with a bang. Presently two short, sharp rings sounded from the hall below and following them her voice rose high and animated:
"That's the mail. I'll go and see if there's anything exciting."
Lorry heard her turbulent descent of the stairs and came back to a realization of her environment. In a few minutes Chrystie was in her room again, a little breathless from her race up the long flight.
"There're only two letters," she called. "One for you and one for me."
Lorry was not interested in letters and made no response, and after a pause heard her sister's voice, raised in the same vivacious note:
"Mine's from Lilly Barlow. She wants me to come down on Tuesday and stay over till Friday. They're having a dance."
"A dance—oh, that'll be lovely. When is it to be?"
"Tuesday night. I'm to go down on the evening train and they'll meet me with the motor."
"I'm so glad—you always have a good time there."
Lorry appeared in the doorway. The room was nearly dark, the last blue light slanting in through the uncurtained window. By its faint illumination she saw Chrystie's face in the mirror, glum and unsmiling. It was not the expression with which the youngest Miss Alston generally greeted calls to festivals.
"What's the matter, Chrystie?" she said. "Don't you want to go?"
The girl wheeled round sharply.
"Of course I do. Why shouldn't I? Did you ever know me not want to go to a dance?"
"Then you'd better write and accept at once. They're probably putting up other people and they'll want to know if you're coming."
"I'll do it tonight. There's no such desperate hurry; I can phone down.There's your letter on the bureau."
She threw herself on the bed, a long, formless shape in the shadowy corner. She lay there without speaking as Lorry took her letter to the window and read it. It was from Mrs. Kirkham; a friend had sent her a box for the opera on Tuesday night and she invited both girls. It would be a great occasion, everybody was going, Caruso was to sing. Lorry looked up from it, quite dismayed; it was too bad that Chrystie would miss it. But Chrystie from the darkness of the bed said she didn't care; she'd rather dance than hear Caruso, or any other singing man—music bored her anyhow. Lorry left her and went into her own room to write an acceptance for herself and regrets for her sister.
At nine that night Mark was sitting by his table, his book on his knee, his eyes on the smoke wreaths that lay across the air in light layers, when his dreams were broken by a knock on his door. It was his landlady with a telegram:
"Mother very sick. Pneumonia. Come at once. SADIE."
There was a train for Stockton in half an hour, and he could make the distance between the town and the ranch by horse or stage. He made a race for it and at the station, finding himself a few minutes ahead, took a call for Crowder at theDespatchoffice and caught him. In a few words he told him what had happened, that he didn't know how long he might be away and that if news came from Jim before his return to let him know. Crowder promised.
The next morning Crowder sent a letter to Fong advising him of Mark's departure. Should Jim get back from Sacramento within the next few days he was to communicate with Crowder at theDespatchoffice. The young man had no expectation of early news, but he was going to run no risks with what promised to be a sensation. His journalist's instincts were aroused, and he was resolved to keep for his own paper and his ownkudosthe most picturesque story that had ever come his way. He went about his work, restless and impatient, seeing the story on theDespatch'sfront page and himself made the star reporter of the staff.
He had not long to wait. On Monday morning he was called from the city room to the telephone. Through the transmitter came the soft and even voice of Jim; he had returned from Sacramento the night before, and if it was convenient for Mr. Crowder could see him that afternoon at two in Portsmouth Square. Mr. Crowder would make it convenient, and Jim's good-by hummed gently along the wire.
The small plaza—a bit of the multicolored East embedded in the new, drab West—was a place where Orient and Occident touched hands. There Chinese mothers sat on the benches watching their children playing at their feet, and Chinese fathers carried babies, little bunched-up, fat things with round faces and glistening onyx eyes. Sons of the Orient, bent on business, passed along the paths, exchanging greetings in a sing-song of nasal voices, cues braided with rose-colored silk swinging to their knees. Above the vivid green of the grass and the dark flat branches of cypress trees, the back of Chinatown rose, alien and exotic: railings touched with gold and red, lanterns, round and crimson or oblong with pale, skin-like coverings, on the window ledges blue and white bowls upholding sheaves of lilies, the rich emblazonry of signs, the thick gilded arabesques of a restaurant's screened balconies.
Crowder found his man standing by the pedestal on which the good shipBonaventurespreads its shining sails before the winds of romance. A quiet hail and they were strolling side by side to a bench sheltered by a growth of laurel.
Mayer had appeared at the Whatcheer House the day before at noon. Jim, crossing the back of the office, had seen him enter, and loitering heard him tell the clerk that he would give up his room that afternoon as his base had shifted to Oregon. Then he had gone upstairs, and Jim had followed him and seen him go into No. 19, the last door at the end of the hall on the left-hand side.
The hall was empty and very quiet. It was the lunch hour, a time at which the place was deserted. Arming himself with a duster Jim had stolen down the passage to No. 19. Standing by the door he could hear Mayer walking about inside, and then a sound as if he was moving the furniture. With the duster held ready for use Jim had looked through the keyhole and seen Mayer with a chisel in his hand, the bed behind him drawn out from the wall to the middle of the room.
