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diff --git a/36961.txt b/36961.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a07f74 --- /dev/null +++ b/36961.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6693 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girl From His Town, by Marie Van Vorst + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Girl From His Town + +Author: Marie Van Vorst + +Illustrator: F. Graham Cootes + +Release Date: August 3, 2011 [EBook #36961] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Image] + + + + + THE + GIRL FROM HIS TOWN + + _By_ + MARIE VAN VORST + + WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + F. GRAHAM COOTES + + INDIANAPOLIS + THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY + PUBLISHERS + + + + + COPYRIGHT 1910 + The Bobbs-Merrill Company + + PRESS OF + BRAUNWORTH & CO. + BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS + BROOKLYN, N. Y. + + + + + CONTENTS + + CHAPTER PAGE + I Dan Blair 1 + II The Duchess Approves 21 + III The Blairtown Soloist 28 + IV In The Coral Room 31 + V At The Carlton 47 + VI Galorey Seeks Advice 55 + VII At The Stage Entrance 70 + VIII Dan's Simplicity 76 + IX Disappointment 85 + X The Boy From My Town 94 + XI Ruggles Gives a Dinner 109 + XII The Green Knight 128 + XIII The Face of Letty Lane 135 + XIV From India's Coral Strands 155 + XV Galorey Gives Advice 174 + XVI The Musicale Program 187 + XVII Letty Lane Sings 199 + XVIII A Woman's Way 207 + XIX Dan Awakes 214 + XX A Hand Clasp 225 + XXI Ruggles Returns 231 + XXII What Will You Take? 234 + XXIII In the Sunset Glow 242 + XXIV Ruggles' Offer 250 + XXV Letty Lane Runs Away 268 + XXVI White and Coral 274 + XXVII At Maxim's 290 + XXVIII Such Stuff as Dreams 299 + XXIX The Picture of It All 304 + XXX Sodawater Fountain Girl 309 + XXXI In Reality 315 + XXXII The Prince Accepts 319 + XXXIII The Things Above Ground 322 + + + + +THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN + + + + +CHAPTER I--DAN BLAIR + + +The fact that much he said, because of his unconscionable slang, was +incomprehensible did not take from the charm of his conversation as far +as the Duchess of Breakwater was concerned. The brightness of his +expression, his quick, clear look upon them, his beautiful young smile, +his not too frequent laugh, his "new gayness," as the duchess called his +high spirits, his supernal youth, his _difference_, credited him with +what nine-tenths of the human race lack--charm. + +His tone was not too crudely western; neither did he suggest the ultra +East with which they were familiar. American women went down well enough +with them, but American men were unpopular, and when the visitor +arrived, Lady Galorey did not even announce him to the party gathered +for "the first shoot." + +The others were in the armory when the ninth gun, a young chap, six feet +of him, blond as the wheat, cleanly set up and very good to look at, +came in with Lily, Duchess of Breakwater. Lady Galorey, his hostess, +greeted them. + +"Oh, here you are, are you? Lord Mersey, Sir John Fairthrope." She +mumbled the rest of the names of her companions as though she did not +want them understood, then waved toward the young chap, calling him Mr. +Dan Blair, and he, as she hesitated, added: + +"From Blairtown, Montana." + +"And give him a gun, will you, Gordon?" Lady Galorey spoke to her +husband. + +"I discovered Mr. Blair, Edie," the duchess announced, "and he didn't +even know there was a shoot on for to-day. Fancy!" + +"I guess," Dan Blair said pleasantly, "I'll just take a gun out of this +bunch," and he chose one at random from several indicated to him by the +gamekeeper. "I get my best luck when I go it blind. Right! Thanks. +That's so, Lady Galorey, I didn't know there was to be any shooting +until the duchess let it out." + +To himself he thought with good-natured amusement, "Afraid I'll spoil +their game record, maybe!" and went out along with them, following the +insular noblemen like a ray of sun, smiling on the pretty woman who had +discovered him in the grounds where he had been poking about by himself. + +"Where, in Heaven's name, did you 'corral'--word of his own--the dear boy, +Edith? How did he get to Osdene Park, or in fact anywhere, just as he +is, fresh as from Eden?" + +"Thought I'd let him take you by surprise, dearest. Where'd you find +Dan?" + +"Down by the garden house feeding the rabbits, on his knees like a +little boy, his hands full of lettuces. I'd just come a cropper myself +on the mare. She fell, I'm sorry to say, Edie, and hacked her knees +quite a lot. One of those disguised ditches, you know. I was coming +along leading her when I ran on your friend." + +The young duchess was slender as a willow, very brunette, with a +beautiful, discontented face. + +"I'm going to show Dan Blair off," Lady Galorey responded, "going to +give the debutantes a chance." + +Placidly nodding, the duchess lit a cigarette and began to quote from +Dan Blair's conversation: "I fancy he won't let them 'worry him'; he's +too 'busy!'" + +"You mean that you're going to keep him occupied?" + +The duchess didn't notice this. + +"_Is_ he such a catch?" + +Neither of the women had walked out with the guns. The duchess had a bad +foot, and Lady Galorey never went anywhere she could help with her +husband. She now drew her chair up to the table in the morning-room, to +which they had both gone after the departure of the guns, and regarded +with satisfaction a quantity of stationery and the red leather desk +appointments. + +"Sit down and smoke if you like, Lily; I'm going to fill out some +lists." + +"No, thanks, I'm going up to my rooms and get Parkins to 'massey' this +beastly foot of mine. I must have fallen on it. But tell me first, is +Mr. Blair a catch?" + +Lady Galorey had opened an address book and looked up from it to reply: + +"Something like ten million pounds." + +"Heavens! Disgusting!" + +"The richest young man 'west of some river or other.' At any rate he +told me last night that it was 'clean money.' I dare say the river is +responsible for its cleanliness, but that fact seemed to give him +satisfaction." + +The duchess was leaning on the table at Lady Galorey's side. + +"Dan's father took Gordon all over the West that time he went to the +States for a big hunt in the Rockies. He got to know Mr. Blair awfully +well and liked him. The old gentleman bought a little property about +that time that turned out to be a gold mine." + +With persistency the duchess said: + +"How d'you know it is 'clean money,' Edith? Not that it makes a rap of +difference," she laughed prettily, "but how do you know that he is rich +to this horrible extent?" + +Lady Galorey put down her address book impatiently: "Does he look like +an impostor?" + +The other returned: "Even the archangel fell, my dear Edith!" + +"Well," returned her friend, "this one is too young to have fallen far," +and she shut up her list in desperation. + +The duchess sat down on the edge of the lounge and raised her expressive +eyes to Lady Galorey, who once more looked at her sarcastically, and +went on: + +"Gordon liked the old gentleman: he was extraordinarily generous--quite a +type. They called the town after him--Blairtown: that is where the son +'hails from.' He was a little lad when Gordon was out and Mr. Blair +promised that Dan should come over here and see us one day, and this," +she tapped the table with her pen, "seems to be the day, for he came +down upon us in this breezy way without even sending a wire, 'just +turned up' last night. Gordon's mad about him. His father has been dead +a year, and he is just twenty-two." + +"Good heavens!" murmured the duchess. Lady Galorey opened her address +book again. + +"Gordon's got him terribly on his mind, my dear; he has forbidden any +gambling or any bridge as long as the boy is with us...." + +Her companion rose and thrust her hands into the pocket of her tweed +coat. She laughed softly, then went over to the long window where +without, across the pane, the early winter mists were flying, chased by +a furtive sun. + +"Gordon said that the boy's father treated him like a king, and that +while the boy is here he is going to look out for him." + +Over her shoulder the other threw out coldly: + +"You speak as though he were in a den of thieves. I didn't know Gordon's +honor was so fine. As for me, _I_ don't gamble, you know." + +Lady Galorey had decided that Lily's insistent remaining gave her a +chance to fill her fountain pen. She was, therefore, carefully squirting +in the ink, and she flushed at her friend's last words. + +Lady Galorey herself was the best bridge player in London, and cards +were her passion. She did not remind the lady in the window that there +were other games besides bridge, but kept both her tongue and her +temper. + +After a little silence in which the women followed each her own +thoughts, the duchess murmured: + +"I'll toddle up-stairs, Edie--let you write. Where did you say we were +going to meet the guns for food?" + +"At the gate by the White Pastures. There'll be a cart and a motor +going, whichever you like, around two." + +"Right," her grace nodded; "I'll be on time, dearest." + +And Lady Galorey with a relieved sigh heard the door close behind the +duchess. Wiping her fountain pen delicately with a bit of chamois, she +murmured: "Well, Dan Blair _is_ out of Eden, poor dear, if he met her by +the gate." + +A fortune of a round ten million pounds was a small part of what this +young man had come into by direct inheritance from the Copper King of +Blairtown, Montana. For once the money figure had not been exaggerated, +but Lady Galorey did not know about the rest of Dan's inheritance. + + * * * * * + +The young man whistling in his rooms in the bachelor quarters of Osdene +Park House, dressed for dinner without the aid of a valet. When Lord +Galorey had asked him "where his manservant was," Dan had grinned. +"Gosh, I wouldn't have one of those Johnnies hanging around me--never did +have! I can put on _my_ stockings all right! There was a chap on the +boat I came over in who let his man put on his stockings. Can you beat +that?" Blair had laughed again. "I think if anybody tickled my feet that +way I would be likely to kick him in the eye." + +Dressing in his room he whistled under his breath a song from a newly +popular comic opera; and he intoned with his clear young voice a line of +the words: + +"_Should-you-go-to-Mandalay._" + +Out through his high window, if he had looked, he would have seen the +misty sweep of the park under the faint moonrise and fine shadows that +the leaves made in the veiled light, but he did not look out. He was +dressing for dinner without a valet and giving a great deal of care to +his toilet; for the first time he was to dine in the house of a nobleman +and in the presence of a duchess; not that it meant a great deal to +him--he thought it was "funny." + +In Dan Blair's twenty-two years of utterly happy days his one grief had +been the death of his father. As soon as the old man had died Dan had +gone off into the Rockies with his guides and not "shown up" for months. +When he came back to Blairtown, as he expressed it, "he packed his grip +and beat it while his shoes were good," for the one place he could +remember his father had suggested for him to go. + +Blairtown was very much impressed when the heir came in from the Rockies +with "a big kill," and the orphan's case did not seem especially +disturbed. But no one in the town knew how the boy's heart ached for the +old man. When Dan was six years old his father had literally picked him +up by the nape of his neck and thrown him into the water like a pup and +watched him swim. At eight he sent the boy off with a gun to rough-camp. +Then he took Dan down in the mines with the men. His education had been +won in Blairtown, at a school called public, but which in reality was +nothing more than a pioneer district school. + +On Sundays Dan dressed up and went with his father to church twice a day +and in the week-days his father took him to the prayer-meetings, and at +sixteen Dan went to college in California. He had just completed his +course when old Blair died. Then he inherited fifty million dollars. + +On