LORRY SEES THE DAWN
Chrystie's manner on her departure had disturbed Lorry. As she dressed
for the opera that night she pondered on it, and back from it to the
change she had noticed in the girl of late. She hadn't been like the old,
easy-going Chrystie; her indolent evenness of mood had given place to a
mercurial flightiness, her gay good-humor been broken by flashes of
temper and morose silences.
Rustling into her new white dress Lorry reproached herself. She should
have paid more attention to it. If Chrystie wasn't well or something was
troubling her she should have found out what it was. She had been
negligent, engrossed in her own affairs--thinking of a man, dreaming like
a lovesick girl. That admission made her blush, and seeing her face in
the mirror, the cheeks pink-tinted, the eyes darkly glowing, she could
not refrain from looking at it. She was not so bad, dressed up that way
with a diamond spray in her hair, and her shoulders white above the
crystal trimming of her bodice. And so--just for a moment--she again
forgot Chrystie, wondering, as she eyed the comely reflection, if Mark
would be at the opera.
But when she was finished and had called in Aunt Ellen to look her over,
the discomforting sense of duties shirked came back. As she slowly turned
under Aunt Ellen's inspecting gaze and drooped her shoulders for the blue
velvet cloak that the old lady held out, her thoughts were full of
self-accusal. On the stairway they took the form of a solemn vow to
pledge herself anew to the accustomed watchful care. In the cab they
crystallized into a definite resolution: as soon as Chrystie came back
from the Barlows' she would have an old-time, intimate talk with her and
find out if anything really was the matter with the child.
At the opera it was so exciting and so wonderful that everything else was
wiped out of her mind. In the front of the box she sat--its sole
ornament--against a background of Mrs. Kirkham's contemporaries, withered
and sere in contrast with her lily-pure freshness. In the entr'actes the
hostess recalled the opera house in its heyday when the Bonanza Kings
occupied their boxes with the Bonanza Queens beside them, when everyone
was rich, and all the women wore diamonds. The old ladies cackled over
their memories, their heads together, forgetful of "Minnie's girl," who
swept the house with her lorgnon searching for a familiar face.
Mrs. Kirkham was going to make a night of it, and afterward took her
party to Zinkand's for supper. Here, too, it was very exciting, too much
claiming one's attention for private worries to intrude. The opera crowd
came thronging in, women in beautiful clothes, men one's father had
known, youths who had come to one's house. Some of the ladies who had
been Minnie Alston's friends stopped to have a word with Lorry and then
swept on making murmurous comment to their escorts--the Alston girls were
coming out of their shells, beginning at last to take their places; it
was a pity they went about with fossils of the Stone Age like Mrs.
Kirkham, but they had a queer, old-fashioned streak in them--ah, there's
a vacant table!
It was past midnight when Mrs. Kirkham dropped Lorry at her door and
rolled off with the rest of her cargo. The joy of the evening was still
with the girl as she entered the hall. She stood there for a moment,
pulling off her gloves and looking about with the prudent eye of a
proprietor. In its roving her glance fell on a letter in the card tray.
It was addressed to her and had evidently come after she had left.
Standing under the single gas jet that was all Fong's thrifty spirit
would permit, she opened it.
Anonymous and written in an unknown hand it struck upon her receptive
mood with a staggering shock.
It came, a bolt from the blue, but a bolt that fell precise on a spot
ready to accept it. It was like a sign following her troubled
premonitions, an answer to her anxious queries. If its author had known
just how Miss Alston's thoughts had been engaged, she could not have
aimed her missile better or timed it more accurately.
During the first moment she saw nothing but the central fact--the
concealed love affair of which the writer thought she was cognizant. Her
mind accepted that instantaneously, corroborating memories coming quick
to her call. They flashed across her mental vision, vivid and detached
like slides in a magic lantern--glimpses of Chrystie in her unfamiliar
brooding and her flushed elation, and the walks, the long walks, from
which she returned withdrawn and curiously silent--the silence of
enraptured retrospect.