Emboldened by the hall's silence, Jim had continued to watch. He saw Mayer go to the corner where the bed had stood, lift the carpet and the boards below it and take from beneath them two canvas sacks. From these he shook a stream of gold coins—more than a thousand dollars, maybe two. He let them lie there while he put back the sacks, replaced the boards and carpet and pushed the bed into its corner. Then he gathered up the money, rolling some of it in a piece of linen, which he packed in his suitcase, and putting the rest in a money belt about his waist. After that he took up his hat and Jim slipped away to a broom closet at the upper end of the hall.
From here the Chinaman saw his quarry come out of the room and go down the stairs. At the desk Mayer stopped, told the clerk he had vacated No. 19, but would wait in the office for a while as his train was not due to leave till the afternoon. From the stairhead Jim watched him take a seat by the window, and, the suitcase at his feet, pick up a paper and begin to read.
It was a rule of the Whatcheer House that a vacated room was subjected to a "thorough cleaning." Translated this meant a run over the floor with a carpet sweeper and a change of sheets. The door of No. 19 had been left unlocked, and while Mayer sat in the office conning the paper, Jim with the necessary rags and brooms was putting No. 19 in shape for the next tenant. An inside bolt on the door made him secure against interruption, and the bed drawn to the middle of the floor was part of the traditional rite. Carpet and boards came up easily; his cache empty Mayer had not troubled to renail them. In the space between the rafters and the flooring Jim had found no more money, only a bunch of canvas sacks, and a dirty newspaper. With the Chinaman's meticulous carefulness he had brought these back to his employers; in proof of which he laid a small, neatly tied package on Crowder's knee. For the rest his work was done. He had paid the Whatcheer room boy and seen him reinstated, had followed Mayer to the depot, viewed his transformation there, and ridden with him on the night train back to San Francisco.
To Crowder's commending words he murmured a smiling deprecation. What concerned him most was his "prize money," which was promised on Mark's return. Then, nodding sagely to the young man's cautioning of secrecy, he rose, and uninterested, imperturbably enigmatic and bland, passed out of sight around the laurels.
Crowder, on the bench, slipped down to a comfortable angle and thought. There was no doubt now—but what the devil did it mean? A concealed hoard hidden under the floor of a men's lodging house—that could only be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone.Whata story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off his knee to the ground.
He had forgotten it, and a little shamefaced—for your true detective studies the details before formulating his theory—picked it up and opened it. Inside a newspaper, its outer sheets mud-stained and torn, were six small bags of white canvas, marked with a stenciled "W. F. & Co." Crowder sat erect and brushed back his pendent lock of hair. He knew what the stenciled letters stood for as well as he knew his own initials. Then he spread out the paper. It was theSacramento Courierof August 25. From the top of a column the heading of his own San Francisco letter faced him, the bottom part torn away. But that did not interest him. It was the date that held his eye—August 25—that was last summer—August 25, Wells Fargo—he muttered it over, staring at the paper, his glance glassily fixed in the intensity of his mental endeavor.
Round date and name his memory circled, drawing toward a focus, curving closer and closer, coming nearer in decreasing spirals, finally falling on it. With the pounce a broken sentence fell from his lips: "The tules! Knapp and Garland!"
For the first moment of startled realization he was so surprised that he could not see how Mayer was implicated. Then his mind leaped the gap from the holdup in August to that picturesque narrative still fresh in the public mind—Knapp's story of the robbed cache. The recollection came with an impact that held him breathless; incidents, details, dates, marshaling themselves in a corroborating sequence. When he saw it clear, unrolled before his mental vision in a series of events, neatly fitting, accurately dovetailed, he sat up looking stupidly about him like a person emerging from sleep.
He had work to do at the office, but on the way there stopped at the Express Company for a word with Robinson, one of the clerks, whom he knew. He wanted information of any losses by theft or accident sustained by the company since the middle of the preceding August. Robinson promised to look up the subject and let him know before the closing hour. At six Crowder was summoned to one of the telephone booths in the city room. Robinson had inquired: during the time specified Wells Fargo and Company had suffered but one loss. This was on the twenty-sixth of August, when Knapp and Garland had held up the Rocky Bar stage and taken thousand dollars in coin consigned to the Greenhide Mine at Antelope.
It was Crowder's habit to dine at Philip's Rôtisserie at half past six. They liked him at Philip's. Madame at her desk, fat and gray-haired, with a bunch of pink roses at one elbow and a sleeping cat at the other, always had time for a chat with "Monsieur Crowdare." Even Philip himself, in his chef's cap and apron, would emerge from the kitchen and confer with the favored guest. But tonight "Monsieur Crowdare" had no words for anyone. He did no more than nod to Madame, and Gaston, the waiter, afterward told her he had hardly looked at the menu—just said bring anything, he didn't care what. Madame was quite worried over it, hoped "le cher garçon" wasn't sick, and comforted herself by thinking he might be in love.
