The next day she rose, grimly determined, and girded herself for action.

In the morning, giving Fong the orders, she told him she was going to have a dinner, and in the afternoon went to see Mrs. Kirkham.

Mrs. Kirkham had once been a friend of Minnie Alston's and she was the only one of that now diminishing group with whom Lorry felt at ease. Had the others known of the visit and its cause they would have thrown up their hands and said, "Just like that girl." Mrs. Kirkham was n.o.body now, the last person to go to for help in social matters. In the old days in Nevada her husband had been George Alston's paymaster, and she had held her head high and worn diamonds.

But that was ages ago. Long before the date of this story the high head had been lowered and the diamonds sold, all but those that encircled the miniature of her only baby, dead before the Con-Virginia slump. She lived in a little flat up toward the cemeteries, second floor, door to the left, and please press the push b.u.t.ton. In her small parlor the pictures of the Bonanza Kings hung on the walls and she was wont, an old rheumatic figure in shiny black with the miniature pinned at her withered throat, to point to these and tell stories of the great Iliad of the Comstock.

She was very fond of Lorry and when she heard her predicament--a party to be given and not enough men--patted her hand and nodded understandingly.

Times were changed--ah, if the girls had been in Virginia in the seventies! And after a brisk canter through her memories (she always had to have that) galloped back into the present and its needs. Lorry went home rea.s.sured and soothed. You could always count on Mrs. Kirkham's taking hold and helping you through.

The old lady was put on her mettle, flattered by the appeal, made to feel she was still a living force. Also she would have done anything in the world for Minnie's girls. She consulted with her niece, well married and socially aspiring if not yet installed in the citadel. It was a happy thought; the niece had the very thing, "a delightful gentleman," lately arrived in the city. So it fell out that Boye Mayer, under the chaperonage of Mrs. Kirkham, was brought to call and asked to fill a seat at the formidable dinner.

Formidable was hardly a strong enough word. It advanced on Lorry like a darkling doom. Once she had set its machinery in motion it seemed to rush forward with a vengeful momentum. Everybody accepted but Charlie Crowder, who could not get off, and Mark Burrage, who wrote her a short, stiff note saying he "was unable to attend." For a s.p.a.ce that made her oblivious to the larger, surrounding distress. It was a little private and particular sting for herself that concentrated her thoughts upon the hurt it left. After she read it her face had flushed, and she had dropped it into her desk snapping the lid down hard. If he didn't want to come he could stay away. Men didn't like her anyway; she knew it and she wasn't going to make any mistakes. Her concern in life was Chrystie and it was being pointed out to her that she wasn't supposed to have any other.

Finally the evening came and everything was ready. Fong's talents, after years of disuse, rose in the pa.s.sion of the artist and produced a feast worthy of the past. A florist decorated the table and the lower floor. Mother's jewels were taken out of the safety deposit box, and Lorry and Chrystie, in French costumes with their hair dressed so that they looked like strangers, gazed upon each other in the embowered drawing-room realizing that they had brought it upon themselves and must see it through.

The start was far from promising; none of them seemed able to live up to it. Aunt Ellen kept following the strange waiters with suspicious eyes, then looking down the glittering table at Lorry like a worried dog. And Chrystie, who had been all blithe expectation up to the time she dressed, was suddenly shattered by nervousness, making detached, breathless remarks about the weather and then drinking copious draughts of water. As for Lorry, she felt herself so small and shriveled that her new dress hung on her in folds and her mouth was so dry she could hardly articulate.

It was awful. The guests seemed to feel the blight and wither under it, eating carefully as if fearing sounds of mastication might intrude on the long, recurring silences. There was a time when Lorry thought she couldn't bear it, had a distracted temptation to leap to her feet, say she was faint and rush from the place. Then came the turn in the tide--Mr. Mayer, the strange man Mrs. Kirkham had produced, did it. She had noticed that he alone seemed free from the prevailing discomfort, looked undisturbed and calm, glancing at the table, the guests, herself and Chrystie. But it was not until the fish that he started to talk. It was about the fish, but it branched away from the fish, radiated out from it to other fish, to the waters where the other fish swam, to the countries that gave on the waters, to the people who lived in the countries.

He woke them all up, held them entranced. Lorry couldn't be sure whether he really was so clever or seemed so by contrast with them, but she thought it was the latter. It didn't matter; nothing mattered except that he was making it go. And at first she had been loath to ask him! She hadn't liked him, thought he was too suavely elaborate, a sort of overdone imitation. Well, thank goodness she had, for he simply took the dinner which was settling down to a slow, sure death and made it come to life.

Presently they were all talking, to their partners, across the table, even to Aunt Ellen. The exhilarating sound of voices rose to a hum, then a concerted babble broken by laughter. It grew animated, it grew sparkling, it grew brilliant. Chrystie, with parted lips and glistening eyes, became as artlessly amusing as she was in the bosom of her family.

She was delightful, her frank enjoyment a charming spectacle. Lorry, in that seat which so short a time before had seemed but one remove from the electric chair, now reigned as from a throne, proudly surveying the splendors of her table and the gladness of her guests.

When it was over, the last carriage wheels rumbling down the street, the girls stood in the hall and looked at one another. Aunt Ellen, creaking in her new silks, toiled up the stairs, an old, shaky hand on the bal.u.s.trade.

"Come up, girls," she quavered; "you must be dead tired."