Then quick, leaping upon her, came the recollection of Chrystie's
departure that afternoon--the clinging embrace, the rush down the steps,
the absence of her face at the carriage window. Lorry gave a moan and her
hands rose, clutched against her heart. It was proof of how her lonely
life had molded her that in this moment of piercing alarm, she thought of
no help, of no outside assistance to which she could appeal. She had
always been the leader, acted on her own initiative, and the will to do
so now held her taut, sending her mind forces out, clutching and groping
for her course. It came in a low-breathed whisper of, "The Barlows," and
she ran to the telephone, an old-fashioned wall instrument behind the
stairs. As she flew toward it another magic lantern picture flashed into
being--Chrystie boring down into her trunk and the pile of money on the
bureau. That forced a sound out of her--a sharp, groaned note--as if
expelled from her body by the impact of a blow.
She tried to give the Barlows' number clearly and quietly and found her
voice broken by gasping breaths. There was a period of agonized waiting,
then a drowsy "central" saying she couldn't raise the number, and Lorry
trying to be calm, trying to be reasonable--it _must_ be raised, it was
important, they were asleep that was all. _Ring_--_ring_--ring till
someone answers.
It seemed hours before Roy Barlow's voice, sleepy and cross, came
growling along the wire:
"What the devil's the matter? Who is it?"
Then her answer and her question: Was Chrystie there?
That smoothed out the crossness and woke him up. He became
suddenly alert:
"Chrystie? Here--with us?"
"Yes--staying over till Friday. Went down this afternoon."
"No. _She's _not here. What makes you think she is?"
She did not know what to say; the instinct to protect her sister was part
of her being, strong in a moral menace as a physical. She fumbled out an
explanation--she'd been out of town and in her absence Chrystie had
gone to the country without leaving word where. It was all right of
course, she was a fool to bother about it, but she couldn't rest till she
knew where the girl had gone. It was probably either to the Spencers or
the Joneses; they'd been teasing her to visit them all winter. Roy, now
wide-awake, showed a tendency to ask questions, but she cut him off,
swamped his curiosity in apologies and good-bys and hung up the receiver.
She was almost certain now, and again she stood pressing down her
terrors, urging her faculties to intelligent action. She did not let them
slip from her guidance; held them close as dogs to the trail. A moment of
rigid immobility and she had whirled back to the telephone and called up
a near-by livery stable. This answered promptly and she ordered a cab
sent round at once.
While she waited she tried to keep steady and think clearly. Prominent
in her mind was the necessity not to move rashly, not to do anything
that would react on Chrystie. There might yet be a mistake--a blessed,
unforseen mistake. She clung to the idea as those about a deathbed
cling to the hope that a miracle may supervene and save their loved
one. There _was_ a possibility that Chrystie had gone on some
mysterious adventure of her own, was playing a trick, was doing
anything but eloping with a man that no one had ever thought she cared
for. The only way to find out whether Mayer had any part in her
disappearance was to go directly to him.
She sat stiffly in the cab holding her hands tight-clenched to control
their trembling. Her whole being seemed to tremble like a substance
strained to the point of a perpetual vibration. She was not conscious of
it; was only conscious of her will stretching out like a tangible thing,
grasping at a fleeing Chrystie and dragging her back. And under that lay
a substratum of anguish--that it was _her_ fault, _her_ fault. The wheels
repeated the words in their rhythmic rotation; the horse's hoofs hammered
them out on the pavement.
The night clerk at the Argonaut Hotel, drowsing behind his desk, sat up
with a start when he saw her. Ladies in such gala array were rare at The
Argonaut at any hour, much more so at long past midnight. That this one
was agitated even the sleepy clerk could see. Her face was nearly as
white as the dress showing between the loosened fronts of her cloak. The
voice in which she asked if Mr. Mayer was there was a husky undertone.
The clerk, scrambling to his feet, said yes, as far as he knew Mr. Mayer
was in his room. He had come in about ten and hadn't gone out since.
A change took place in her expression; the strained look relaxed and the
white neck, showing between the cloak edges, lifted with a caught breath.
"Where is he?" she said, and before the man could answer had turned and
swept toward the stairs.
"Second floor--two doors from the stairs on your right--No. 8," he
called, and watched her as she ran, her skirts lifted, the rich cloak
drooping about her form as it slanted forward in the rush of her ascent.