the day of the shoot at Osdene, Dan dropped sixty birds. He tried +very hard not to be too pleased. "Gosh," he thought to himself, "those +birds fell as though they were trained all right, and the other sports +were mad, I could see it." He then fell to whistling softly the air he +had heard Lady Galorey play the night before from the new success at the +Gaiety, and finished it as his toilet completed itself. He took up a +gardenia from his dressing-table, and fastened it in his coat, stopping +on the stairs on the way down to look over into the hall, where the men +in their black clothes and the women in their shining dresses waited +before going into the dining-room. The lights fell on white arms and +necks, on jewels and on fine proud heads. Dan Blair had been in San +Francisco and in New York, on short journeys, however, which his father, +the year before, had directed him to take, but he had never seen a +"show" like this. + +He came slowly down the broad stairway of the Osdene Park House, the +last guest. In the corner, where, behind her, a piece of fourteenth +century tapestry cut a green and pink square against the rich black oak +paneling, the Duchess of Breakwater sat waiting. She wore a dress of +golden tulle which was simply a sheath to her slender body, and from her +neck hung a long rope of diamonds caught at the end by a small black +fan; there was a wreath of diamonds like shining water drops linked +together in her hair. She was the grandest lady at Osdene, and renowned +in more than one sense of the word. As Dan saw her smile at him and +rise, he thought: + +"She is none too sorry that I made _that_ record, but I hope to heaven +she won't say anything to me about it." + +And the duchess did not speak of it. Telling him that he was to take her +in to dinner, she laid first her fan on his arm and then her hand. And +Dan, one of those fortunate creatures who are born men of the world when +they get into it, gave her his arm with much grace, and as he leaned +down toward her he thought to himself: + +"Well, it's lucky for me I have my head on tight; a few more of those +goo-goo eyes of hers and it would be as well for me to light out for the +woods." + + * * * * * + +Dan liked best at Osdene Park his chin-chins with Gordon Galorey. The +young man was unflatteringly frank in his choice of companions. When the +duchess looked about for him to ride with her, walk with her, to find +the secluded corners, to talk, to play with him, she was likely to +discover Dan gone off with Lord Galorey, and to come upon them later, +sitting enveloped in smoke, a stand of drinks by their side. + +To Galorey, who had no heir or child, the boy's presence proved to be +the happiest thing that had come to him for a long time. He talked a +great deal to Dan about the old man. Galorey was poor and the fact of a +fortune of ten million pounds possessed by this one boy was continually +before his mind like an obsession. It was like looking down into a gold +mine. Galorey tried often to broach the subject of money, but Dan kept +off. At length Galorey asked boldly: + +"What are you going to do with it?" On this occasion they were walking +over from the lower park back to the house, a couple of terriers at +their heels. + +"Do with what?" Blair asked innocently. He was looking at the trees. He +was comparing their grayish green trunks and their foliage with the +California redwoods. A little taken aback, Lord Galorey laughed. + +"Why, with that colossal fortune of yours." + +And Blair answered unhesitatingly: "Oh--spend it on some girl sooner or +later." + +Galorey fairly staggered. Then he took it humorously. + +"My dear chap, I never saw a sweeter, bigger man than your father. If he +had been my father, I dare say I might have pulled off a different yard +of hemp, but I must confess that I think he has left you too much +money." + +"Well, there are a lot of fellows who are ready to look after it for +me," Blair answered coolly. Before his companion could redden, he +continued: "You see, dad took care of me for twenty-one years all right, +and whenever I am up a stump, why all I have to do is to remember the +things he did." + +For the first time since his arrival at Osdene Dan's tone was serious. +Interested as he was in the older man, Dan's inclination was to evade +the discussion of serious subjects. With Blair's slang, his conversation +was almost incomprehensible. + +"Dad didn't gas much," the boy said, "but I could draw a map of some of +the things he did say. He used to say he made his money out of the +earth." + +The two were walking side by side across the rich velvet of the +immemorial English turf. The extreme softness of the autumn day, its +shifting lights, its mellow envelope, the beauty of the park--the age, +the stability, the harmony, served to touch the young fellow's spirits. +At any rate there was a ring in him, an equilibrium that surprised +Galorey. + +"'Most things,' dad said to me, 'go back to the earth.'" He struck the +English turf with his stick. "Dad said a fellow had better buy those +things that stay above the ground." Dan smiled frankly at his companion. +"Curious thing to say, wasn't it?" he reflected. "I remembered it, and I +got to wondering after I saw him buried, '_what are_ the things that +stay above the ground?' The old man never gave me another talk like +that." + +After a few seconds Galorey put in: + +"But, my dear chap, you did give me a shock up there just now when you +said you were going to spend 'all your money on some girl.'" + +The millionaire took a chestnut from his pocket. He held it high above +his head and the little dog that had been yelping at his heels fixed his +eyes on it. Blair poised it, then threw it as far as he could. It sped +through the air and the terrier ran like mad across the park. + +"I like girls awfully, Gordon, and when I find the right one, why, then +I'm going to feel what a bully thing it is to be rich." + +Lord Galorey groaned aloud. + +"My dear chap!" he exclaimed. + +The spell of the day, the fragrant beauty of the time and place and hour +were clearly upon Dan Blair. Lord Galorey was sympathetic to him. The +terrier came tearing back with the chestnut held between his thick jaws. +Dan bent down to take the nut from the dog and wrestled with him gently. + +"Swell little grip he's got. Nice old pup! Let it go now!" And he threw +the nut far again, and as the terrier ran once more Blair thrust his +hands down in his pockets and began softly to whistle the tune of +_Mandalay_. + +He said slowly, going back to his subject: "It must be great to feel +that a fellow can give her jewels like the Duchess of Breakwater's, +ropes of 'em"--he nodded toward the house--"and a fine old place like this +now, and motors and yachts and all kinds of stuff." + +His eyes rested on the suave lines of the Elizabethan house, with its +softened gables and its banked terraces. Possibly his vivid imagination +pictured "some nice girl" there waiting, as they should come up, to meet +him. + +"I have always thought it would be bully to find a poor girl--pretty as a +peach, of course--one who had never had much, and just cover her with +things. Hey, there!" he cried to the terrier, who had come running back, +"bring it to me." + +They had come up to the terrace by this, and Dan's confidence, fresh as +a gush of water from a rock, had ceased. His face was placid. He didn't +realize what he had said. + +From out of one of the long windows, dressed in a sable coat, her small +head tied up in a motor scarf, the Duchess of Breakwater appeared. She +greeted them severely, and Lord Galorey hear her say under her breath to +Dan: + +"You promised to be back to drive with me before dinner, Dan. Did you +forget?" + +And as Galorey left the boy to make his peace, the first smile of +amusement broke over his face. He felt that the duchess had between her +and her capture of Dan Blair's heart the elusive picture of some "nice +girl"--not much perhaps, but it might be very hard to tear away the +picture of the ideal that was ever before the blue eyes of this man who +had a fortune to spend on her! + + + + +CHAPTER II--THE DUCHESS APPROVES + + +His attentions to the Duchess of Breakwater had not been so conspicuous +or so absorbing as to prevent the eager mothers--who, true to her word, +Lady Galorey had invited down--from laying siege to Dan Blair. Lady +Galorey asked him: + +"Don't you want to marry any one of these beauties, Dan?" And Blair, +with his beautiful smile and what Lily called his inspired candor, +answered: + +"Not on your life, Lady Galorey!" + +And she agreed, "I think myself you are too young." + +"No," Dan refuted, "you are wrong there. I shall marry as fast as I +can." + +His hostess was surprised. + +"Why, I thought you wanted your fling first." + +And Dan, from his chair, in which, with a book, he had been sitting when +Lady Galorey found him, answered cheerfully: + +"Oh, I don't like being alone. I want to go about with some one. I +should like a fling all right, but I want to fling with somebody as I +go." + +The lady of the house was not a philosopher nor an analyst. She had +certain affairs of her own and was engrossed in them and lived in them. +As far as Lady Galorey was concerned the rest of the world might go and +hang itself as long as it didn't do it at her gate-post. But Blair +couldn't leave any one indifferent to him very long, not unless one +could be indifferent to a blaze of sunlight; one must either draw the +blinds down or bask in its brightness. + +She laughed. "You're perfectly delicious! You mean to say you want to be +married at once and let your _wife_ fling around with you?" + +"Just that." + +"How sweet of you, Dan! And you won't marry one of these girls here?" + +"Don't fill the bill, Lady Galorey." + +"Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then?" + +"All off!" he assured her blithely, and rose, tall and straight and +slender. + +The Duchess of Breakwater had come in, indeed she never failed to when +there was any question of finding Blair. + +Dan stood straightly before the two women of an old race, and the +American didn't suggest any line of noble ancestors whatsoever. His +features were rather agglomerate; his muscles were possibly not the +perfect elastic specimens that were those muscles whose strain and sinew +had been made from the same stock for generations. He was, nevertheless, +very good to look on. Any woman would have thought so, and he bent his +blond head as he looked at the Duchess of Breakwater with something like +benevolence, something of his father's kindness in his clear blue eyes. +Neither of the noble ladies vaguely understood him. His hostess thought +him "a good sort," not half bad, a splendid catch, and the other woman, +only a few years his senior, was in love with him. The duchess had +married at eighteen, tired of her bargain at twenty, and found herself a +widow at twenty-five. She held a telegram in her hand. + +"We've got the box for _Mandalay_ to-night at the Gaiety, and let's +motor in." + +Only Lady Galorey hesitated, disappointed. + +"Too bad--I had specially arranged for Lady Grandcourt to drive over with +Eileen. I thought it would be a ripping chance for her to see Dan." + +When at length the duchess had succeeded in getting Dan to herself +toward the end of the day in the red room, after tea, she said: + +"So you won't marry a London beauty?" + +And rather coldly Dan had answered: + +"Why, you talk, all of you, as if I had only to ask any girl of them, +and she would jump down my throat." + +"Don't try it," the duchess answered, "unless you want to have your +mouth full!" + +Dan did not reply for a second, but he looked at her more seriously, +conscious of her grace and her good looks. She was certainly better to +look at than the simple girls with their big hands, small wits, long +faces, and, as the boy expressed it, "utter lack of get-up." The duchess +shone out to advantage. + +"Why don't you talk to me?" she asked softly. "You know you would rather +talk to me than the others." + +"Yes," he said frankly; "they make me nervous." + +"And I don't?" + +"No," he said. "I learn a lot every time we are together." + +"Learn?" she repeated, not particularly