"Well," breathed Lorry with questioning eyes on her sister, "how was it?"

Chrystie jumped at her and folded her in a rapturous embrace.

"Oh, it was maddening, blissful, rip-roarious! Oh, Lorry, it was the grandest thing since the water came up to Montgomery street!"

"You _did_ enjoy it, didn't you?"

"Enjoy it! Why, I never had such a galumptious time in my life. They all did. The Barlow girls are on their heads about it--they said so and I saw it."

"I think everybody had a good time."

"Of course they did. But, oh, didn't you nearly die at the beginning? I was sick. Honestly, Lorry, I felt something sinking in me down here, and my mouth getting all sideways. If it hadn't been for that man I'd have just slipped out of my seat under the table and died there at their feet."

"He saved it," said Lorry solemnly, as one might mention a doctor who had brought back from death a beloved relative.

The gas was out and they were mounting the stairs, arms entwined, warm young flesh on warm young flesh.

"Isn't he a thoroughbred, isn't he a gem!" Chrystie chanted. "I'd like to go to Mrs. Kirkham's tomorrow, climb up her front stairs on my knees and knock my forehead on the sill of her parlor door."

"Did you really like him? I think he's clever and entertaining but I wouldn't want him for a friend."

"I didn't think about him that way. I just sort of stood off and admired. He's the most _magnetic_ thing!"

"Yes, I suppose he is, but--"

"There are no buts about it." Then in the voice of knowledge, "I'll tell you what he is, I'll put it in terms you can understand--he's the perfect specimen of the real, genuine, solid gold nugget."

CHAPTER XII

A KISS

After the dinner Mayer walked downtown. He had been a good deal surprised, rather amused, and in the drawing-room afterward extremely bored. His amus.e.m.e.nt was sardonic. He grinned at the thought of himself in such company and wondered if it could have happened anywhere but California. Those two girls, rich and young, were apparently free to ask anybody into their house. It was curious, and he saw them similarly placed in Europe; they would have been guarded like the royal treasure, chiefly to keep such men as himself out.

The splendor of the entertainment had surprised him. He was becoming used to the Californian's prodigal display of flowers, but such a dinner, served to unappreciative youth, was something new. The whole affair had been a combination of an intelligent luxury and a rank crudity--food fit for kings set before boys and girls who had no more appreciation of its excellence than babies would have had. And the silver on the table, c.u.mbrously magnificent, it was worth a small fortune.

Outside the humor of his own presence there, he had found the affair tedious, especially that last hour in the drawing-room. It was the sort of place that had always bored him even when he was young, governed by narrow, feminine standards, breathing a ponderous respectability from every curtain fold. Neither of the girls had been attractive. The elder, the small, pale one, was a prim, stiff little thing. The other was nothing but a gawky child; fine coloring--these Californians all had it--but with no charm or mystery. They were like the fruit, all run to size but without much flavor. He thought the elder girl had some intelligence; one would have to be on one's guard with her. He made a mental note of it, for he intended going there again--it was the best meal he had eaten since he left New York.

The night was warm and soft, a moon rising over the housetops. He breathed deep of the balmy air, inhaling it gratefully. After such a constrained three hours he felt the need of relaxation, of easy surroundings, of an expansion to his accustomed dimensions. Swinging down the steep street between the dark gardens and flanking walls, he surveyed the lights of the city's livelier center and thought of something to do that would take the curse of the dinner off his spirit.

A half hour later Pancha, emerging from the alley that led to the Albion's stage door, saw a tall, familiar shape approach from the shadows. Her heart gave a jump, and as her hand was enfolded in a strong, possessive grasp, she could not control the sudden quickening of her breath.

"Oh, it's you! Gee, how you scared me," she said, to account for it.

He squeezed the hand, murmuring apologies, his vanity gratified, for he knew no man at the stage door would ever scare Pancha.

As it was so fine a night he suggested that she walk back to the hotel and let him escort her, to which, with a glance at the moon, and a sniff of the mellow air, she agreed.

So they fared forth, two dark figures, choosing quieter streets than those she usually trod, the tapping of her high heels falling with a smart regularity on the stillness held between the silver-washed walls.

They were rather silent, conversation broken by periods when their mingled footfalls beat clear on the large, enfolding mutter of the city sinking to sleep. It was his fault; heretofore he had been the leader, conducting her by a crafty discursiveness toward those confidences she so resolutely withheld. But tonight he did not want to talk, trailing lazy steps beside her, casting thoughtful glances upward at the vast, illumined sky. It made her nervous; there was something of a deep, disturbing intimacy about it; not a sweet and soothing intimacy, but portentous and agitating. She tried to be herself, laid about for bright things to say and found she could pump up no defiant buoyancy, her tongue clogged, her spirit oppressed by a disintegrating inner distress. It did not make matters any better when he said in a dreamy tone:

"Why are you so quiet?"

"I've worked hard tonight. I'm tired and you're walking so fast."

He was immediately contrite, slackening his step, which in truth was very slow.

"Oh, Pancha, what a brute I am. Why didn't you tell me?" And he took her hand and tried to draw it through his arm.

But she resisted, pulling away from him almost pettishly, shrinking from his touch.

"No, no, let me alone. I like to walk by myself."

He drew back with a slight shrug, more amused than repulsed. Nevertheless he was rather sorry he had suggested the walk, he had never known her to be less entertaining.