The girl, baffled and uncertain, looked for help to her father.

"How'll I begin?"

"Tell him what it's about," he suggested. "You give him the facts, and he'll put 'em into shape."

"Well, we've got a sick woman here, and we don't know who she is. We found her in a hotel, hit on the head, and she's not spoken much yet--not anything that'll give any clew to where she comes from or who she belongs to. That's what the ad's for. She's a lady, young, and she's tall--nearly as tall as you. Blonde, blue eyes and golden hair, and she's got three rings--" She stopped, the words dying before the expression of the young man's face.

"Where is she?" he said.

Pancha pointed to the room on the left, saw the letter drop to the floor as he turned and ran for the doorway, saw him enter and heard his loud e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

For a moment she and her father stared, open-mouthed, at one another, then she went to the door. In the room, swept with pure airs from the open window, the light subdued by a curtain of gunny sacks, the young man was kneeling by the side of the mattress, his hand on the sick woman's.

She was looking at him intently, a slow intelligence gathering in her eyes. The ghost of a smile touched her lips, and they parted to emit in the small voice of a child,

"Marquis de Lafayette."

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

HAIL AND FAREWELL

The Alstons had taken a house in San Rafael. It was a big comfortable place with engirdling balconies whence one looked upon the blossoming beauties of a May-time garden. Aunt Ellen thought it much too large, but when the settling down was accomplished, saw why Lorry had wanted so much room. Mrs. Kirkham was invited over from town "to stay as long as she liked," and now for a week there had been visitors from up country--Mrs.

Burrage and Sadie.

It made quite a houseful and Fong, with a new second boy to break in, was exceedingly busy. He had brushed aside Lorry's suggestion that with half the city in ruins and n.o.body caring what they ate, simple meals would suffice. That was all very well for other people--let them live frugally if they liked; Fong saw the situation from another angle. Back in his old place, his young ladies blooming under his eye, he gave forth his contentment in the exercise of his talents. Gastronomic masterpieces came daily from his hands, each one a note in his hymn of thanksgiving.

When the fire was under control he had turned up at Mrs. Kirkham's, saying he had thought "Miss Lolly" would be there. Then he had taken Lorry's jewel box from under his coat and held it out to her, answering her surprise with a series of smiling nods. He had everything safe, down on the water front--the silver, the best gla.s.s, all the good clothes and most of the pictures which he cut from their frames. Yes, he had moved them after Aunt Ellen left, having packed them earlier in the day and got a friend from Chinatown who had a butcher's wagon. They had worked together, taken the things out through the back alley, very quiet, very quick; the soldiers never saw them. He had driven across town to a North Beach wharf, hired a fishing smack, and with two Italians for crew, cast off and sailed about the bay for three days.

"I stay on boat all time," he said. "My business mind your stuff. I watch out, no leave dagoes, no go sleep. All locked up now. Chinamen hide him, keep him safe. I bring back when you get good house."

When they moved to San Rafael he brought them back, a load that must have filled the butcher's wagon to its hood. His young ladies' grat.i.tude pleased him, but to their offers of a reward he would not listen.

"Old Chinaman take care of my boss's house like my boss want me. Bad time, good time, ally samey. You no make earthquake--he come--my job help like evly day. I no good Chinaman if I don't. I no get paid extla for do my job."

The girls, after fruitless efforts, had to give in. Afterward, in their rooms when they sorted the clothes--the two beds were covered with them--they cried and laughed over the useless finery. Fong had carried away only the richest and costliest--evening dresses, lace petticoats, opera wraps, furs, high-heeled slippers, nothing that could be worn as life was now.

"We'll have to go about in ball dresses for the rest of the summer," said Chrystie, giggling hysterically. "How nice you'll look weeding the garden in an ermine stole and white satin slippers."

"We've got to wear them somewhere," Lorry decided.

"For one reason we've almost nothing else, and for another--and the real one--Fong mustn't know he's rescued the wrong things. I _will_ weed the garden in white satin slippers, and I'll put on a ball dress for dinner every night."

Chrystie was well again now. Drowsing on the balcony in the steamer chair and taking sun baths in the garden had restored her, if not quite to her old rosy robustness, to a pale imitation of her once glowing self. The rest of her hair had been cut off, and her shaven poll was hidden by a lace cap with a fringe of false curls sewed to its edge. This was very becoming and in sweeping draperies--some of the evening dresses made over into tea gowns--she was an attractive figure, her charms enhanced by a softening delicacy.

The dark episode of her disappearance was allowed to rest in silence. She and Lorry had threshed it out as far as Lorry thought fit. That Boye Mayer had dropped out of sight was all Chrystie knew. Some day later she would hear the truth, which Lorry had learned from Pancha Lopez. Lorry had also decided that the world must never know just what _did_ happen to the second Miss Alston. The advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Despatch_ was withdrawn in time, and those who shared the knowledge were sworn to secrecy. Her efforts to invent a plausible explanation caused Chrystie intense amus.e.m.e.nt. She hid it at first, was properly attentive and helpful, but to see Lorry trying to tell lies, worrying and struggling over it, was too much. A day came when she forgot both manners and sympathy, began to t.i.tter and then was lost. Lorry was vexed at first, looked cross, but when the sinner gasped out, "Oh, Lorry, I never thought I'd see _you_ come to this," couldn't help laughing herself.