flattered by this. "What sort of +things?" + +"Oh, about the whole business," he returned vaguely. "You know what I +mean." + +"Then," she said with a slight laugh, "you mean to say you talk with me +for _educational purposes_? What a beastly bore!" + +Dan did not contradict her. She was by no means Eve to him, nor was he +the raw recruit his simplicity might give one to think. He had had his +temptations and his way out of them was an easy one; for he was very +slow to stir, and back of all was his ideal. The reality and power of +this ideal Dan knew best at moments like these. But the Duchess of +Breakwater was the most lovely woman--the most dangerous woman that had +come his way. He liked her--Dan was well on the way to love. + +The two were alone in the big dark room. At their side the small table, +from which they had taken their tea together, stood with its empty cups +and its silver. Without, the day was cold and windy, and the sunset +threw along the panes a red reflection. The light fell on the Duchess of +Breakwater, something like a veil--a crimson veil slipped over her face +and breast. She leaned toward Dan, and between them there was no more +barrier than the western light. He felt his pulses beat and a tide +rising within him. She was a delicious emanation, fragrant and near, and +as he might have gathered a cluster of flowers, so in the next second he +would have taken her in his arms, but from the other room just then Lady +Galorey, at the piano, played a snatch from _Mandalay_, striking at once +into the tune. The sound came suddenly, told them quickly some one was +near, and the Duchess of Breakwater involuntarily moved back, and so +knocked the small tray, jostled it, and it fell clattering to the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER III--THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST + + +Blairtown had a population of some eight thousand. There was a +Presbyterian church to which Dan and his father went regularly, sitting +in the bare pew when the winter's storms beat and rattled on the panes, +or in the summer sunshine, when the flies thronged the window casings, +when the smell of the pews and the panama fans and the hymn-books came +strong to them through the heat. + +One day there was a missionary sermon, and for the first time in its +history a girl sang a solo in the First Presbyterian Church. Dan Blair +heard it, looked up, and it made a mark in his life. A girl in a white +dress trimmed with blue gentians, white cotton gloves, and golden hair, +was the soloist. He knew her, that is, he had a nodding acquaintance +with her. It was the girl at the drug store who sold soda-water, and he +had asked her some hundreds of times for a "vanilla or a chocolate," but +it wasn't this vulgar memory that made the little boy listen. It was the +girl's voice. Standing back of the yellow-painted rail, above the +minister's pulpit, above the flies, the red pews and the panama fans, +she sang, and she sang into Dan Blair's soul. To speak more truly, she +_made him a soul_ in that moment. She awakened the boy; his collar felt +tight, his cheeks grew hot. He felt his new boots, too, hard and heavy. +She made him want to cry. These were the physical sensations--the +material part of the awakening. The rest went on deeply inside of Dan. +She broke his heart; then she healed it. She made him want to cry like a +girl; then she wiped his tears. + +The little boy settled back and grew more comfortable and listened, and +what she sang was, + + "From Greenland's icy mountains, + From India's coral stra--ands." + +Before the hymn reached its end he was a calm boy again, and the hymn +took up its pictures and became like an illustrated book of travels, and +he wanted to see those pea-green peaks of Greenland, to float upon the +icebergs to them, and see the dawn break on the polar seas as the +explorers do.... He should find the North Pole some day! Then he wanted +to go to an African jungle, where the tiger, "tiger shining bright," +should flash his stripes before his eyes! Dan would gather wreaths of +coral from the stra--ands and give them to the girl with the yellow hair! +When he and his father came out together from the church, Dan chose the +street that passed the soda-fountain drug store and peeped in. It was +dark and cool, and behind the counter the drug clerk mixed the summer +drinks: and the drug clerk mixed them from that time ever afterward--for +the girl with the yellow hair never showed up in Blairtown again. She +went away! + + + + +CHAPTER IV--IN THE CORAL ROOM + + +"Mandalay" had run at the Gaiety the season before and again opened the +autumn season. Light and charming, thoroughly musical, it had toured +successfully through Europe, but London was its home, and its great +popularity was chiefly owing to the girl who had starred in it--Letty +Lane. Her face was on every post-card, hand-bill, cosmetic box, and even +popular drinks were named for her. + +The night of the Osdene box party was the reopening of _Mandalay_, and +the curtain went up after the overture to an outburst of applause. Dan +Blair had never "crossed the pond" before this memorable visit, when he +had gone straight out to Osdene Park. London theaters and London itself, +indeed, were unexplored by him. He had seen what there was to be seen of +the opera bouffe in his own country, but the brilliant, perfect +performance of a company at the London Gaiety he had yet to enjoy. + +The opening scene of _Mandalay_ is oriental; the burst of music and the +tinkling of the silvery temple bells and the effect of an extremely blue +sea, made Dan "sit up," as he put it. The theatrical picture was so +perfect that he lifted his head, pushed his chair back to enjoy. He was +thus close to the duchess. With invigorating young enthusiasm the boy +drew in his breath and waited to be amused and to hear. The tunes he +already knew before the orchestra began to charm his ear. + +On landing at Plymouth Dan had been keen to feel that he was really +stepping into the world, and at Osdene Park he had been daily, hourly +"seeing life." The youngest of the household, his youth nevertheless was +not taken into consideration by any of them. No one had treated him like +a junior. He had gone neck to neck with their pace as far as he liked, +furnished them fresh amusement, and been their diversion. In all his +rare unspoiled youth, Blair had been suddenly dropped down in an effete +set that had whirled about him, and one by one out of the inner circle +had called him to join them; and one by one with all of them Dan had +whirled. + +Lord Galorey had talked to him frankly, as plainly as if Dan had been +his own father, and found much of the old man's common sense in his fine +blond head. Lady Galorey had come to him in a moment of great anxiety, +and no one but her young guest knew how badly she needed help. He had +further made it known to the lady that he was not in the marriage +market; that she could not have him for any of her girls. And as for the +Duchess of Breakwater, well--he had whirled with her until his head swam. +He had grown years older at the Park in the few weeks of his visit, but +now for the first time, as the music of _Mandalay_ struck upon his ears, +like a ripple of distant seas, he felt like the boy who had left +Blairtown to come abroad. He had spent the most part of the day in +London with a man who had come over to see him from America. Dan +attended to his business affairs, and the people who knew said that he +had a keen head. Mr. Joshua Ruggles, his father's best friend, whom Dan +this afternoon had left to go to his room at the Carlton, had put his +arm with affection through the boy's: + +"Don't look as though it were any too healthy down to the place you're +visiting at, Dan. Plumbing all right?" + +And the boy, flushing slightly, had said: "Don't you fret, Josh, I'll +look after my health all right." + +"There's nothing like the mountain air," returned the Westerner. "These +old fogs stick in my nostrils; feel as though I could smell London clean +down to my feet!" + + * * * * * + +From the corner of the box Dan looked hard at the stage, at the fresh +brilliant costumes and the lovely chorus girls. + +"Gosh," he thought to himself, "they are the prettiest ever! Dove-gray, +eyes of Irish blue, mouths like roses!" + +Leaning forward a little toward the duchess he whispered: "There isn't +one who isn't a winner. I never struck such a box of dry goods!" + +The duchess smiled on Dan with good humor. His naive pleasure was +delightful. It was like taking a child to a pantomime. She was wearing +his flowers and displaying a jewel that he had found and bought for her, +and which she had not hesitated to accept. She watched his eager face +and his pleasure unaffected and keen. She could not believe that this +young man was master of ten million pounds. + +When Letty Lane appeared Blair heard a light rustle like rain through +the auditorium, a murmur, and the house rose. There was a well-bred +calling from the stalls, a call from the pit, and a generous +applause--"Letty Lane--Letty Lane!" and as though she were royalty, there +was a fluttering of handkerchiefs like flags. The young fellow with the +others stood in the back of the box, his hands in his pockets, looking +at the stage. There wasn't a girl in the chorus as pretty as this prima +donna! Letty Lane came on in _Mandalay_ in the first act in the dress of +a fashionable princess. She was modish and worldly. For the only time in +the play she was modern and conventional, and whatever breeding she +might have been able to claim, from whatever class she was born, as she +stood there in her beautiful gown she was grace itself, and charm. She +was distinctly a star, and showed her appreciation of her audience's +admiration. + +At the end of the tenor solo the Princess Oltary runs into the pavilion +and there changes her dress and appears once more to dance before the +rajah and to prove herself the dancer he has known and loved in a cafe +in Paris. Letty Lane's dress in this dance was the classic ballet +dancer's, white as the leaves of a lily. She seemed to swim and float; +actually to be breathed and exhaled from out her filmy gown; and the +only ray of color in her costume was her own golden hair, surmounted by +a small coral-colored cap, embroidered in pearls. The actress bowed to +the right and left, ran to the right, ran to the left; glanced toward +the Duchess of Breakwater's box; acknowledged the burst of applause; +began to dance and finished her _pas seul_, and with folded hands sang +her song. Her beautiful voice came out clear as crystal water from a +crystal rock, and her words were cradled like doves, like boats on the +boundless seas.... + + "From India's coral strand...." + +But there was no hymn tune to this song of Letty Lane's in _Mandalay_! +To the boy in the box, however, the words, the tune, the droning of the +flies on the window-pane, the strong odor of the hymn-books and panama +fans, came back, and the clear sunlight of Montana seemed to steal into +the Gaiety as Letty Lane sang. + +The Duchess of Breakwater clapped with frank enthusiasm, and said: "She +is a perfect wonder, isn't she? Oh, she is _too_ bewitching!" + +And she turned for sympathy to her friend, who stood behind her, his +face illumined. He was amazed; his blue eyes ablaze, his head bent +forward, he was staring, staring at the Gaiety curtain, gone down on the +first act. + +He laughed softly, and the duchess heard him say: + +"_Good!