Never before in his cheery existence had Crowder been so excited. Over his unsavored dinner he studied the situation, planning his course. He was resolved on one point—to keep the rights of discovery for theDespatch. He could manage this, making it a condition when he laid his knowledge before the Express Company people. That would be his next move, and he ought to do it soon; Mayer's withdrawal of the money might indicate an intention of disappearing. He would go to Wells Fargo and tell them what he had found out, asking in return that the results of their investigation should be given to him for first publication in theDespatch.
It was a pity Mark wasn't there—he didn't like acting without Mark. But matters were moving too quickly now to take any chances. There was no telephone at the ranch, or he could have called up long-distance, and a telegram, to be intelligible, would have to be too explicit. He would write to Mark tomorrow, or perhaps the next day—after he had seen the Express people.
To be secret as the grave was the charge Crowder laid upon himself, but he longed to let loose some of the ferment that seethed within him, and in his longing remembered the one person to whom he dared go—Pancha. Hers were the legitimate ears to receive the racy tale. She was not only to be trusted—a pal as reliable as a man—but it would cure her of her infatuation, effectually crush out the passion that had devastated her.
Pancha had been much alone. Crowder had seen her several times, the doctor had come, the chambermaid, one or two of her confreres from the theater. But there had been long, dreary hours when she had lain motionless, looking at the walls and thinking of her wrongs. She had gone over and over the old ground, trodden the weary round like a squirrel in a cage, asked herself the same questions and searched, tormented, for their answers. As the days passed the weight of her grievance grew, and her sick soul yearned to hit back at the man who had so wantonly wounded her.
Gradually, from the turmoil an idea of retaliation was churned into being. It did not reach the point of action till Monday evening. Then it rose before her imperious, a vengeance, subtle and if not complete, at least as satisfying as anything could be to her sore heart. It was that expression of futile anger and poisoned musings, an anonymous letter. She wrote it on the pink note paper which she had bought to write to Mayer on. It ran as follows:
Dear Lady:
This letter is to warn you. It comes from a person friendly to you and who wants to put you wise to something you ought to know. It's about Boyé Mayer, him that goes to your house and is after your sister. Maybe you don't know that, butIdo—it's truth what I'm telling you every word. He's no good. Not the kind to go round with your kind. It's your sister's money he wants. If she had none he'd not trouble to meet her in the plaza opposite the Greek Church. Watch out for him—don't let her go with him. Don't let her marry him or you'll curse the day. I know him well and I know he's bad right through.
Wishing you well,
She had written the letter to Lorry as the elder sister, whose name she had seen in the papers and whom Crowder had described as the intelligent one with brains and character. Her woman's instinct told her that her charges might have no weight with the younger girl, under the spell of those cajoleries and blandishments whose power she knew so well. With the letter in her hand she crept out to the stairhead and called to the clerk in the office below. Gushing had not come on duty yet, and it was the day man who answered her summons. She asked him to post the letter that night, and he promised to do so. The lives of the group of which this story tells were drawing in to a point of fusion. In the centripetal movement this insignificant incident had its importance. The man forgot his promise, and it was not till the next day at lunch that he thought of the letter, posting it on his way back to the hotel.
In her room again, Pancha dropped on the sofa, and lay still. The exertion had taxed her strength and she felt sick and tremulous. But she thought of what she had done with a grim relish, savored like a burning morsel on her tongue, the bitter-sweet of revenge.
Here an hour later Crowder found her. She was glad to see him, and told him she was better, but the doctor would not let her get up yet.
"And even if he would," she said, "I don't want to. I'm that weak, Charlie, you can't think. It's as if the thing that made me alive was gone, and I was just the same as dead."
Crowder thought he understood his friend Pancha even as he did his friend Mark. That she could have complexities and reservations beyond his simple ken had never occurred to him. What he saw on the surface was what she was, and being so, the news he was bringing would be as a tonic to her broken spirit.
"You'll not stay that way long, Panchita," he said. "You'll be on the job soon now. And what I've come to tell you will help on the good work. I've got a story for you that'll straighten out all the creases and bring you up on your feet better than a steam derrick would."
"What is it?" She did not seem especially interested, her glance listless, her hand lying languid where he had dropped it.
"It's about Mayer."
He was rewarded by seeing her shift her head on the pillow that she might command him with a vivid, bird-bright eye.
"What about him?"
"Every thing, my dear. We've got him coming and going. We've got him dead to rights. He's a rogue and a thief."
With her hands spread flat on either side of her she raised herself to a sitting posture. Her face, framed in its bush of hair, had a look of strained, almost wild, inquiry.
"Thief!" she exclaimed.
"Yes. It's a honeycooler of a story. Burst out all of a sudden like a night blooming cereus. But before I say a word you've got to promise on everything you hold sacred that you won't breathe a word of it."
"I promise."
"It's only for a little while. It'll be public property in a day or two—Thursday or Friday maybe."
"I'm on. How is he a thief?"
Crowder told her. The story was clear in his head by this time, and he told it well, with the journalist's sense of its drama. As he spoke she drew up her knees and clasping her hands round them sat rigid, now and then as she met his eyes, raised to hers to see if she had caught a point, nodding and breathing a low, "I see—Go on."