On a bright Sat.u.r.day afternoon Chrystie and Sadie were sitting on the front balcony in the shade of the Marechal Niel rose. Mrs. Burrage and Lorry had gone for a drive, later to meet Mark--who was to stay with them over Sunday--at the station. Upstairs Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Kirkham were closeted with a dressmaker, fashioning festal attire. For that night there was to be a dinner, the first since the move. Beside the household Mark was coming, and Crowder was expected on a later train with Pancha Lopez and her father--eight people, quite an affair. Fong had been marketing half the morning, and was now in the kitchen in a state of temperamental irritation, having even swept Lorry from his presence with a commanding, "Go away, Miss Lolly. I get clazy if you wolly me now."

Sadie and Chrystie had become very friendly. Sadie was not disinclined to adore the youngest Miss Alston, so easy to get on with, so full of fun and chatter. Chrystie had fulfilled her expectations of what an heiress should be, handsome as a picture, clothed in silken splendors, regally accepting her plenty, carelessly spendthrift.

Lorry had rather disappointed her. She was not pretty, didn't seem to care what she had on, and was so quiet. And as an engaged girl there was nothing romantic about her, no shy glances at Mark, no surrept.i.tious hand pressures. Sadie would have set her down as dreadfully matter-of-fact except that now and then she did such queer, unexpected things. For example the first afternoon they were there, she had astonished Sadie by suddenly getting up and without a word kissing Mother on the forehead.

Mother, whom you never could count on, had begun to talk about the days when she was waitress in The Golden Nugget Hotel--broke into it as if it didn't matter at all. It made Sadie get hot all over; she didn't suppose they knew, and under her eyelids looked from one girl to the other to see how they'd take it. They didn't show anything, only seemed interested, and Sadie was calming down when Mother started off on George Alston--how fine he used to treat her and all that. It was then that Lorry did the queer thing--not a word out of her; just got up and kissed Mother and sat down. In her heart Sadie marveled at the perversity of men--Mark to have fallen in love with the elder when the younger sister was there!

She spoke about it to Mother upstairs that night, but Mother was unsatisfactory, smiled ambiguously and said:

"I guess Mark's the smart one of _our_ family."

In the shade of the Marechal Niel rose the girls talked and Chrystie, her tongue unloosed by growing intimacy, told about her wild adventure. She could not help it; after all Sadie knew a lot already, and it hampered conversation and the spontaneities of friendship to have to stop and think whether one ought to say this or not say that. It completed Sadie's subjugation: here _was_ a romance. She breathlessly listened, in a state of staring attention that would have made a less garrulous person than Chrystie tell secrets. When she knew all she couldn't help asking--no girl could:

"But did you love him _really_?"

Chrystie, stretching a white hand for a branch of the rose and drawing it, blossom-weighted, to her face, answered:

"No, I thought I did at first; it was so exciting and all the girls said he was such a star. But I was always afraid of him. He sort of magnetized me--made me feel I'd be a poor-spirited chump if I didn't run away with him. You don't want to have a man think that about you, so I said I would and I did go. But that night--shall I ever forget it? It was pure misery."

"Do you think you _would_ have gone with him?"

"I guess so, just because I hadn't the nerve not to. I felt as if I _had_ to see it through--was sort of pledged to it. Maybe I didn't want to go back on him, and maybe I was ashamed to. You can hardly call the earthquake a piece of luck, but it was for me."

She sniffed at the roses while Sadie eyed her almost awed. Eighteen and with this behind her! The more she knew of the youngest Miss Alston the more her respect and admiration increased. She waited expectantly for the heroine to resume, which she did after a last, luxurious inhalation of the rose's breath.

"Wasn't it wonderful that the person who found me was Pancha Lopez? I keep thinking of it all the time. You know I was always crazy about her, but I never thought I'd meet her. And then to finally do it the way I did!"

Sadie's comment showed a proper comprehension of this strange happening, and then she wanted to know what Pancha Lopez was like.

"Oh, she's a priceless thing--there's n.o.body anywhere like her, in looks or any other way. She's different. You can't take your eyes off her, and yet she's not pretty. Remarkable people never are."

This was a new thought to Sadie who, absorbing it slowly, ventured a safe:

"Aren't they?"

"No, it's only the second-cla.s.s ones who don't amount to anything who are good-looking. I must say it was a blow to me to hear that her real name was Michaels. But of course actresses generally have other names, and Lopez does belong to her in a sort of way. She told Lorry about it and about her father, too. n.o.body knew she had a father."

"What's he like?"

"Oh, he's a grand old dear--rough, but he would be naturally, just a miner all his life. He took care of me as if I was a baby."

"He won't have to be a miner any more now."

They exchanged a glance of bright meaning, and Chrystie, drawing herself up in the chair, spoke with solemn emphasis:

"Sadie, I've always been glad I had money, because I'd be lost without it. But I'm glad now for another reason--because we could do something for those two. If we couldn't they'd have had to go back and begin all over again. Pancha's got some money saved up, but it'll be a long time before she gets it, and Lorry says it wouldn't be enough any way. Think of that kind old bear with his hair getting gray trudging up and down the Mother Lode! If I'd thought that was to go on I'd never have had a peaceful night's sleep again. We'd have had to adopt him, and I _know_ he wouldn't have liked that. Now, thank heaven, we can make him comfortable in his own way."

"Did he tell you what it was he wanted to do?"