_ Well, I should say she was! She's a girl from our town!" + +When the duchess tried to share her enthusiasm with Dan he had +disappeared. He left the box and with no difficulty made his way as far +as the first wing. + +"Can you get me an entrance?" he asked a man he had met once at Osdene +and who was evidently an habitue. + +"I dare say. Rippin' show, isn't it?" + +[Image] + +Dan put his hand on ducal shoulders and followed the nobleman through +the labyrinth of flies. + +"Which of 'em do you want to see, old man?" + +Dan, without replying, went forward to a small cluster of lights in one +of the wings. He went forward intuitively, and his companion caught his +arm: "Oh, I say, for _God's_ sake, don't go on like this!" + +But without response Dan continued his direction. A call page stood +before the door, and Dan, on a card over the entrance, read "Miss Lane." +The smell of calcium and paint and perfume and the auxiliaries hung +heavy on the air. The other man saw Dan knock, knock again and then go +in. + +Unannounced Dan Blair opened the door of the dressing-room of the +actress. Miss Lane's dressing-rooms were worth displaying to her +intimate friends. They were done with great taste in coral tint. She +might have been said to be in a coral cave under the sea, as far as +young Blair was concerned. As he came in he felt his ears deaden, and +the smoke of cigarettes grew so thick that he looked as through a veil. +The dancer was standing in the center of the room, one hand on her hip, +and in the other hand a cigarette. Her short skirt stood out around her +like a bell, and over the bell fell a rain of pinkish coral strands. She +wore a thin silk slip, from which her neck and arms came shining out, +and her woman knelt at her feet strapping on a little coral shoe. + +Blair shut the door behind him, and began to realize how rude, how +impertinent his entrance would be considered. But he came boldly forward +and would have introduced himself as "Dan Blair from Blairtown," but +Miss Lane, who stared at the entrance through the smoke, burst into a +laugh so bright, so delightful, that he was carried high up on the coral +strands to the very beach. She crossed her white arms over her breast +and leaned forward, as a saleswoman might lean forward over a counter, +and with her beautifully trained voice, all sweetly she asked him: + +"Hello, little boy, what will _you_ take?" + +Blair giggled, quick to catch her meaning, and answered: "Oh, chocolate, +I guess!" + +And Letty Lane laughed, put out her white hand, the one without the +cigarette, and said: "Haven't got that brand on board--so sorry! Will a +cocktail do? All sorts in bottles. Higgins, fix Mr. Blair a Martini." + +As the dresser rose from her stooping position, the rest of Letty Lane's +dressing-room unfolded out of the mist and smoke. On a sofa covered with +lace pillows Blair saw a man sitting, smoking as well. He was tall and +had a dark mustache. It was Prince Poniotowsky, whom Dan had already met +at the Galorey shoot. + +"Prince Poniotowsky," Miss Lane presented him, "Mr. Blair, of Blairtown, +Montana. Say, Frederick, give me my cap, will you? It is over by your +side. I've got to hustle." + +The man, without moving, picked up a small red cap with a single plume, +from the sofa at his side. In another second Letty Lane had placed it on +her head of yellow hair, real yellow hair and not a doubt of it, like +sunshine--not the color one gets from inside bottles. Her arms, her hands +flashed with rings, priceless flashes, and the little spears pricked Dan +like sharp needles. + +"It's the nicest ever!" she was saying. "How on earth did you get in +here, though? Have you bought the Gaiety Theater? I'm the most exclusive +girl on the stage. Who let you in?" + +Her accent was English, and even that put her from him. As he looked at +her he couldn't understand how he had ever recognized her. If he had +waited for another act he wouldn't have believed the likeness real. The +girl he remembered had both softened and hardened; the round features +were gone, but all the angles were gone as well. Her eyes were as gray +as the seas; she was painted and her lids were darkened. Seen close, she +was not so divine as on the stage, but there was still a more thrilling +charm about the fact that she was real. + +"To think of any one from Montana being here to-night! Staying very +long, Mr. Blair?" Between each sentence she directed Higgins, who was +getting her into her bodice. "And how do you like _Mandalay_? Isn't it +great?" + +She addressed herself to Dan, but she smiled on both the men with +extreme brilliance. + +"You bet your life," he responded. "I should think it was great." + +Poniotowsky rose indolently. He had not looked toward the new-comer, but +had, on the other hand, followed every detail of Miss Lane's dressing. + +"Better take your scarf, Letty. Hand it to Miss Lane," he directed +Higgins. "It is so damned drafty in these beastly wings." + +He drew his watch out, gathered up his long coat, flung it over his arm +and picked up his opera hat which lay folded on Letty Lane's +dressing-table. + +The call page for the third time summoned "Miss La--ne, Miss La--ane," and +she took the scarf Higgins handed her and ran it through her hands, +still beaming on Dan. + +"Come in to see me at the Savoy on any day at two-thirty except on +matinee days." + +"Put on your scarf." Poniotowsky, taking it from her hands, laid it +across her white shoulders, and she passed out between the two men, +light as a bird, smiling, nodding, followed by the prince and the boy +from Montana. The crowds began to fill the lately empty wings--dancers, +chorus girls with their rustling gowns. Letty Lane said to Dan: + +"Guess you'll like my solo in this act all right--it's the best thing in +_Mandalay_. Now go along, and clap me hard." + +It gave him a new pleasure, for she had spoken to him in real American +fashion with the swift mimicry that showed her talent. Dan went slowly +back to his party. As he took his seat by the duchess she said to him: + +"You went out to see Letty Lane. Do you know her?" + +"Know her!" And as Dan answered, the sound of his own voice was queer to +him, and his face flushed hotly. "Lord, yes. She used to be in the drug +store in Blairtown. Sold soda-water to me when we were both kids. +Whoever would have thought that she had that in her!" He nodded toward +the stage, for Letty Lane had come on. "She sang in our church, too, but +not for long." + +"Who was with her in her dressing-room?" the duchess asked. Blair didn't +answer. He was looking at Letty Lane. She had come to dance for the +rajah and in her arms she held four white doves; each dove had a coral +thread around its throat. It was a number that made her famous, _The +Dove Song_. Set free, the birds flew about her, circling her blond head, +surmounted by the small coral-colored cap. The doves settled on her +shoulders, pecked at her lips. + +"Was it Poniotowsky?" the duchess repeated. + +And Dan told her a meaningless lie. "I didn't meet any one there." And +with satisfaction the duchess said: + +"Then she has thrown him over, too. He was the latest and the richest. +She is horribly extravagant. No man is rich enough for her, they say. +Poniotowsky isn't a gold mine." + +The doves had flown away to the wings and been gathered up by the Indian +servants. The actress on the stage began her Indian cradle song. She +came, distinctly turning toward the box party. She had never sung like +this in London before. There was a freshness in her voice, a quality in +her gesture, a pathos and a sweetness that delighted her audience. They +fairly clamored for her, waved and called and recalled. Dan stood +motionless, his eyes fastened on her, his heart rocked by the song. He +didn't want any one to speak to him. He wished that none of them would +breathe, and nearly as absorbed as was he, no one did speak. + + + + +CHAPTER V--AT THE CARLTON + + +There are certain natures to whom each appearance of evil, each form of +delinquency is a fresh surprise. They are born simple, in the sweet +sense of the word, and they go down to old age never of the world, +although in a sense worldly. If Dan Blair's eyes were somewhat opened at +twenty-two, he had yet the bloom on his soul. He was no fool, but his +ideals stood up each on its pedestal and ready to appear one by one to +him as the scenes of his life shifted and the different curtains rose. +He had been trained in finance from his boyhood and he was a born +financier. Money was his natural element; he could go far in it. But +_woman_! He was one of those manly creatures--a knight--to whom each woman +is a sacred thing: a dove, a crystal-clear soul, made to cherish and to +protect, made to be spoiled. And in Dan were all the qualities that go +to make up the unselfish, tender, foolish, and often unhappy American +husband. These were some of the other things he had inherited from his +father. Blair, senior, had married his first love, and whereas his boy +had been trained to know money and its value, how to keep it and spend +it, to save it and to make it, he had been taught nothing at all about +woman. He had never been taught to distrust women, never been warned +against them; he had been taught nothing but his father's memory of his +mother, and the result was that he worshiped the sex and wondered at the +mystery. + +With Gordon Galorey and the others he had ridden, shot better than they, +and had played, but with Lady Galorey and the Duchess of Breakwater he +was nothing but a child. As far as his hostess was concerned, on several +occasions she had put to him certain states of affairs, well, +touchingly. Dan had been moved by the stories of sore need among the +tenants, had been impressed by the necessity of reforms and rebuildings +and on each occasion had given his hostess a check. She had asked him to +say nothing about it to Gordon, and he had kept his silence. Dan liked +Lady Galorey extremely: she was jolly, witty and friendly. She treated +him as a member of the family and made no demands on him, save the ones +mentioned. + +In the time that he had come to know the Duchess of Breakwater she, on +her part, had filled him full of other confidences. Into his young ears +she poured the story of her disappointment, her disjointed life, from +her worldly girlhood to her disillusion in marriage. She was beautiful +when she talked and more lovely when she wept. Dan thought himself in +love with the Duchess of Breakwater. His conversations with her had +brought him to this conclusion. They had motored from Osdene Park +together, and he had been extremely taken with the pleasure of it, and +with the fact of their real companionship. Two or three times the words +had been on his lips, which were fated not to be spoken then, however, +and Dan reached the Gaiety still unfettered, his duchess by his side. +And then the orchestra had begun to play _Mandalay_, the curtain had +gone up and Letty Lane had come out on the boards. But her apparition +did not strike off his chains immediately, nor did he renounce his plan +to tell the duchess the very next day that he loved her. + +When with sparkling eyes Lady Galorey raved about _Mandalay_, Dan +listened with eagerness. Everybody seemed to know all about Letty Lane, +but he alone knew from what town she had come! + +They went for supper at the Carlton after the theater. + +"Letty," Lady Galorey said, "tells it herself how the impresario heard +her sing in some country church--picked her up then and there and brought +her over here, and they say she married him." + +Dan Blair could have told them how she had sung in that little church +that day. Dan was eating his caviare sandwich. "Her name _then_ was +Sally Towney," he murmured. How little he had guessed that she was +singing herself right out of that church and into the London Gaiety +Theater! Anyway, she had made him "sit up!" It was a far cry from +Montana to the London Gaiety. And so she married the greasy Jew who had +discovered her! + +Dan glanced over at the Duchess of Breakwater. She was looking well, +exquisitely high bred, and she impressed him. She leaned slightly over +to him, laughing. He had hardly dared to meet her eyes that day, fearing +that she might read his secret. She had told him that in her own right +she was a countess--the Countess of Stainer. Titles didn't cut any ice +with him. At any rate, she would be able to "buy back the old farm"--that +is the way Dan put it. She had told him of the beautiful old Stainer +Court, mortgaged and hung up with debts, as deep in ruins as the ivy was +thick on the walls. + +As Dan looked over at the duchess he saw the other people staring and +looking about at a table near. It was spread a little to their left for +four people, a great bouquet of orchids in the center. + +"There," Galorey said, "there's Letty Lane." And the singer came in, +followed by three men, the