Mayer was still up and sitting at his desk. Everything was progressing
satisfactorily. An excellent dinner had exerted its comforting influence
and the telephone message to Chrystie had shown her to be reassuringly
uncomplaining and tranquil. Elated by a heady sense of approaching
success he had packed his trunk in the bedroom and then come back to the
parlor and added up his resources and coming expenses. He had calculated
what these would be with businesslike thoroughness, his mind, under the
process of addition and subtraction, cogitating on a distribution of
funds that would at once husband them and yield him the means of
impressing his bride. Through the word "jewelry" he had drawn his pen,
substituting "candy and flowers," and was leaning back in gratified
contemplation when a knock fell on the door. He rose to his feet,
frightened, for the first moment inclined to make no answer. Then knowing
that the light through the transom would betray his presence, he called,
"Come in."
Lorry Alston, in evening dress, pale-faced and alone, entered.
His surprise and alarm were overwhelming. With the pen still in his hand
he stood speechless, staring at her, and had she faced him then and there
with her knowledge of the facts, admission might have dropped, in scared
amaze, from his lips.
But the sight of him, peacefully employed in his own apartment, when she
had suspected him of being somewhere else, nefariously engaged in running
away with her sister, had so relieved her, that, in that first moment of
encounter, she was silent. Bewilderment, verging toward apology, kept her
on the threshold. Then the memory of the letter sent her over it, brought
back the realization that even if he was here by himself he must know
something of Chrystie's whereabouts.
Closing the door behind her she said:
"Mr. Mayer, I'm looking for my sister."
If that told him that she did not know where Chrystie was, it also told
that she connected him with the girl's absence. He controlled his alarm
and drew his shaken faculties into order.
"Looking for your sister!" he repeated. "Looking for her _here_?"
"Yes." She advanced a step, her eyes sternly fixed on him. He did not
like the look, there was question and accusation in it, but he was able
to inject a dignified surprise into his answer.
"I don't understand you, Miss Alston. Why should you come to _me_ at this
hour to find your sister?"
He did it well, wounded pride, hostility under unjust suspicion, strong
in his voice.
"Chrystie's gone," she answered. "She told me she was going to friends,
and I find she isn't there. She deceived me and I had reason--I heard
something tonight that made me think--" She stopped. It was horrible to
state to this man, now frankly abhorred, what she suspected. There was a
slight pause while he waited with an air of cold forbearance.
"Well," he said at length, "would it be too much trouble to tell me what
you think?"
She had to say it:
"That she had gone to you."
"To _me_?" He was incredulous, astounded.
"Yes. Had run away with you."
"What reason had you for thinking such a thing?"
She made a step forward, ignoring the question.
"She isn't here--I can see that--but where is she?"
"How should I know?"
"Because you must know something about her, because you _do_ know.
Chrystie of herself wouldn't tell me lies; someone's made her do it,
_you've_ made her do it."
"Really, Miss Alston--"
But she wouldn't give him time to finish.
"Mr. Mayer, you've got to tell me where she is. I won't leave here
till you do."
He had always felt and disliked a quality of cool reasonableness in
this girl. Now he saw a fighting courage, a thing he had never guessed
under that gentle exterior, and he liked it even less. Had he followed
his inclination he would have treated her with the rough brutality he
had awarded Pancha, but he had to keep his balance and discover how
much she knew.
"Miss Alston, we're at cross-purposes. We'd come to a better
understanding if I knew what you're talking about. You spoke of finding
out something tonight. If you'll tell me what it is I'll be able to
answer you more intelligently."
She thrust her hand into her belt, drew out a folded paper and handed
it to him.
"_That._ I found it when I came back from the opera."
He recognized the writing at once, and before he was halfway through his
rage against Pancha was boiling. When he had finished he could not trust
his voice, and staring at the paper, he heard her say:
"I've known for some time Chrystie was troubled and not herself, and this
afternoon when I saw her go I _knew_ something was wrong. She looked ill;
she could hardly speak to me. And then _that_ came, and I telephoned to
the Barlows'--the place she was going. She wasn't there, they'd never
asked her, never expected her. She's gone somewhere--disappeared." She
raised her voice, hard, threatening, her face angrily accusing, "Where is
she, Mr. Mayer? Where is she?"
He knew it all now, and his knowledge made him master.
