Treasure and Trouble Therewith Part 41

Mark looked up at it, unaware of its splendors, mind and glance raised in an instinctive appeal to some remote source of strength in those illumined heights.

As his glance fell back to the road he suddenly knew where he had seen the eyes. There was no jar of recognition, no startled uncertainty. He saw them looking at him from the face of Boye Mayer, standing in Lorry's drawing-room with his hands resting on the back of a chair.

He stopped dead, staring ahead. Lorry's summons, the tramp, the man in evening dress against the background of the rich room--all these drew to a single point. What their connection was he could not guess, was only aware of them as related, and, accepting that, forged forward at a swinging stride. The beat of his feet fell rhythmic on the dust; his breath came deep-drawn and even; his eyes pierced the dark ahead, fixed on landmarks to be pa.s.sed, goals to be gained, stations to leave behind him in his race to the woman who had called.

Unnoted by him a pale edge of light stole along the east, throwing out the high, crumpled line of the Sierra. The landscape developed from nebulous shadows and enfoldings to hill slopes, tree domes, the cl.u.s.tered groupings of barns. A stir pa.s.sed, frail and delicate, over the earth's face, a light tentative trembling in the leaves, a quiver through the grain. Birds made sleepy twitterings; the c.h.i.n.k of running water came from hidden stream beds; plowed fields showed the striping of furrows on which the dew glistened in a silvery crust. The day was at hand.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

REVELATION

While Lorry was still queening it in the front of Mrs. Kirkham's box, while Chrystie was tossing in her strange bed, while Boye Mayer was packing his trunk, while Mark was thinking of Lorry in his room under the eaves, Garland, one of the actors in this drama now drawing to its climax, stood against the chain of a ferry boat b.u.mping its way into the Market Street slip.

He was over it first, racing up the gangway and along the echoing pa.s.sage to the street. People growled as he elbowed them, plowed a pa.s.sage through their slow-moving ranks, and ran for the wheeling lights of the trolleys. He made a dash for one, leaped on its step, and holding to an upright, stood, breathing quickly, as the car clanged its way up the great thoroughfare. He had to change by the Call Building, and his heart was hammering on his ribs as he dropped off the second car at the corner of Pancha's street.

Up its dim perspective he could see the two ground gla.s.s globes at the Vallejo's steps. He wanted to run but did not dare--the habits of the hunted still held--and he walked as fast as he could, sending his glance ahead for her windows. When he saw light gleaming from them his head drooped in a spasm of relief. All the way down the fear that she might be in a hospital--a public place dangerous for him to visit--had tortured him.

Cus.h.i.+ng, behind the desk, yawning over the evening paper, roused at the sight of him and showed a desire to talk. At the sentence that "Miss Lopez was gettin' along all right," the visitor moved off to the stairs.

He again wanted to run but he felt Cus.h.i.+ng's eyes on his back and made a sober ascent till the turn of the landing hid him; then he rushed. At her door he knocked and heard her voice, low and querulous:

"Who is it now?"

"The old man," he whispered, his mouth to the crack. It was opened by her and he had her in his arms.

Joy at the sight and feel of her, the knowledge that she was not as he had pictured in desperate case, made him speechless. He could only press her against him, hold her off and look into her face, his own working, broken words of love and pity coming from him. His unusual display of emotion affected her, deeply stirred on her own account, and she clung to him, weak tears running down her cheeks, caressing him with hands that said what her shaking lips could not utter.

He supported her to the sofa and laid her there, covering her, soothing her, his concern finding expression in low, crooning sounds such as women make over their sick babies. When she was quieted he drew the armchair up beside her, and, his hand stroking hers, asked about her illness. He had read in the paper that it was a nervous collapse caused by overwork, and he chided her gently.

"What did you keep on for when you were so tuckered out? Why didn't you let up on it sooner? You could 'a stood the expense, and if you didn't want to use your own money what's the matter with mine?"

"I didn't want to stop," she murmured. "Every day I kept thinking I'd be all right."

"Oh, hon, that don't show good sense. How can I keep up my lick if I can't trust you better? You've pretty near finished me. I come on it in a paper up there in the hills-G.o.d, I didn't know what struck me. It's tore me to pieces."