first of them the Prince Poniotowsky, +indolent, bored, haughty, his eye-glass dangling. Miss Lane was dressed +in black, a superb costume of faultless cut, and it enfolded her like a +shadow; as a shadow might enfold a specter, for the dancer was as pale +as the dead. She had neither painted nor rouged, she had evidently +employed no coquetry to disguise her fag; rather she seemed to be on the +verge of a serious illness, and presented a striking contrast to the +brilliant creature, who had shone before their eyes not an hour before. +Her dress was a challenge to the more gay and delicate affairs the other +women in the restaurant wore. The gown came severely up to her chin. Its +high collar closed around with a pearl necklace; from her ears fell +pearls, long, creamy and priceless. She wore a great feathered hat, +which, drooping, almost hid her small, pale face and her golden hair. +She drew off her gloves as she came in and her white, jeweled hands +flashed. She looked infinitely tired and extremely bored. As soon as she +took her seat at the table intended for her party, Poniotowsky poured +her out a glass of champagne, which she drank off as though it were +water. + +"Gad," Lord Galorey said, "she _is_ a stunner! What a figure, and what a +head, and what daring to dress like that!" + +"She knows how to make herself conspicuous," said the Duchess of +Breakwater. + +"She looks extremely ill," said Lady Galorey. "The pace she goes will do +her up in a year or two." + +Dan Blair had his back to her, and when they rose to leave he was the +last to pass out. Letty Lane saw him, and a light broke over her pallid +face. She nodded and smiled and shook her hand in a pretty little +salute. If her face was pale, her lips were red, and her smile was like +sunlight; and at her recognition a wave of friendly fellowship swept +over the young man--a sort of loyal kinship to her which he hadn't felt +for any other woman there, and which he could not have explained. In +warm approval of the actress' distinction, he said softly to himself: +"_That's_ all right--she makes the rest of them look like thirty cents." + + + + +CHAPTER VI--GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE + + +Blair did not go back at once to Osdene Park. He stopped over in London +for a few days to see Joshua Ruggles, and so remarked for the first time +the difference between the speech of the old and the new world. Mr. +Ruggles spoke broadly, with complete disregard of the frills and +adornments of the King's English. He spoke United States of the pure, +broad, western brand, and it rang out, it vibrated and swelled and +rolled, and as Ruggles didn't care who heard him, nothing of what he had +to say was lost. + +Old Mr. Blair had left behind him a comrade, and as far as advice could +go the old man knew that his Dan would not be bankrupt. + +"Advice," Dan Blair senior once said to his boy, "is the kind of thing +we want some fellow to give us when we ain't going to do the thing we +ought to do, or are a little ashamed of something we have done. It's an +awful good way to get cured of asking advice just to do what the fellow +tells you to at once." + +During Ruggles' stay in London the young fellow looked to it that +Ruggles saw the sights, and the two did the principal features of the +big town, to the rich enjoyment of the Westerner. Dan took his friend +every night to the play, and on the fourth evening Ruggles said: "Let's +go to the circus or a vaudeville, Dan. I have learned _this_ show by +heart!" They had been every night to see _Mandalay_. + +"Oh, you go on where you like, Josh," the boy answered. "I'm going to +see how she looks from the pit." + +Ruggles was not a Blairtown man. He had come from farther west, and had +never heard anything of Sarah Towney or Letty Lane. He applauded the +actress vigorously at the Gaiety at first, and after the third night +slept through most of the performance. When he waked up he tried to +discover what attraction Letty Lane had for Dan. For the young man never +left Ruggles' side, never went behind the scenes, though he seemed +absorbed, as a man usually is absorbed for one reason only. + +In response to a telegram from Osdene Park, Dan motored out there one +afternoon, and during his absence Ruggles was surprised at his hotel by +a call. + +"My dear Mr. Ruggles," Lord Galorey said, for he it was the page boy +fetched up, "why don't you come out to see us? All friends of old Mr. +Blair's are welcome at Osdene." + +Ruggles thanked Galorey and said he was not a visiting man, that he only +had a short time in London, and was going to Ireland to look up "his +family tree." + +"There are one hundred acres of trees in Osdene," laughed Galorey; "you +can climb them all." And Ruggles replied: + +"I guess I wouldn't find any O'Shaughnessy Ruggles at the top of any of +'em, my lord. The boy has gone out to see you all to-day." + +Galorey nodded. "That is just why I toddled in to see you!" + +Ruggles' caller had been shown to the sitting-room, where he and Dan +hobnobbed and smoked during the Westerner's visit. There was a pile of +papers on the table, in one corner a typewriter covered by a black +cloth. Galorey took a chair and, refusing a cigarette, lit his pipe. + +"I didn't have the pleasure of meeting you in the West when I was out +there with Blair. I knew Dan's father rather well." + +Ruggles responded: "I knew him rather well too, for thirty years. If," +he went on, "Blair hadn't known you pretty well he wouldn't have sent +the boy out to you as he has done. He was keen on every trail. I might +say that he had been over every one of 'em like a hound before he set +the boy loose." + +Galorey answered, "Quite so," gravely. "I know it. I knew it when Dan +turned up at Osdene--" Holding his pipe bowl in the palm of his slender +hand, he smoked meditatively. He hadn't thought about things, as he had +been doing lately, for many years. His sense of honor was the strongest +thing in Gordon Galorey, the only thing in him, perhaps, that had been +left unsmirched by the touch of the world. He was unquestionably a +gentleman. + +"Blair, however," he said, "wasn't as keen on this scent as you'd +expect. His intuition was wrong." + +Ruggles raised his eyebrows slightly. + +"I mean to say," Lord Galorey went on, "that he knew me in the West when +I had cut loose for a few blessed months from just these things into +which he has sent his boy--from what, if I had a son, God knows I'd throw +him as far as I could." + +"Blair wanted Dan to see the world." + +"Of course, that is right enough. We all have to see it, I fancy, but +this boy isn't ready to look at it." + +"He is twenty-two," Ruggles returned. "When I was his age I was +supporting four people." + +Galorey went on: "Osdene Park at present isn't the window for Blair's +boy to see life through, and that is what I have come up to London to +talk to you about, Mr. Ruggles. I should like to have you take him +away." + +"What's Dan been up to down there?" + +"Nothing as yet, but he is in the pocket of a woman--he is in a nest of +women." + +Ruggles' broad face had not altered its expression of quiet expectation. + +"There's a lot of 'em down there?" he asked. + +"There are two," Galorey said briefly, "and one of them is my wife." + +Ruggles turned his cigarette between his great fingers. He was a slow +thinker. He had none of old Blair's keenness, but he had other +qualities. Galorey saw that he had not been quite understood, and he +waited and then said: + +"Lady Galorey is like the rest of modern wives, and I am like a lot of +modern husbands. We each go our own way. My way is a worthless one, God +knows I don't stand up for it, but it is not my wife's way in any sense +of the word." + +"Does she want Dan to go along on her road?" Ruggles asked. "And how +far?" + +"We are financially strapped just now," said Galorey calmly, "and she +has got money from the boy." He didn't remove his pipe from his mouth; +still holding it between his teeth he put his hand in his pocket, took +out his wallet, drew forth four checks and laid them down before +Ruggles. "It is quite a sum," Galorey noted, "sufficient to do a lot to +Osdene Park in the way of needed repairs." Ruggles had never seen a +smile such as curved his companion's lips. "But Osdene Park will have to +be repaired by money from some other source." + +Ruggles wondered how the husband had got hold of the checks, but he +didn't ask and he did not look at the papers. + +"When Dan came to the Park," said Galorey, "I stopped bridge playing, +but this more than takes its place!" + +Ruggles' big hand went slowly toward the checks; he touched them with +his fingers and said: "Is Dan in love with your wife?" + +And Lord Galorey laughed and said: "Lord no, my dear man, not even that! +It is pure good nature on his part--mere prodigality. Edith appealed to +him, that's all." + +Relief crossed Ruggles' face. He understood in a flash the worldly +woman's appeal to the rich young man and believed the story the husband +told him. + +"Have you spoken to the boy?" + +"My dear chap, I have spoken to him about nothing. I preferred to come +to you." + +"You said," Ruggles continued, "there were two ladies down to your +place." + +Galorey had refilled his pipe and held it as before in the palm of his +hand. + +"I can look after the affairs of my wife, and this shan't happen again, +I promise you--not at Osdene, but I'm afraid I can not do much in the +other case. The Duchess of Breakwater has been at Osdene for nearly +three weeks, and Dan is in love with her." + +Ruggles put the four checks one on top of the other. + +"Is the lady a widow?" + +"Unfortunately, yes." + +"So that's the nest Dan has got into at Osdene," the Westerner said. And +Galorey answered: "That is the nest." + +"And he has gone out there to-day--got a wire this morning." + +"The duchess has been in an awful funk," said Galorey, "because Dan's +been stopping in London so long. She sent him a message, and as soon as +Dan wired back that he was coming to the Park, I decided to come here +and see you." + +Ruggles ruminated: "Has the duchess complications financially?" + +"Ra-ther!" the other answered. + +And Ruggles turned his broad, honest face full on Galorey: "Do you think +she could be bought off?" + +Galorey took his pipe out of his mouth. + +"It depends on how far Dan has gone on with her. To be frank with you, +Mr. Ruggles, it is a case of emotion on the part of the woman. She is +really in love with Dan. Gad!" exclaimed the nobleman. "I have been on +the point of turning the whole brood out of doors these last days. It +was like imprisoning a mountain breeze in a charnel house--a woman with +her scars and her experience and that boy--I don't know where you've kept +him, or how you kept him as he is, but he is as clear as water. I have +talked to him and I know." + +Nothing in Ruggles' expression had changed until now. His eyes glowed. + +"Dan's all right," he said softly. "Don't you worry! He's all right. I +guess his father knew what he was doing, and I'll bet the whole thing +was just what he sent him over here for! Old Dan Blair wasn't worth a +copper when the boy was born, and yet he had ideas about everything and +he seemed to know more in that old gray head of his than a whole library +of books. Dan's all right." + +"My dear man," said the nobleman, "that is just where you Americans are +wrong. You comfort yourself with your eternal 'Dan's all right,' and you +won't see the truth. You won't breathe the word 'scandal' and yet you +are thick enough in them, God knows. You won't admit them, but they are +there. Now be honest and look at the truth, will you? You are a man of +common sense. Dan Blair is _not_ all right. He is in an infernally +dangerous position. The Duchess of Breakwater will marry him. It is what +she has wanted to do for years, but she has not found a man rich enough, +and she will marry this boy offhand." + +"Well," said the Westerner slowly, "if he loves her and if he marries +her--" + +"Marries her!" exclaimed the nobleman. "There you are again! Do you +think marriage makes it any better? Why, if she went off to the +Continent with him for six weeks and then set him free, that would be +preferable