When he had finished he looked at her with challenging triumph.
"Well—isn't it all I said it was?"
Already she showed the effect of it. There was color in her face, a dusky red on the high cheek bones.
"Yes—more. I didn't think—" She stopped and swallowed, her throat dry.
"Did you have the least idea, did he ever say a word to suggest he had anything as juicy as that in the background?"
"No. I can't remember all in a minute. But he never said much about himself; he was always asking about me." She paused, fixedly staring; then her glance, razor-sharp, swerved to the young man. "Will he go to jail?"
"You bet he will. I'm not sure on just what count, but they'll find one that'll fit his case. He's as much a thief as either Knapp or Garland. He knew it wasn't Captain Kidd's treasure; he saw the papers. He can't play the baby act about being ignorant. The way he hid his loot proves that."
"Yes," she murmured. "He's a thief all right. He's bad every way."
"That's what I wanted you to see. That's why I told you. You can't go on caring now."
"No." Her voice was very low. "It puts the lid on that."
"You can thank God on your bended knees he threw you down."
"Oh, yes," she rocked her head slightly from side to side with an air of morose defiance, "Ican."
"Doyou?" said the young man, leaning closer and looking into her face.
He was satisfied by what he saw. For a moment the old pride flamed up, a spark in the black glance, a haughty straightening of the neck.
"A common thief like him for my lover? Say, you know me, Charlie. I'd have killed myself, or maybe I'd have killed him."
Crowder had what he would have called "a hunch" that this might be true.From his heart he exclaimed:
"Gee, I'm glad it's turned out the way it has!"
"So am I. Only I'm sorry for one thing. It'syouthat have caught him, notme."
Crowder laughed.
"You Indian!" he said. "You red, revengeful devil!"
"Oh, I'mthat!" she answered, with biting emphasis. "When I get a blow I want to give one. I don't turn the other cheek; I strike back—with a knife if I have one handy."
"Well, don't you bother about knives now. The hitting's going to be done for you. All you have to do is to sit still, like a perfect lady, and say nothing."
"Um." She paused, mused an instant, and then said: "You're sure you can't be mistaken?"
"Positive. Funny, isn't it? It was the paper that gave me the lead. Sort of poetic justice his being landed by that—the paper that had the article about you in it."
She looked at him, struck with a sudden idea:
"Perhaps it was that article that made him come to see me in the beginning."
Crowder smiled.
"I guess he wasn't bothering about articles just then. He'd used it to wrap the money in. It was all muddy and ragged, the lower half of the letter gone—the piece about you—got torn out by accident I guess. As I see it he happened to have the paper and when he got the sacks out of the ground, put some of 'em in it. Then when he was in the Whatcheer House he stuffed it in the hole under the floor. It was the handiest way to get rid of it."
Soon after that Crowder left, feeling that he had done a good work. The news had had the effect he had hoped it would. She was a different girl. The last glimpse of her, sitting in that same attitude with her hands clasped round her knees, showed her revitalized, alive once more, with something of the old brown and red vividness in her face.
When he had gone she remembered her letter. It was of no use now. She would have liked to recall it, but it was too late; the clock on the table marked eleven. Through the fitful sleep of her uneasy night it came back, invested by the magnifying power of dreams with a fantastic malignity; in waking moments showing as a bit of spite, dwindled to nothing before the forces gathering for Mayer's destruction.
Old Man Haley's shack stood back from a branch road that wound down from Antelope across the foothills to Pine Flat. Commercial travelers, staging it from camp to camp, could see his roof over the trees, and sometimes the driver would point to it with his whip and tell how the old man—a survival of the early days—lived there alone cultivating his vegetable patch. In the last four or five years people said he had gone "nutty," had taken to wandering down the stream beds with his pickax and pan, but he was a harmless old body and seemed able to get along. He said he had a son somewhere who sent him money now and again, and he always had enough to keep himself in groceries and tobacco, which he bought at the general store in Pine Flat. Maybe you'd see him straying along, sort o' kind and simple, with his pick over his shoulder, smilin' up at the folks in the stage.
On that Sunday when Mayer had made his last trip to Sacramento Old Man Haley had risen with the sun. While the rest of the world was slumbering on its pillow he was out among his vegetables, hoe in hand.
It was one of those mornings that deck with a splendor of blue and gold the foothill spring. The air was balmy, the sky a fleckless vault, where bird shapes floated on aerial currents or sped in jubilant flight. From the chaparral came the scents of sun-warmed foliage, the pungent odor of bay, the aromatic breath of pine, and the sweet, frail perfume of the chaparral flower. This flecked the hillside with its powdery blossom, a white blur among the glittering enamel of madrona leaves.