"Miss Alston, I'm very sorry about this--"
"Oh. don't talk that way!" she cried, pointing at the letter. "What does
_that_ mean?"
"I think I can explain. You've given yourself a lot of unnecessary
trouble and taken this thing," he scornfully dropped the letter on the
table, "altogether too seriously. Sit down and let me straighten it out."
He pointed to the rocker, but she did not move, keeping her eyes with
their fierce steadiness on his face.
"How _could_ I take it too seriously?" she said.
"Why"--he smiled in good-natured derision--"what is it? An anonymous
letter, evidently by the wording and the writing the work of an
uneducated person. It's perfectly true that I've seen your sister several
times on the streets, and once I _did_ happen upon her when she was
taking a walk in the plaza by the Greek Church. But there's nothing
unusual about that--I've met and talked with many other ladies in the
same way. The writer of that rubbish evidently saw us in the plaza and
decided--to use his own language--that he'd have some fun with us, or
rather with me. The whole thing--the expression, the tone--indicates a
vulgar, malicious mind. Don't give it another thought, it's unworthy of
your consideration."
He saw he had made an impression. Her eyes left him and she stood gazing
fixedly into space, evidently pondering his explanation. In a pleasantly
persuasive tone he added:
"You know that I've not been a constant visitor at your house. You've
seen my attitude to your sister."
She made no reply to that, muttering low as if to herself:
"Why should anyone write such a letter without a reason?"
"Ah, my dear lady, why are there mischief makers in the world? I'm
awfully sorry; I feel responsible, for the person who'd do such a thing
is more likely to be known by me than by you. It's probably some servant
I've forgotten to tip or by accident given a plugged quarter."
There was a pause, then she turned to him and said:
"But where's Chrystie?"
He came closer, comforting, very friendly:
"Since you ask me I'd set this down as a prank. She's full of high
spirits--only a child yet. She's gone somewhere, to some friend's house,
is playing a joke on you. Isn't that possible?"
"Yes, possible." She had already found this straw herself, but grasped it
anew, pushed forward by him.
He went on, his words sounding the note of masculine reason and
reassurance.
"You'll probably hear from her tomorrow, and you'll laugh together over
your fears of tonight. But if you take my advice, don't say anything
outside, don't tell anyone. You're liable to set the gossips talking, and
you never know when they'll stop. They might make it very unpleasant for
you both. Miss Chrystie doesn't want her schoolgirl tricks magnified into
scandals."
She nodded, brows drawn low, her teeth set on her underlip. If he had
convinced her of his innocence he saw he had not killed her anxieties.
"Is there any way I can help you?" he hazarded.
She shook her head. She had the appearance of having suddenly become
oblivious to him--not finding him a culprit, she had brushed him aside as
negligible.
"Then you'll go home and give up troubling about it?"
"I'll go home," she said, and with a deep sigh seemed to come back to the
moment and his presence. Moving to the table she picked up the letter.
Now that he was at ease, her face in its harassed care touched a
vulnerable spot. He was sorry for her.
"Don't take it so to heart, Miss Alston. I'm convinced it's going to turn
out all right."
She gave him a sharp, startled look.
"Of course it is. If I thought it wasn't would I be standing here
doing nothing?"
She walked to the door, the small punctilio of good-bys ignored as
she had ignored all thought of strangeness in being in that place at
that hour.
"I wish I could do something to ease your mind," he said, watching her
receding back.
"You can't," she answered and opened the door.
"Have you a trap--something to take you home?"
She passed through the doorway, throwing over her shoulder:
"Yes, I've a cab--it's been waiting."
In spite of his success he had, for a moment, a crestfallen sense of
feeling small and contemptible. He watched her walk down the hall and
then went to the window and saw her emerge from the street door, and
enter the cab waiting at the curb.
Alone, faced by this new complication, the sting of her disparaging
indifference was forgotten. There was no sleep for him that night, and
lighting a cigarette he paced the room. He would have to let the gambling
debt go; there could be no delay now. By the afternoon of the next day
Lorry would be in a state where one could not tell what she might do. He
would have to leave on the morning train, call up Chrystie at seven, go
out and change the tickets, and meet her at Oakland. In the sudden
concentrating of perils, the elopement was gradually losing its
surreptitious character and becoming an affair openly conducted under
the public eye. But there was no other course. Even if they were seen on
the train they would reach Reno without interference, and once there he
would find a clergyman and have the marriage ceremony performed at once.