to marrying her. My dear man," he said, leaning over the +table where Ruggles sat, "if I had a boy I would rather have him marry +Letty Lane of the Gaiety. Now you know what I mean." + +Ruggles' face, which had hardened, relaxed. + +"I have seen that lady," he exclaimed with satisfaction; "I have seen +_her_ several times." + +Galorey sank back into his chair and neither man spoke for a few +seconds. Turning it all over in his slow mind, Ruggles remembered Dan's +absorption in the last few days. "So there are three women in the nest," +he concluded thoughtfully, and Gordon Galorey repeated: + +"No, not three. What do you mean?" + +"Your wife"--Ruggles held up one finger and Galorey interrupted him to +murmur: + +"I'll take care of Edith." + +"The Duchess of Breakwater you think won't talk of money?" + +"No, don't count on it. She is aiming at ten million pounds." + +Ruggles was holding up the second finger. + +"Well, I guess Dan has gone out to take care of _her_ to-day." + +Dan and Ruggles had seen _Mandalay_ from a box, from the pit and from +the stalls. On the table lay a book of the opera. While talking with +Galorey, Ruggles had unconsciously arranged the checks on top of the +libretto of _Mandalay_. + +"_I'll_ take care of Miss Lane," Ruggles said at length. + +His lordship echoed, "Miss Lane?" and looked up in surprise. "What Miss +Lane, for God's sake?" + +"Miss Letty Lane at the Gaiety," Ruggles answered. + +"Why, she isn't in the question, my dear man." + +"You put her there just now yourself." + +"Bosh!" Galorey exclaimed impatiently, "I spoke of her as being the +limit, the last thing on the line." + +"No," corrected the other, "you put the Duchess of Breakwater as the +limit." + +Galorey smiled frankly. "You are right, my dear chap," he accepted, "and +I stand by it." + +A page boy knocked at the door and came in holding out on a salver a +card for Mr. Ruggles, and at the interruption Galorey rose and invited +Ruggles to go out with him that night to Osdene. "Lady Galorey will be +delighted." + +But Ruggles shook his head. "The boy is coming back here to-night," and +Galorey laughed. + +"Don't you believe it! You don't know how deep in he is. You don't know +the Duchess of Breakwater. Once he is with her--" + +At the same time that the page boy handed Mr. Ruggles the card of the +caller, he gave him as well a small envelope, which contained box +tickets for the Gaiety. Ruggles examined it. + +"I have got some writing to do," he told Galorey, "and I'm going to see +a show to-night, and I think I'll just stay here and watch my hole." + +As soon as Galorey had left the Carlton, Mr. Ruggles despatched his +letters and his visitor, made a very careful toilet, and after waiting +until past eight o'clock for Dan to return to dinner, dined alone on +roast beef and a tart, and with perfect digestion, if somewhat +thoughtful mind, left the hotel and walked down the dim street to the +brilliant Strand, and on foot to the Gaiety. + + + + +CHAPTER VII--AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE + + +Ruggles, from his stall, for the fourth time saw the curtain go up on +_Mandalay_ and heard the temple bells ring. One of the stage boxes was +not occupied until after the first act and then the son of his friend +came in alone and sat far back out of sight of any eyes but the keenest, +and those eyes were Ruggles'. Letty Lane, delicious, fantastic, +languishing, sang to Dan; that was evident to Ruggles. He was a large +man and filled his stall comfortably. He sat through the performance +peacefully, his hands in his pockets, his big face thoughtful, his shirt +front ruffled. To look at him, one must have wondered why he had come to +_Mandalay_. He scarcely lost any of the threads of his own reflections, +though when Miss Lane, in response to a call from the house, sang her +cradle song three times, he seemed moved. The tones of her pure voice, +the cradling in her arms of an imaginary child, her apparent dovelike +purity, her grace and sweetness, and her cooing, gentle tone, to judge +by the softening of the Westerner's face, touched very much the big +fellow who listened like a child. At the end he drew his handkerchief +slowly across his eyes, but the tears, or rather moisture, that rose +there was not all due to Miss Lane's song, for Ruggles was extremely +warm. + +He could see that in his box the boy sat transfixed and absorbed. Dan +went out in the second entr'acte and was absent when the curtain went +down. Ruggles, as well, left before the performance was over, to make +his way outside the theater to the stage exit, where there was already +gathered a little group, looked after by a couple of policemen. Close to +the curb a gleaming motor waited, the footman at its door. Ruggles +buttoned his coat up to his chin and took his place close to the door, +over which the electric light showed the words "Stage Entrance." A poor +woman elbowed him, her shabby hat adorned by a scraggly plume, a gray +shawl wrapped round her shoulders. A girl or two, who might have been +flower sellers in Piccadilly in the daytime, a couple of toughs, a +handful of other vagrants smelling of gin, a decent man in working +clothes, a child in his arms, formed the human hedge Letty Lane was to +pass between--a singular group of people to spend an hour hanging about +the streets at the exit of a theater well toward midnight. So the naive +Ruggles thought, and better understood the appearance of the young +fellows in evening clothes who hovered on the extreme edge of the little +crowd. Dan, however, was not of these. + +"Look sharp, Cissy," the workingman spoke to his child, holding her well +up. "When she comes hout she'll pass close to yer, and you sing hout, +'God bless yer.'" + +"Yes, Dad, I will," shrilled the child. + +The woman in the gray shawl drew it close about her. "Aw she's a true +lidy, all right, ain't she? I expect you've had some kindness off her as +well?" + +The man nodded over the child's shoulder. "Used to be a scene shifter, +and Miss Lane found out about my little girl last year--not this lass, +not Cissy, Cissy's sister--and she sent 'er to a place where it costs the +eyes out of yer head. She's gettin' well fast, and we, none of us, has +seen her or spoken to Miss Lane. She doesn't know our names." + +And the woman answered: "She does a lot like that. She's got a heart +bigger'n her little body." + +And a big boy in the front row said back to the others: "Well, she makes +a mint of money." + +And the woman who had spoken before said: "She gives it nearly all to +the poor." + +Ruggles was evidently on the poor side of the waiting crowd; the handful +of riffraff around him with its stench of dirt and gin. A better looking +set collected opposite and there was the gleam of white shirt fronts. + +"Now, there she comes," the father saw her first. "Sing out, Cissy." + +The door opened and a figure quickly floated from it, like a white rose +blown out into the foggy darkness. It floated down the few steps to the +street between the double row of spectators. A white cloak entirely +covered the actress. Her head was hidden by a white scarf, and she +almost ran the short gantlet to her motor, between the cries of "God +bless you!"--"Three cheers for Letty Lane"--"God bless you, lady!" She +didn't speak or heed, however, or turn her head, but held her scarf +against her face, and the man who slowly lounged behind her to the car, +and put her in and got in after her, was not the man Joshua Ruggles had +waited there to see. He hung about until the footman had sprung up and +the car moved softly away, the stage entrance door shut, then he +followed along with the crowd, with the few faithful ones who had waited +an hour in the cold mist to cry out their applause, not to a singer in +_Mandalay_ but to a woman's heart. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII--DAN'S SIMPLICITY + + +The Duchess of Breakwater was not sure how close Dan Blair's thoughts +were to marriage, but the boy from Montana was the easiest prey that had +come across the beautiful and unscrupulous woman's range. He had told +her that he stayed on up in London to see a man from home, and when +after four days he still lingered in town, she found his absence +unbearable, and sent him a wire so worded that if he had a spark of +interest in her he must immediately return to the Park. She had never +been more lovely than when Dan found her waiting for him. + +She had ordered tea in her sitting-room. She told him that he looked +frightfully seedy, asked him what he had been doing and why he had +stopped so long away, and Blair told her that old Ruggles, his father's +friend, had run over to see him with a lot of papers for Dan to read and +sign and closed with a smile, telling her that he guessed she "didn't +know much about business." + +"I only know the horrid things of business--debts, and loans, and bills, +and fussing." + +"Those things are not business," Dan answered wisely; "they are just +common or garden carelessness." + +She asked him why he had not brought Ruggles out to Osdene, and he told +her he couldn't have done a stroke of work with the old boy down here at +the Park. + +Stirring his tea, he appreciated the duchess. The agreeable picture she +made impressed him mightily. + +"Do you know," he asked suddenly, "what you make me think of?" + +And she responded softly: "No, dear." + +"A box of candy. This room with its stuffed walls, and you in it are +good enough--" + +"To eat?" she laughed aloud. "Oh, you perfectly killing creature, what +an idea!" + +And as he met her eyes with his clear ones, with a simplicity she could +never hope to reach, he put his tea-cup down; and as he did so the +duchess observed his strong hands, their vigor, well-kept and muscular, +but not the dandified hands of the man who goes often to the manicure. + +"If it hadn't been for one thing," the boy went on, "I would have +thought of nothing else but you, every minute I've been away." + +"Mr. Ruggles?" suggested the duchess. + +"No, the Gaiety girl, Letty Lane. You know I told you in the box that +she was from my town." + +The young man, who had flown back to Osdene Park in answer to a +telegram, began to take his companion into his confidence. + +"I knew that girl," Dan said, "when she wasn't more than fourteen. She +sold me soda-water over the drug store counter. I always thought she was +bully, bright as a button and pretty as a peach. Once, I remember, I +took six chocolate sodas in one day just to go in and see her. I had an +awful time. I most died of that jag, and yet," he said meditatively, "I +don't think I ever spoke three words to her, just said 'sarsaparilla' or +'chocolate' or whatever it might happen to be. Ever since that day, ever +since that jag," he said with feeling, "I couldn't _see_ a stick of +chocolate and keep my head up! Well," went on the boy, "Sarah Towney +sang in our church for a missionary meeting, and I was there. I can +remember the song she sang." He spoke with unconscious ardor. He didn't +refer to the hymn, however, but went on with his narrative. "She +disappeared from Blairtown. I never had a peep at her again until the +other night. Gosh!" he said fervently, "when I saw her there on the +stage, why, I felt as though cold water was running up and down my +spine." + +The duchess, as a rule, was amused by his slang. It seemed vulgar to her +now. + +"Heavens," she drawled, "you are really too dreadful!" + +He didn't seem to hear her. + +"She's turned out a perfect wonder, hasn't she? A world-beater! Why, +everybody tells me there isn't another like her in her specialty. Of +course I have heard of Letty Lane, but I haven't been out to things +since I went in mourning, and I've never run up against her." + +"Really," drawled the duchess again, "now that you have 'run up against +her' what are you going to do with her? Marry her?" + +His honest stare was the greatest relief she had ever experienced. He +repeated bluntly: "Marry her? Why the dickens should I?" + +"You seem absorbed in her." + +He agreed with her. "I am. I think she's great, don't you?" + +"Hardly." + +But the cold voice of the duchess did not chill him. "Simply great," he +continued, "and I'm sorry for her down