Old Man Haley, an ancient figure in his rusty overalls, paused in his labor to survey the sea of green from which he had wrested his garden. His eye traveled slowly, for he loved it, and had grown to regard it as his own. Leaning on his hoe he looked upward over its tufted density and suddenly his glance lost its complacent vagueness and became sharp and fixed. Through the close-packed vegetation a zigzag movement descended as if a fissure of earth disturbance was stirring along the roots. After a moment's scrutiny he turned and sent a look, singularly alert, over the shack and the road beyond. Then, pursing his lips, he emitted a whistled bar of bird notes.
The commotion in the chaparral stopped, and from it rose a wild figure. It looked more ape than man, hairy, bearded to the cheekbones, sunken-eyed and staggering. It started forward at a run, branches crashing under its blundering feet, and as it came it sent up a hoarse cry for food.
Some years before Old Man Haley had built a woodshed behind the cabin. When he bought the planks he had told "the boys" in Pine Flat that he was getting too old to forage for his wood in winter, and was going to cut it in summer, and have it handy when the rains came. He had built the shed well and lined it with tar paper. Adventurous youngsters, going past one day, had peeped in and seen a blanket spread over the stacked logs as if the old man might have been sleeping there; which, being reported, was set down to his craziness.
Here Garland now hid, ate like a famished wolf, and slept. Then when night came, and all wayfarers were safe indoors, stole to the shack, and with only the red eye of the stove to light their conference, exchanged the news with his confederate. Hunger had driven him back to the settlements; four days before his last cartridge had been spent, and he had lived since then on berries and roots. Old Man Haley, squatting in the rocking-chair made from a barrel, whispered cheering intelligence: they'd about given up the hunt, thought he had died in the chaparral. Someone had seen birds circling round a spot off toward the hills behind Angels.
The next day when Garland told his intention of moving on to San Francisco, the old man was uneasy. He was the only associate of the bandit who knew of the daughter there, and he urged patience and caution. He was even averse to taking a letter to her when he went into Pine Flat for supplies. The post office was the resort of loungers. If they saw Old Man Haley coming in to mail a letter, they'd get curious; you couldn't tell but what they might wrastle with him and grab the letter. In a day or two maybe he could get into Mormons Landing, where he wasn't so well known, and mail it there. To placate Garland he promised him a paper; the man at the store would give him one.
When he came back in the rosy end of the evening he was exultant. A woman, hearing him ask the storekeeper for a paper, had told him to stop at her house and she would give him a roll of them. There they were, a big bundle, and not local ones, but the _San Francisco Despatch _almost to date. He left Garland in the woodshed, reading by the light that fell in through the open door, and went to the shack to cook supper.
Presently a reek of blue smoke was issuing from the crook of pipe above the roof, and wood was crackling in the stove. Old Man Haley, mindful of his guest's dignities and claims upon himself, set about the preparation of a goodly meal, part drawn from his own garden, part from the packages he had carried back from Pine Flat. He was engrossed in it, when, through the sizzling of frying grease, he heard the sound of footsteps and the doorway was darkened by Garland's bulk. In his hand he held a paper, and even the age-dimmed eyes of the old man could see the pallid agitation of his face.
"My daughter!" he cried, shaking the paper at Haley. "She's sick inFrancisco—I seen it here! I got to go!"
There was no arguing with him, and Old Man Haley knew it. He helped to the full extent of his capacity, set food before the man, and urged him to eat, dissuaded him from a move till after nightfall, and provided him with money taken from a hiding-place behind the stove.
Then together they worked out his route to the coast. The first stage would be from there to the Dormer Ranch where he had friends. They'd victual him and give him clothes, for even Garland, reckless with anxiety, did not dare show himself in the open as he now was, a figure to catch the attention of the most unsuspicious. He would have to keep to the woods and the trails till he got to Dormer's, and it would be a long hike—all that night and part of the next day. They would give him a mount and he could strike across country and tap the railroad at some point below Sacramento, making San Francisco that night.
The dark had settled, clearly deep, when he left. There were stars in the sky, only a few, very large and far apart, and by their light he could see the road between the black embankment of shrubs. It was extremely still as he stole down from the shack, Old Man Haley watching from the doorway. It continued very still as he struck into his stride, no sound coming from the detailless darkness. Its quiet suggested that same tense expectancy, that breathless waiting, he had noticed under the big trees.
No shadow of impending disaster fell across Mayer's path. On the Monday morning he rose feeling more confident, lighter in heart, than he had done since he met Burrage. It had been a relief to put an end to the Sacramento business; Chrystie had been amenable to his suggestion; the weather was fine; his affairs were moving smoothly to their climax. As he dressed he expanded his chest with calisthenic exercises and even warbled a little French song.
He was out by ten—an early hour for him—and he fared along the street pleasantly aware of the exhilarating sunshine, the blueness of the bay, the tang of salty freshness in the air. The hours till lunch were to be spent in completing the arrangements for the flight. At the railway office he bought the two passage tickets to Reno, his own section and Chrystie's stateroom, and even the amount of money he had to disburse did not diminish his sense of a prospering good fortune.
From there he went to the office of the man who owed him the gambling debt and encountered a check. The gentleman had gone to the country on Friday and would not be back till Wednesday morning at ten. A politely positive clerk assured him no letter or message had been left for Mr. Mayer, and a telegram received that morning had shown his employer to be far afield on the Macleod River.
