THEREBY HANGS A TALE
That same evening the audience at the Albion had a disappointment. At
half past eight the manager appeared before the curtain and said that
Miss Lopez was ill and could not appear. As they all knew, she had been
an unremitting worker, had given them of her best, and in her love of her
art and her public had worn herself out and suffered a nervous breakdown.
A week or two of rest would restore her, and meantime her place would be
taken by Miss Lottie Vere.
The audience, not knowing what was expected of them, applauded and then
looked at one another in aggrieved surprise. They felt rather peevish,
for they had come to regard Pancha Lopez as a permanent institution
devised for their amusement. They no more expected her to fail them than
the clock in the Ferry Tower to be wrong. Charlie Crowder heard it at the
_Despatch_ office next morning--Mrs. Wesson, who picked up local news
like a wireless, met him on the stairs and told him.
"I'm glad she's given in at last," said the good-natured society
reporter. "She's been running down hill for the past month, and if she'd
kept on much longer she'd have run to the place where you jump off."
That afternoon Crowder went round to see her. There was no use phoning,
the Vallejo was still in that archaic stage where the only telephone was
in the lower hall and guests were called to it by the clerk. Besides, you
never could tell about a girl like Pancha; she was half a savage, liable
to lie curled up in a corner and never think of a doctor.
He found her on the sofa in her sitting-room, a box of crackers and a
bottle of milk on the table, a ragged Navajo blanket over her feet. When
she saw who it was she sat up with a cry of welcome, her wrapper falling
loose from her brown neck. She looked very ill, her eyes dark-circled and
sunken in her wasted face.
He sat beside her on the sofa's edge--she was so thin there was plenty
of room--and taking her hand held it while he tried to hide the concern
that seized him. After the first sentence of greeting she fell back on
the crumpled pillow, and lay still, the little flicker of animation
dying out.
"Well, well, Panchita," he said, patting her hand, a kindly awkward
figure hunched up in his big overcoat; "this is something new for you."
She made an agreeing movement with her head, her glance resting where it
fell, too languid to move.
"I seem to be all in," she murmured.
"Just played out?"
"Looks that way."
"I didn't know till this morning--Mrs. Wesson told me. How did it
happen?"
"I don't know, I got all weak. It was last night."
"At the theater?"
"No, here, in my room. I kept feeling worse and worse, but I thought I
could pull through. And then I knew I couldn't and I got down to the
phone some way and told them. And then I came back here and--I don't
know--I sort of broke to pieces."
As she completed the sentence tears suddenly welled into her eyes and
began to run, unchecked, in shining drops down her cheeks. She drew her
hand from Crowder's and turning on her side placed it and its fellow
over her face and wept, a river of tears that came softly without sobs.
Crowder was overwhelmed. He had never thought his friend could be so
broken, never had imagined her weak as other women, bereft of her
gallant pride.
"Oh, Pancha," he said, unutterably distressed, "you poor girl! I'm so
sorry, I'm so awfully sorry." He crooned over her in his rough man's
tenderness, stroking her hair. "You've worked yourself to the bone. You
ought to have given in sooner, you've kept it up too long."
Her voice came smothered through the shielding hands:
"It's not that, Charlie, it's not that."
This surprised him exceedingly. That any other cause than overwork could
so reduce her had never occurred to him. Had she some ailment--some
hidden suffering--preying on her? He thought of the Indian's stoicism and
was filled with apprehension.
"Well, then, what is it?" he asked. "Are you ill?"
She moved her head in silent negation.
"But if it isn't work, it must be something. A girl as strong as you
doesn't collapse without a reason."
She dropped her hands and sat up. Her face was brought on a level
with his, the swollen eyes blinking through tears, the mouth twisted
and pitiful.
"It's pain, it's pain, Charlie," she quavered.
"Then you _are_ sick," he said, now thoroughly alarmed.
"No--it's not my body, it's my heart. It's here." She clasped her hands
over her heart, and suddenly closing her eyes rocked back and forth. "A
little while ago I was so happy. I never was like that before--every
minute of the day lovely. And then it was all changed, it all ended. I
couldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. I kept saying 'it'll come all
right, nothing so awful could happen to anyone.' But it could--it did.
And it's that that's made me this way--to be so full of joy and then to
have it snatched away. It's too much, Charlie. Even I couldn't stand
it--I who once thought nothing could beat me."
Crowder had had a wide experience in exhibitions of human suffering, but
he had never seen anything quite like this. Tenderness was not what was
needed, and, his eyes stern on her working face, he said with quiet
authority:
"Pancha, I don't get what this means. Now, like a good girl, tell me.
