CHAPTER XXII
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.