Mayer left the office with a set, yellowish face. The disappointment would have irritated him at any time; now coming unexpected on his eased assurance it enraged him. For an hour he paced the streets trying to decide what to do. Of course he could go and leave the money, write a letter to have it sent after him. But he doubted whether his creditor would do it, and he needed every cent he could get. His plan of conquest of Chrystie included a luxurious background, a wealth of costly detail. He did not see himself winning her to complete subjugation without a plentiful spending fund. He had told her they would go North from Reno and travel eastward by the Canadian Pacific, stopping at points of interest along the road. He imagined his courtship progressing in grandiose suites of rooms wherein were served delicate meals, his generous largesse to obsequious hirelings adding to her dazzled approval. He had to have that money; he couldn't go without it; he had set it aside to deck with fitting ceremonial the conquering bridal tour.
He stopped at a telegraph office and wrote her a note telling her to meet him that afternoon at three in the old place opposite the Greek Church. This he sent by messenger and then he pondered a rearrangement of his plans. He would only have to shift their departure on a few hours—say till Wednesday noon. He had heard at the railway office there was a slow local for Reno at midday. They could take this, and though it was a day train there would be little chance of their being noticed, as the denizens of Chrystie's world and his own always traveled by the faster Overland Flyer.
As he saw her approaching across the plaza his uneasy eye discerned from afar the fact that she was perturbed. Her face was anxious, her long swinging step even more rapid than usual. And, "Oh, Boyé!" she grasped as they met and their hands clasped. "Has anything happened?"
It was not a propitious frame of mind, and he drew one of her hands through his arm, pressing the fingers against his side as they walked toward the familiar bench. There gently, very gently, he acquainted her with the version of the situation he had rehearsed: a business matter—she wouldn't understand—but something of a good deal of importance had unfortunately been postponed from that afternoon till Wednesday morning. It was extremely annoying—in fact, maddening, but he didn't see how it was to be avoided. She looked horrified.
"Then what are we to do—put it off?"
"Yes, until Wednesday at noon. There's a slow train we can get. There's no use waiting till evening."
She turned on him aghast.
"But the Barlows? What am I to do about them? I've told Lorry I was going there on Tuesday."
"Darling girl, that's very simple. You've had a letter to say they don't want you till Wednesday."
"But, Boyé," she sat erect, staring distressfully at him, "I've toldLorry the party was on Tuesday night. That's what they've asked me for.Now how can I say they don't want me?"
He bit his lip to keep down his anger. Why had he allowed her to doanything—why hadn't he written it all down in words of one syllable?
"We'll have to think of some reason for a change in their plans. Why couldn't they have postponed the party?"
"Even if they did they wouldn't postponeme. I go there often, they're old friends, it doesn't matter when I come."
Her voice had a quavering note, new to him, and extremely alarming.
"Dearest, don't get worked up over it," he said tenderly.
"Worked up!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't any girl be worked up? It'sawfulfor a person in my position to elope. It's all very well for you who just go and come as you please, but for me—I believe if I was in prison I could get out easier."
He caught her hand and pressed it between his own.
"Of course, it's hard for you. No one knows that better than I, and that you should do it makes me love you more—if that's possible." He raised the hand to his lips, kissed it softly and dropped it. "I know how you can manage—it's as easy as possible. Say you have a headache, a splitting headache, and can't take the railway trip, but rather than disappoint them you'll go down the next day."
She drew her hand out of his, and said in a stubborn voice:
"No. I don't want to."
"Why? Now why, darling? What's wrong about that?"
"I won't tell any more lies to Lorry."
He looked at her, and saw her flushed, mutinous, tears standing in her eyes.
"But, dearest—"
She cut him off, her voice suddenly breaking:
"I can't do it. I didn't know it was going to be so dreadful. But I can't look at Lorry and tell her any more lies. Iwont. It makes me sick. It's asking too much, Boyé. There's something hateful about it."
Her underlip quivered, drew in like a child's. With a shaking hand she began fumbling about her belt for her handkerchief.
"Sometimes I feel as if I was doing wrong," she faltered. "I love you,I've told you so—but—but—Lorry's not like anybody else—anyway to me.And to keep on telling her what isn't true makes me feel—like—like—ayellow dog!"
The last words came on a breaking sob, and the handkerchief went up to her face. Mayer was frightened. A quick glance round the plaza showed him no one was in sight, and he threw him arm about her and drew the weeping head down to his shoulder. Though the green paradise plume was in the way and his fear of passersby acute, he was still sufficiently master of himself to soothe with words of beguiling sweetness.
While he did it, his free hand holding the paradise plume out of his face, his eye nervously ranging the prospect, his mind ran over ways to meet the difficulty. By the time Chrystie had conquered her tears, and, with a creaking of tight-drawn silks, was sitting upright again, he had hit on a solution and was ready to broach it.
"Well, then, we'll rule out any more lies as you call them. You won't have to say another word to Lorry. We can go on just as we'd planned."