to the ground. That is what is +the matter. Didn't you notice her when she came into the Carlton that +night?" + +"What of it, silly? I thought she looked as thin as a shad in that black +dress, and the way Poniotowsky goes about with her proves what an ass he +is." + +"Well, I hate him," Blair simply stated; "I would wring his neck for +twenty cents. But she's very ill; that is what is the matter with her." + +"They all look like that off the stage," the duchess assured +indifferently. "They are nothing but footlight beauties: they look +ghastly off the boards. I dare say that Letty Lane _is_ ill, though; the +pace she goes would kill anybody. Have some more tea?" + +He held out his cup and agreed with her. + +"She works too hard--this playing almost every night, singing and dancing +twice at the matinees, I should think she would be dead." + +"Oh, I don't mean her professional engagements," murmured the duchess. + +A revolt such as had stung him when they criticized her at the Carlton +rose in him now. + +"It is hard to believe," he said, "when you hear her sing that dove song +and that cradle song." + +But his companion's laugh stopped his championship short. + +"You dear boy, don't be a silly, Dan. She doesn't need your pity or your +good opinion. She is perfectly satisfied. She has got a fortune in +Poniotowsky, and she really is 'a perfect terror,' you know." + +Affected slightly by her cold dismissal of his subject, he paused for a +moment. But his own point of view was too strong to be shaken by this +woman's light words. + +"I suppose if she wasn't from my town--" At his words the vision of Letty +Lane with the coral strands on her dress, came before his eyes, and he +said honestly: "But I do take an interest in her just the same, and +she's going to pieces, that's clear. Something ought to be done." + +The Duchess of Breakwater was very much annoyed. + +"Are you going to talk about her all the time?" she asked with sharp +sweetness. "You are not very flattering, Dan." + +And he returned peacefully, "Why, I thought you might be able to help +her in some way or another." + +"_Me!_" She laughed aloud. "Me help Letty Lane? Really--" + +"Why, you might get her to sing out here," he suggested. "That would +sort of get hold of her; women know how to do those things." + +His preposterous simplicity overwhelmed her. She stirred her tea, and +said, controlling herself, "Why, what on earth would you have me to say +to Letty Lane?" + +"Oh, just be nice to her," he suggested. "Tell her to take care of +herself and to brace up. Get some nice woman to--" + +The duchess helped him. "To reform her?" + +"Do her good," the boy said gently. + +"You're too silly for words. If you were not such a hopeless child I +would be furious with you. Why, my dear boy, she would laugh in your +face and in mine." + +As the duchess left the tea-table she repeated: "Is this what you came +up from London to talk to me about?" + +And at the touch of her dress as she passed him--at the look she gave him +from her eyes, Dan flushed and said honestly: "Why, I told you that she +was the only thing that kept me from thinking about you all the time." + + + + +CHAPTER IX--DISAPPOINTMENT + + +Dan Blair had not been back of the scenes at the Gaiety since his first +call on the singer. Indeed, though he had told the duchess he pitied +Miss Lane, he had not been able to approach her very closely, even in +his own thoughts. When she first appeared on his horizon his mind was +full of the Duchess of Breakwater, and the singer had only hovered round +his more profound feelings for another woman. But Letty Lane was an +atmosphere in Dan's mind which he was not yet able to understand. There +was so little left that was connected with his old home, certainly +nothing in the British Isles, excepting Ruggles, and to the young man +everything from America had its value. Decidedly the nice girl of whom +he had spoken to Gordon Galorey, the print-frocked, sun-bonneted type, +the ideal girl that Dan would like to marry and to spoil, had not +crossed his path. The Duchess of Breakwater did not suggest her, nor did +any of the London beauties. Dan's first ideal was beginning to fade. + +He left Osdene Park on protest and returned the same night to London, +and all the way back to town tried to register in his mind, unused to +analysis, his experience with the Duchess of Breakwater on this last +visit. + +He had experienced his first disappointment in the sex, and this +disappointment had been of an unusual kind. It was not that he had been +turned down or given the mitten, but he had seen one woman turn another +down. A woman had been mean, so he put it, and the fact that the Duchess +of Breakwater had refused to lend a moral hand to the singer at the +Gaiety hurt Dan's feelings. Then, as soon as his enthusiasm had calmed, +he saw what a stupid ass he had been. A duchess couldn't mix up with a +comic opera singer, of course. Still, he mused, "she might have been a +little nicer about it." + +The education his father had given him about women, the slender +information he had about them, was put to the test now; the girl he had +dreamed of, "the nice girl," well, she would have had a tenderer way +with her in a case such as this! Back of Dan's hurt feelings, there was +a great deal on the Duchess of Breakwater's side. She had not done for +herself yet. She hadn't fetched him nearly up to the altar for nothing, +and back of his disapproval, there was a long list of admirations and +looks, memories of many tete-a-tetes and of more fervent kisses which +scored a good deal in the favor of Dan's first woman. The Duchess of +Breakwater had gone boldly on with Dan's unfinished education, and he +really thought he loved her, and that he was in honor bound to see the +thing through. + + * * * * * + +That evening, once more in the box he had taken all to himself, he +listened to _Mandalay_, carried away with the charm of the music and +carried away by the singer. He was in the box nearest the stage and +seemed close to her, and he imagined that under her paint he could see +her pallor and how thin she was. Nothing, however, in her acting or in +her voice revealed the least fatigue. Blair had obtained a card of +entrance to the theater, which permitted him to circulate freely behind +the scenes, and although as yet the run of his visits had not been +clear, this night he had a purpose. Dan stood not far from the corridor +that led to Letty Lane's room, and saw her after her act hurriedly cross +the stage, a big white shawl wrapping her slender form closely. She was +as thin as a candle. Her woman Higgins followed closely after her, and +as they passed Dan, Letty Lane called to him gaily: + +"Hello, you! What are you hanging around here for?" + +And Dan returned: "Don't stand here in the draft. It is beastly cold." + +"Yes, Miss," her woman urged, "don't stand here." + +But the actress waited nevertheless and said to Dan: "Who's the girl?" + +"What girl?" + +"Why, the girl you come here every night to see and are too shy to speak +to. Everybody is crazy to know." + +Letty Lane looked like a little girl herself in the crocheted garment +her small hands held across her breast. Dan put his arm on her shoulder +without realizing the familiarity of his gesture: + +"Get out of this draft--get out of it quick, I say," and pushed her +toward her room. + +"Gracious, but you are strong." She felt the muscular touch, and his +hand flat against her shoulder was warm through the wool. + +"I wish _you_ were strong. You work too darned hard." + +Her head was covered with the coral cap and feather. Dan saw her billowy +skirt, her silken hose, her little coral shoes. She fluttered at the +door which Higgins opened. + +"Why haven't you been to see me?" she asked him. "You are not very +polite." + +"I am coming in now." + +"Not a bit of it. I'm too busy, and it is a short entr'acte. Go and see +the girl you came here to see." + +Dan thought that the reason she forbade him to come in was because +Prince Poniotowsky waited for her in her dressing-room. It was his first +jealous moment, and the feeling fell on him with a swoop, and its fangs +fastened in him with a stinging pain. He stammered: + +"I didn't come to see any girl here but you. I came to see you." + +"Come to-morrow at two, at the Savoy." + +But before Dan realized his own precipitation, he had seized the +door-handle as Letty Lane went within and was about to close her room +against him, and said quickly: + +"I'm coming right in now." + +"Why, I never heard of such a thing," she answered sharply, angrily; +"you must be crazy! Take away your hand!" And hers, as well as his, +seized the handle of the door. Her small ice-cold hand brought him to +his senses. + +"I beg your pardon," he murmured confusedly. "Do go in and get warm if +you can." + +But instead of obeying, now that the rude young man withdrew his +importuning, Miss Lane's hands fell from the knob, and close to his eyes +she swayed before him, and Dan caught her in his arms--went into her +room, carrying her. He had been wrong about Prince Poniotowsky; save for +Higgins, the room was empty. The woman, though she exclaimed, showed no +great surprise and seemed prepared for such a fainting spell. Dan laid +the actress on the sofa and then the dresser said to him: + +"Please go, sir; I can quite manage. She has these turns often. I'll +give her brandy. She will be quite right." + +But Dan hesitated, looking at the bit of humanity that he had laid with +great gentleness on the divan covered with pillows. Letty Lane lay +there, small as a little child, inanimate as death. It was hard to think +the quiet little form could contain such life, fire and motion, or that +this senseless little creature held London with her voice and grace. +Higgins knelt down by Letty Lane's side, quiet, capable, going about the +business of resuscitating her lady much as she laced the singer's bodice +and shoes. "If you would be so good as to open the door, sir, and send +me a call page. They'll have to linger out this entr'acte or put on some +feature." + +"But," exclaimed Blair, "she can't go back to-night?" + +"Lord, yes," Higgins returned. "Here, Miss Lane; drink this." + +At the door where he paused, Dan saw the girl lifted up, saw her lean on +Higgins' shoulder, and assured then that she was not lifeless in good +truth, he went out to do as Higgins had asked him. In a quarter of an +hour the curtain rose and within half an hour Dan, from his box, saw the +actress dance to the rajah her charming polka to the strains of the +Hungarian Band. + + + + +CHAPTER X--THE BOY FROM MY TOWN + + +He went the next day to see Letty Lane at the Savoy and learned that she +was too ill to receive him. Mrs. Higgins in the sitting-room told him +so. + +Dan liked the big cordial face of the Scotch-woman who acted as +companion, dresser and maid for the star. Mrs. Higgins had an affable +face, one that welcomes, and she made it plain that she was not an enemy +to this young caller. + +The visitor, in his blue serge clothes, was less startling than most of +the men that came to see her mistress. + +"She works too hard, doesn't she?" + +"She does everything too hard, sir." + +"She ought to rest." + +"I doubt if she does, even in her grave," returned Higgins. "She is too +full of motion. She is like the little girl in the fairy book that +danced in her grave." + +Dan didn't like this comparison. + +"Can't you make her hold up a little?" + +Higgins smiled and shook her head. + +Letty Lane's sitting-room was as full of roses as a flower garden. There +were quantities of theatrical photographs in silver and leather frames +on the tables and the piano. Signed portraits from crowned heads; +pictures of well-known worldly men and women whom the dancer had +charmed. But a full-length picture of Letty Lane herself in one of the +dresses of _Mandalay_ lay on the table near Dan, and he picked it up. +She smiled at him enchantingly from the cardboard, across which was +written in her big, dashing hand: "For the Boy from _my_ Town. Letty +Lane." + +Dan glanced up at Mrs. Higgins. + +"Why, that looks as though this were for me." + +The dressing woman nodded. "Miss Lane thought she would be able to