His look bore testimony to his words. He was old, seamed with lines, fallen away from his robust st.u.r.diness. She suddenly seemed unable to bear all this weight of pitifulness--his, hers, the world's outside them. At first she had resolved to keep the real cause of her illness secret. But now his devastated look, his pathetic tenderness, shattered her. She was a child again, longing to creep into the arms that would have held her against all harm, droop on the rough breast where she had always found sympathy. As the truth had come out under Growder's kindness, the truth came again. But this time there were no reservations; the rich girl took her place in the story. Others might see in that a mitigating circ.u.mstance but not the man who valued her above all girls, rich or poor.

Garland listened closely, hardly once interrupting her. When she finished his rage broke and she was frightened. Years had pa.s.sed since she had seen him aroused and now his lowering face, darkened with pa.s.sion, his choked words, brought back memories of him raging tremendously in old dead battles with miner and cattleman.

"Pa, Pa," she cried, stretching her hands toward him, "what's the use--what can you do? It's finished and over; getting mad and cursing won't make it any better."

But he cursed, flinging the chair from him, rumbling out his wrath, beyond the bounds of reason.

"Don't talk so," she implored and slid off the sofa to her feet. "They'll hear you in the next room. I can't afford to let this get around."

For the first time in her knowledge of him he was deaf to the claims of her welfare.

"Who is this fancy gentleman?" he cried. "Where is he?"

"Oh, why did I tell you?" she wailed. "What got into me to tell you! I can't fight with you--I won't let you go to him. There's no use--it's all over, it's done, it's ended. _Can't_ you see?"

He made no answer and she went to him, catching at his arm and shoulder, staring, desperately pleading, into his face.

"You talk like a fool," he said, pus.h.i.+ng her away. "This is my job.

Where is he?"

As she had said, she was unable to fight with him. Her enfeebled body was empty of all resistant force. Now, as she clung to him, she felt its sickly weakness, its drained energies. She wanted peace, the sofa again, the swaying walls to steady, the angry man to be her father, quiet in the armchair. She forgot her promise to Crowder, her pledged word, everything, but that there was a way to end the racking scene. Holding to the hand that thrust her aside she said softly:

"There's a punishment coming to him that's better than anything _you_ can give."

His glance s.h.i.+fted to hers, arrested.

"What you mean?"

"He's done something worse than the way he's treated me--something the law can get him for."

"What?"

"Sit down quiet here and I'll tell you."

She pointed to the overturned chair and made a step toward the sofa. He remained motionless, watching her with somberly doubting eyes.

"It's true," she said; "every word. It comes from Charlie Crowder. When you hear it you'll see, and you'll see too that you'll only mix things up by b.u.t.ting in. They're getting their net ready for him, and they'll have him in it before the week's out."

This time the words had their effect. He picked up the chair and brought it to the sofa. She sat there erect, her legs curled up beside her, and told him the story of Boye Mayer and the stolen money.

The light was behind him and against it she saw him as a formless shape, the high, rounded back of the chair projecting above his head. The silence with which he listened she set down to interest, and feeling that she had gained his attention, that his wrath was appeased by this unexpected retribution, her own interest grew and the narrative flowed from her lips, fluent, complete, full of enlightening detail.

Once or twice at the start he had stirred, the rickety chair creaking under his weight. Then, slouched against its back, he had settled into absolute stillness. To anyone not seeing him, it might have seemed that the girl was talking to herself, pauses that she made for comment pa.s.sed in silence, questions she now and then put remained unanswered. Peering at him she made him out, a brooding ma.s.s, his chin sunk into his collar, his hands clasped over his waist, his eyes fixed on the floor.

When she was done he stayed thus for a moment apparently so buried in thought that he could not rouse himself.

"Well," she said, surprised at his silence, "isn't it true what I said?

Hasn't fate rounded things up for him?"

The chair creaked as he moved, heavily as if with an effort. He laid his hands on the arms and drew himself forward.

"Yes," he muttered, "it sounds pretty straight."

"Would anything you could do beat that?"

He sat humped together looking at the floor, his powerful, gnarled hands gripping at the chair arms. She could see the top of his head with a bald place showing through the thick, low-lying grizzle of hair.

"Nup," he said, "I guess not."

He heaved himself up and walked across the room to the window.