"How?" she asked, in a stopped-up voice, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief.
"You can leave on Tuesday afternoon at the same time and go to a hotel."
"A hotel!" She stopped dabbing, extremely surprised, as if he had suggested going to something she had never heard of before.
"Yes, not one of the big ones; a quiet place where you're not liable to run into anyone who may recognize you. I know of the very thing, not long opened, in the Mission. You leave for the train as you intended, but instead of going to the ferry, you go there. I'll take the rooms for you. All you'll have to do will be to write your name in the book—say, Miss Brown—and go up to your apartment. Order your dinner up there and your breakfast the next morning. I'll have a cab sent round for you at half-past eleven that'll take you straight to the ferry, and I'll send your tickets and trunk check to your rooms before that. There'll be nothing for you to do but cross on the boat and go into your stateroom on the train."
This was all very smooth and clear. It was proof of Chrystie's unpractical trend of thought that her comment was an uneasy,
"A hotel in the Mission?"
"Yes, a new place, very quiet and decent. I heard of it from some people who are living there. I'll not come to see you, but I'll phone over in the evening and find out how you're getting on. And the next morning I'll be on the platform at Oakland, watching out for you."
"But you won't speak to me?"
"Not then. In the train we might meet—just accidentally run into one another. And you'll say, 'Why, there's Mr. Mayer! How odd. How d'ye do, Mr. Mayer.'" He bowed with a mincing imitation of Chrystie's best society manner. "'I didn't expect to seeyouhere.'"
She laughed delightedly, nestling against his shoulder.
"Will that be all? Can I say any more?"
"Not much. It will be only a greeting as we pass each other: 'So glad to see you, Miss Alston. Going up to Reno for a short stay. See you in town soon again, I hope.' And then you to your stateroom and me in my section, both of us looking out of the window as if we were bored."
They both laughed, lovers again. He was as relieved as she was. After all it might turn out the better plan. He could keep his eye on her, watch for signs of distress or mutiny and be ready with the comforting word. He had to take some risk, and it was better to take that of being seen than that of leaving her a prey to her own disintegrating musings. Chrystie thought it was a great deal better than the other way. She saw herself in the train, conscious of him, knowing he was there, and pretending not to care. She felt uplifted on the wings of romance, heard the air around her stirred by the beating of those rainbow pinions.
The thrill of it lasted until dinner, then began to die away. Her home and the familiar surroundings pressed upon her attention like live things insisting on recognition. The trivial talk round the table took on the poignancy of matters already in the past. The night before Fong, on his way back from Chinatown, had found a deserted kitten and brought it home announcing his intention to adopt it and call it George Washington. Lorry and Aunt Ellen made merry over it, but Chrystie couldn't. The kitten would grow from youth to maturity, and she not be there to see. It took its place in her mind as something belonging to a vanished phase, having the cherished value of a memory.
Finally, Lorry noticed her silence, and wanted to know if anything was the matter. She was pale and had hardly eaten a bite. Aunt Ellen arraigned the Spring as a malign influence, and suggested quinine. Chrystie snapped at her, and said she wouldn't take quinine if she was dying. Thus warned away, Lorry and Aunt Ellen left her alone and made Summer plans together. Lake Tahoe for July and August was taking shape in Lorry's mind. July and August! Where wouldshebe? Boyé had said something about Europe, and at the time it had seemed to her theultima Thuleof her dreams. Now it looked as far away as the moon and as inhospitable.
The inner excitement of the next day carried her over qualms and yearnings—the beating of the rainbow pinions was again in her ears.
In the morning she went to the bank and drew five hundred dollars. She must have some money of her own, and when she reached New York she would want clothes. It was unfortunate that while she was making holes in her trunk to pack it, Lorry should have come in and seen more than half of it stacked on the bureau. That necessitated more lies, and Chrystie told them with desperation. It was to pay people, of course, milliners and dressmakers—she owed a lot, and as she was passing the bank she'd drawn it in a lump.
Lorry was disapproving—her sister's carelessness about money always shocked her—and offered to take charge of it till Chrystie came back. There had to be another crop of lies, and Chrystie's face was beaded with perspiration, her voice shaking, as she bent over her trunk. She'd lock it in her desk, it would be all right—and please go away and don't bother—the expressman might be here any minute now.
She had a hope that Lorry would go out in the afternoon, and she could get away unobserved, but the faithful sister persisted in staying to see her off. That was dreadful. Bag in hand, a lace veil—to be lowered later—pushed back across her hat, she had tried to get the good-by over in the hall, but Lorry had followed her out to the steps. There in the revealing daylight the elder sister's smiles had died away, and scrutinizing the face under the jaunty hat, she had said sharply:
"Is anything the matter, Chrystie? You know, you look quite ill. Are you sure you feel well?"
It brought up a crowding line of memories—Lorry concerned, vigilant, always watching over her with that anxious tenderness. A surge of emotion rose in the girl and she snatched her sister to her, kissed her with a sudden passion, then ran.