I've got to know."
Then and there, without more urging, she told him.
She told her story truthfully as far as she went, but she did not go to
the end. All the preceding night, the interview with Mayer, had repeated
itself in her memory, bitten itself in in every brutal detail. Hate
trailed after it a longing to repay in kind and she saw herself impotent.
The threat of her father's championship, snatched at in blind rage, she
knew meant nothing, the boast of "getting square" was empty. Subtlety was
her only weapon and now in her confession to Crowder she employed it.
What she told of Mayer's conduct was true, but she did not tell what to
her was a mitigating circumstance--the counter-attraction of Chrystie.
The lure of money was to this child of poverty an excuse for her lover's
desertion. Even Crowder, her friend, might condone a transfer of
affection from Pancha Lopez to the daughter of George Alston. So the
young man, hearing the story ended, saw Mayer as Pancha intended him
to--a blackguard, breaking a girl's heart for pastime.
"The dog!" he muttered. "The cur! Why didn't you tell me? I'd have sized
him up for you."
"I believed him, I thought it was true. And I was afraid you'd
interfere--tell me it was all wrong."
The young man shifted his eyes from her face and stifled a comment. It
was no time now to reproach her. There was a moment's silence and then
she broke out into the query, put so often to herself, put to Mayer,
tormenting and inexplicable.
"Why did he do it--why did he begin it? It was he who came, sought me
out, gave me flowers. He'd come whenever I'd let him--and he was so
interested, couldn't hear enough about me. There wasn't any little thing
in my life he didn't want to know. Every man who'd ever come near me he'd
want me to tell him about, he'd just _hound_ me to tell him. What made
him do it? Was it all a fake from the beginning, and if it was did he do
it just for sport?"
Crowder had no answer for these plaints. He was deeply moved, shocked and
indignant, more than he let her see. "An ugly business, a d----d ugly
business," he growled, his honest face overcast with sympathy, his hand,
big and not over clean, lying on hers.
"Never mind, old girl," he said; "we'll pull you out, we'll get you on
your feet again. We've got to do that before we turn our attention to
him. I guess he's got a weak spot and I'll find it before I'm done. Who
is he, anyway--where does he come from--what's he doing here? He's too
d----d reserved to come out well in the wash. You keep still and leave
the rest to me. I'm not your old pal for nothing."
But his encouragement met with no response. Her heart unburdened, she
lapsed into apathy and dropped back on the pillow, her spurt of
energy over.
He lighted the light and tried to make her eat, but she pushed away the
glass of milk he offered and begged him to let her be. So there was
nothing for it but to make her as comfortable as he could, draw the table
to her side, straighten the Navajo blanket and get another pillow from
the bedroom. Tomorrow morning he would send in a doctor and on his way
out stop at the office and leave a message for the chambermaid to look in
on her during the evening. She answered his good-by with a nod and a
slight, twisted smile, the first he had seen on her face.
"Lord!" he thought as he closed the door, "she looks half dead. How I'd
like to get my hooks into that man!"
Downstairs he gave the clerk instructions and left a tip for the
chambermaid--a doctor would come in the morning and he would look in
himself in the course of the day. She was to want for nothing; if there
was any expense he'd be responsible. On the way up the street he bought
fruit, magazines and the evening papers and ordered them sent to her.
The next morning he found time to drop into the Argonaut Hotel for a chat
with Ned Murphy. The chat, touching lightly on the business of the place,
drifted without effort to Mr. Mayer, always to Ned Murphy, an engaging
topic. Crowder went away not much the wiser. Mayer, if a little offish,
was as satisfactory a guest as any hotel could ask for--paid his bill
weekly, always in gold, gave no trouble, and lived pretty quiet and
retired, only now and then going to the country on business. What the
business was Ned Murphy didn't know--he'd been off five times now,
leaving in the morning and coming back the next day. But he wasn't the
kind to talk--you couldn't get next him. It was evident that Ned Murphy
took a sort of proprietary pride in the stately unapproachableness of the
star lodger.
In the shank of the afternoon, Crowder, at work in the city room, was
called to the phone. The person speaking was Mark Burrage and his
communication was mysterious and urgent. The night before, in a curious
and unexpected manner, he had received some information of a deeply
interesting nature upon which he wanted to consult Crowder. Would Crowder
meet him at Philip's Rotisserie that evening at seven and arrange to come
to his room afterward for an hour? The matter was important, and Crowder
must hustle and fix it if it could be done. Crowder said it could, and,
shut off from further parley by an abrupt "So long," was left wondering.