Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner (top e book reader .txt) 📕

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's _very_ polite 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 would I 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 the _Despatch_ office 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.


CHAPTER XXV


WHAT JIM SAW

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 the _Despatch_ office. 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 own _kudos_ the most picturesque story that had ever come his way. He went about his work, restless and impatient, seeing the story on the _Despatch's_ front 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 ship _Bonaventure_ spreads its shining sails before the winds of romance. A quiet hail and