"Good-by, good-by," she called out as she flew down the steps to the waiting carriage.
Her eyes were blinded, and she was afraid to look back for fear Lorry might see the tears. She waved a hand, then crouched in the corner of the seat and spied out of the little rear window. She could see Lorry on the top step watching the carriage, her face grave, her brows low-drawn in a frown.
The thrill came back when she dismissed the cab at the door of the hotel. As she walked up the entrance hall it was as if she was walking into the first chapter of a novel—a novel of which she was the heroine. And as Boyé had said, it was all very easy—she was expected, everything was ready. A bellboy snatched her bag, and the elevator whisked her up to her rooms, suite 38, third floor rear.
They seemed to her very uninviting; a parlor with crimson plush furniture, smelling of varnish and opening into a bedroom. The blinds were down, and when the boy had left she went to the window and threw it up, letting light and air into the stuffy, unfriendly place. That was better and she leaned out, breathing in the balmy freshness, catching a whiff from gardens blooming bravely between the crowding walls.
She stayed there for some time, staring about, to the left where the bay shone blue beyond the roofs, to the right where on the flanks of the Mission hills she could see the city's distant outposts, white dottings of houses, and here and there the gleam of a tin roof touched by the low sun. The nearby prospect was not attractive—what one might expect in the Mission. Only a narrow crevice separated the hotel wall from the next house, whose yard stretched below her, crossed with clothes lines, the plants and shrubs showing a pale green, elongated growth in their efforts to reach the sunlight. Her down-drooped glance ranged over it with disfavor, and she idly wondered what kind of people lived there. It had once been a sort of detached villa; she could trace the remains of walks and flower beds, and the shed in the back had a broken weather vane on the roof—it must have been a stable.
She leaned out on her folded arms till the flare of sunset blazed on the westward windows, then sank through a burning decline into grayness and the night. The fiery windows grew blank and chains of lamps marked the lines of the streets. Then she turned back to the room, dark behind her, yawning like a cavern. She lighted the lights and sat in a stiff-backed rocking-chair, the hard white radiance beating on her from a cluster of electric bulbs close against the ceiling as if they had been shot up there by an explosion. It was half-past six, but she did not feel at all hungry. She felt—with a smothered exclamation she jumped up, ran to the telephone and ordered her dinner.
At eight o'clock Mayer's voice on the phone brought back a slight, faint echo of the thrill. What he said was matter-of-fact and colorless—he had warned her that it would be—just if she was comfortable and everything Was all right. She tried to answer it with debonair brevity; show the right spirit, bold and undismayed, of the dauntless woman to the companion of her daring.
Then came the slow undrawing of the night, the noises of the house dying down, car bells and auto horns less frequent in the streets below. The bedroom was at the back of the building, with windows that looked across a paved court to the rear walls of houses. There were lights in many of them, glimpses of bright interiors, people chatting in friendly groups. The sight brought a stabbing memory of the drawing-room at home, and in the dark she undressed and slipped into bed.
But sleep would not come—her mind would not obey her; slipped and slid away from her direction like an animal racing for its goal. At home at this hour the door between her room and Lorry's would be open and they would be calling back and forth to one another as they made ready for bed. They had done that as far back as she could remember, back to the time when there had been a nurse in her room and Lorry had worn her hair in braids. She lay still, almost breathless, her eyes fixed on the yellow oblong of the transom, recalling Lorry in those days, in stiff white skirts and a wide silk sash, very grave, a little woman even then. She groaned and turned over in the bed, digging her head into the pillow and closing her eyes.
After an hour or two she rose and put on her wrapper and slippers. The turmoil within her was so intense that she could not keep still, and prowled, a tall, swathed form, from one room to the other. It seemed then that there never had been a thrill—nothing but this repulsion, this repudiation, nothing but a desire to be back where she belonged. She fought it, less for love of Mayer than for shame at her own backsliding. She saw herself a coward, lacking the courage to take her life boldly, renouncing the man who had her promise. That held her closer to her resolve than any other consideration; her troth was plighted. Could she now—the wedding ring almost on her finger—turn and run crying for home like a child frightened of the dark?
But she didn't want to, she didn't want to! She seemed to see Mayer with a new clearness; glimpsed, to her own dread, his compelling power. He was her master, someone she feared, someone who could make her at one moment feel proud and glad, and at another small and trivial and apologetic. A majestic figure, a woman built on the grand plan, poor Chrystie paced through the silent rooms, weeping like a lost baby.
When the dawn began to grow pale she went to the bedroom window and pulled up the blinds. Like a place of dreams the city slowly grew into solidity through the spectral light. It was as gray as her mood, all color subdued, walls and roofs and chimneys an even monochrome, above them in the sky an increasing, thin, white luster. The air stole in chill as the prospect and from the street beyond rose the sound of a footfall, enormously distinct, echoing prodigiously, as if it was the only footfall left in the world and the sound of the others—refused individual existence—had concentrated in that one to give it volume.
Chrystie drew up a chair and sat down. There with swollen eyes and leaden heart she waited for the day.