After that it didn't matter--he trusted in his power over Chrystie. In
the back of his mind rose a discomforting thought of an eventual
"squaring things" with Lorry, but he pushed it aside. Future difficulties
had no place in the present and its desperate urgencies. The thought of
Pancha also intruded, and on that he hung, for a moment, his face evil
with a thwarted rage, his hands instinctively bent into talons. Had he
dared he would like to have gone to her and--but he pushed that aside too
and went back to his plans and his pacings.
Lorry went home convinced of Mayer's ignorance. Finding him at the hotel
had done half, his arguments and manner the rest. And during the drive
back his explanation of Chrystie's disappearance had retained a consoling
plausibility. She held to it fiercely, conned it over, tried to force
herself to see the girl impishly bent on a foolish practical joke.
But when she was in her own room, the blank silence of the house about
her, it fell from her and left her defenseless against growing fears. It
was impossible to believe it--utterly foreign to Chrystie's temperament.
She racked her memory for occasions in the past when her sister had
indulged in such cruel teasing and not one came to her mind. No--she
wouldn't have done it, she couldn't--something more than a joke had made
Chrystie lie to her. A sumptuous figure in her glistening dress, she
moved about, rose and sat, jerked back the curtains, picked up and
dropped the silver ornaments on the bureau. Her lips were dry, her heart
contracted with a sickening dread; never in all the calls made upon her
had there been anything like this; finding her without resources,
reducing her to an anguished helplessness.
If in the morning there was no word from Chrystie she would have to do
something and she could not think what this should be. Mayer had not
needed to warn her against giving her sister up to the tongue of gossip.
The most guileless of girls living in San Francisco would learn that
lesson early. But what could she do? To whom could she go for help and
advice? She thought of her mother's friends, the guardians of the estate,
and repudiated them with a smothered sound of scorn. They wouldn't care;
would let it get into the papers; would probably suggest the police. And
would she not herself--if Chrystie did not come back or write--have to go
to the police?
That brought her to a standstill, and with both hands she pressed on her
forehead pushing back her hair, sending tormented looks about her. If
there was only someone who would understand, someone she could trust,
someone--she dropped her hands, her eyes widening, fixed and startled, as
a name rose to her lips and fell whispered on the stillness. It came
without search or expectation, seemed impelled from her by her inward
stress, found utterance before she knew she had thought of him. A deep
breath heaved her chest, her head drooped backward, her eyelids closing
in a relief as intense, as ineffably comforting, as the cessation of an
unbearable pain.
She stood rigid, the light falling bright on her upturned face, still as
a marble mask. For a moment she felt bodiless, her containing shell
dissolved, nothing left of her but her longing for him. Like an audible
cry or the grasp of her hand drawing him to her, it went out from her,
imperious, an appeal and a summons. Again she whispered his name; but
she heard it only as the repetition of a solace and a solution, was not
aware of forces tapped in lower wells of being.
After that she felt curiously calmed, her wild restlessness gone, her
nightmare terrors assuaged. If she did not hear from Chrystie by midday
she would call him up at his office and ask him to come to her. She
seemed to have found in the thought of him not only a staff to uphold,
but wisdom to guide.
She drew the curtains and saw the first thin glimmering of dawn,
pearl-faint in the sky, pearl-pale on the garden. The crystal trimmings
of her bodice gave a responsive gleam, and looking down she was aware of
her gala array. She slipped out of it, put on a morning dress, and
denuded her hair of its shining ornament. It seemed long ago, in another
life, that she had sat in Mrs. Kirkham's box, rejoicing in her costly
trappings, glad to be admired.
Then she pulled a chair to the window and sat there waiting for the light
to come. It crept ghostly over the garden, trees and plants taking form,
the walks and lawns, a vagueness of dark patches and lighter windings,
emerging in gradual definiteness. The sky above the next house grew a
lucid gray, then a luminous mother-of-pearl. She could see the glistening
of dew, its beaded hoar upon cobwebs and grassy borders. There was no
footstep here to disturb the silence; the dawn stole into being in a deep
and breathless quietude.