see +you to-day." + +The picture in his hand, Dan gazed at it rapturously. + +"I'm from Blairtown, Montana, where she came from." + +"So she told me, sir." + +He laid the picture back on the table, and Higgins understood that he +wanted Miss Lane to give it to him herself. She led him affably to the +door and affably smiled upon him. She had a frill in her hand, a thimble +on her finger, and a lot of needles in her bodice. She looked motherly +and useful. Blair liked to think of her with Letty Lane. He put his hand +in his pocket, but she saw his gesture and reproved him quietly: "No, +no, sir, please, I never do. I am just as much obliged," and her face +remained so affable that Blair was not embarrassed by her refusal. His +parting words were: + +"Now, you make her take care of herself." + +And to please him, as she opened the door, she pleasantly assured him +that she would do her very best. + +Dan went out of the Savoy feeling that he had left something of himself +behind him in the motley room of an actress with its perfumed atmosphere +of roses and violets. The photograph which he had laid down on the table +seemed to look out at him again, and he repeated delightedly, "That one +was for me, all right! I'm the 'boy from her town' and no mistake." And +he thought of her as she had lain, lifelessly and pale on the +dressing-room sofa, under the touch of hired hands, and how, no doubt, +she had been lying in her room when he called to-day, with shades drawn, +resting before the long hard evening, when London would be amused by +her, delighted by her, charmed by her voice, by her body and her grace. +He had wandered up as far as Piccadilly, went into a florist's and stood +before the flowers. Her sitting-room had been full of roses, but Dan +chose something else that had caught his eye from the window,--a huge +country basket of primroses, smelling of the earth and the spring. He +sent them with his card and wrote on it, "To the Girl from My Town," and +sent the gift with a pleasure as young and as fresh as was his own +heart. + +He got no note of acknowledgment from his flowers. Miss Lane was +evidently better and played every night; no mention was made of her +indisposition in the papers. But Dan couldn't go to the Gaiety or bear +to see her make the effort which he knew must tire her beyond words to +conceive. + +After a few days he called at the Savoy to get news of her. He got as +far as the lift when going up in it he saw Prince Poniotowsky. The sight +affected Miss Lane's townsman so forcibly that instead of going up to +the dancer's apartment Dan took himself off, and anger, displeasure and +something like disgust were the only sentiments he carried away from the +Savoy. He sent her no flowers, and gave himself up unreservedly to +Joshua Ruggles and to a couple of men who came in to see him by +appointment. And when toward four o'clock he found himself alone with +Ruggles, Dan threw himself down in a big chair and looked intensely +bored. + +[Image] + +"Well, I guess we don't need to see any more of these fellows for a +week, Dan," Ruggles yawned with relief. "I'm blamed if it isn't as hard +to take care of money as to get it. I was a poor man once, and so was +your father. Those were the days we had fun." + +Ruggles took out a big cigar, struck a match sharply, and when he had +lit his Henry Clay he fixed his gaze on the flying London fog, whose +black curtain drew itself across their window. + +"There's a lot of excitement," Ruggles said, "in not knowing what you're +going to get; may turn out to be anything when you're young and on the +trail. That's the way your father and me felt. And when we started out +on the spot that's Blairtown on the map to-day, your father had forty +dollars a week to engineer a busted mine and to pull the company into +shape." + +Dan knew the story of his father's rise by heart, but he listened. + +"He took on with the mine a lot of discontented half-hearted +rapscallions--a whole bunch, who had failed all along the line. He didn't +chuck 'em out. 'There's no life in old wood, Josh,' he said to me, 'but +sometimes there's fire in it, and I'm going to light up,' and he did. He +won over the whole lot of them in eighteen months, and within two years +he had that darned mine paying dividends. Meanwhile something came his +way and he took it." + +From his chair Dan asked: "You mean the Bentley claim?" + +"Measles," his friend said comically, with a grin. "Your father was sick +to death with them. When he was sitting up for the first time, peeling +in his room, there was a fellow, an Englishman, a total stranger, come +in to see him. 'Better clear out of here,' your father says to him. 'I'm +shedding the damnedest disease for a grown man that ever was caught.' +'I'm not afraid of it,' the Englishman said, 'I'm shedding worse.' When +your father asked him what that was, he said the idea that he could make +any money in the West. He told your father that he was going back to +England and give up his western schemes, and that he had a claim to +sell, and he told Blair where it lay. 'Who has seen it?' your father +asked. 'Any of my men?' And the Englishman told your father that nobody +had wanted to buy it and that was why he had come to him. He said he +thought his only chance to sell was to hold up some blind man on his +dying bed and that he had heard that Blair was too sick to stir out of +his room and to prospect. Your father liked the fellow's cheek and when +he found out that he had the maps with him, your father bought the whole +blooming sweep at the man's price, which was a mere song. + +"Your father never went near his purchase for a year or more, and when +he had turned the mine he was managing over to the original company, +with me as manager in his place, at a salary of twenty thousand dollars +a year, he said to me one day, 'Ruggles, you'll be sorry to know that +the fun is all over, I've struck oil.' But the oil was copper. The whole +blooming business that he'd bought of that Englishman was rich with ore. +Well, that's the story of Blairtown," Ruggles said. "You were born there +and your mother died there." + +Dan said: "Galorey told me what dad did later for the man that sold him +the mine, and it was just like everything else he did, for dad was all +right, just as good as they come." + +Ruggles agreed. He left his reminiscences abruptly. "Your dad and me had +the fun in our time; now you are going to get the other kind; you're +going to make the dust fly that he dug up." + +And the rich young man said musingly: "I'll bet it isn't half as good at +my end." + +And Ruggles agreed: "Not by a jugful." And followed: "What's on +to-night? _Mandalay?_" + +Dan's fury at Prince Poniotowsky came back. "I guess you thought I was a +little loose in the lid, didn't you, Josh, going so often to the same +play?" + +"You wouldn't have been the first rich man that had the same disease," +Ruggles answered. + +"There is nothing the matter with _Mandalay_, but I'm not gone on any +actress living, Josh; you are in the wrong pew." + +Dan altered his indolent pose and sat forward. "But I _am_ thinking of +getting married," he said. + +"I hope it's to the right girl, Dan." + +And with young assurance Blair answered: "It will be if I marry her. I +know what I want all right." + +"I hope she knows what she wants, Dan." + +"How do you mean?" + +"You or your money. You have the darnedest handicap, my boy." + +Blair flushed. "I'll get to hate the whole thing," he said ferociously. +"It meets me everywhere--bonds--stocks--figures--dividends +--coupons--deeds--it's too much!" he said suddenly, with resentment. "It is +too much for me. Why, sometimes I feel a hundred years old, and like a +hunk of gold." + +Ruggles, in answer to this, said: "Why, that reminds me of what a man +remarked about your father once. It was the same English chap your +father bought the claim of. Speaking of Blair, he said to me: 'You know +there's all kinds of metal bars, and when you cut into them some is +bullion and some's coated with aluminum, and there's others that when +you cut down, cut a clean yellow all along the line.' If, as you say, +you feel like a hunk of metal, it ain't bad if it is that kind." + +"It's got to stop coming in between me and the woman I marry, all right, +though." Dan did not pursue his subject further, for his feelings about +the duchess were too unreal to give him the sincere heartiness with +which he would have liked to answer Ruggles. + +He went over to the window, and, with his hands in his pockets, stood +looking out at the fog. Ruggles, at the table, opened the cover of the +book of _Mandalay_ and took out the four checks made out to Lady Galorey +and which he had forgotten. He hurriedly thrust them into his pocket. + +"Come away, Dannie," he said cheerfully, "let's do something wild. I +feel up to most anything with this miserable fog down on me. If it had +any nerve it would take some form or shape, so a man could choke it +back." + +Ruggles blew his nose violently. + +"There's nothing to do," said Dan in a bored tone. + +"Why don't you see who your telegram is from?" Ruggles asked him. It +proved to be a suggestion from Gordon Galorey that Dan should meet him +at five o'clock at the club. + +"What will you do, Rug?" + +"Sleep," said the Westerner serenely; "I'm nearly as happy in London as +I am in Philadelphia. It's four o'clock now and I can't sleep more than +four hours anyway. Let's have a real wild time, Dannie." + +Dan looked at him doubtfully, but Ruggles' eyes were keen. + +"What kind of a time do you mean?" + +"Let's ask the Gaiety girl for dinner--for supper after the theater." + +"Letty Lane? She wouldn't go." + +"Why not?" + +"She is awfully delicate; it is all she can do to keep her contracts." + +He knows that, Ruggles thought. "Let's ask her and see." He went over to +the table and drew out the paper. "Come on and write and ask her to go +out with us to supper." + +"See here, Rug, what's this for?" + +"What's strange in it? She is from our state, and if you don't hustle +and ask her I am going to ask her all alone." + +Dan was puzzled as he sat down to the table, reflecting that it was +perfectly possible that old Ruggles had fallen a prey to the charms of +an actress. She wouldn't come, of course. He wrote a formal invitation +without thinking very much of what he said or how, folded and addressed +his note. + +"What did you say?" Ruggles asked eagerly. + +"Why, that two boys from home wanted to give her a supper." + +"Well," said Ruggles, "if the answer comes while you are at the club +I'll open it and give the orders. Think she'll come?" + +"I do not," responded Dan rather brutally. "She's got others to take her +out to supper, you bet your life." + +"Well, there's none of them as rich as you are, I reckon, Dan." + +And the boy turned on him violently. + +"See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of my money, when there's a +woman in the question--" + +He did not finish his threat, but snatched up his coat and hat and +gloves and went out of the door, slamming it after him. + +Mr. Ruggles' profound and happy snore was cut short by the page boy, who +fetched in a note, with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles opened +it not without emotion. + +"Dear boy," it ran, "I haven't yet thanked you for the primroses; they +were perfectly sweet. There is not one of them in any of my rooms, and +I'll tell you why to-night. I am crazy to accept for supper"--here she +had evidently struck out her intended refusal, and closed with, "I'm +coming, but don't come after me at the Gaiety, please. I'll meet you at +the Carlton after the theater. Who's the other boy? L. L." + +The "other boy" read the note with much difficulty, for it was badly +written. "He'll have to stop sending her flowers and going every night +to the theater unless he wants a row with the duchess," he said dryly. +And with a certain interest in his role, Ruggles rang for the head +waiter, and with the man's help ordered his first midnight supper for an +actress. + + + + +CHAPTER XI--RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER + + +The bright tide of worldly London flows after and around midnight into +the various restaurants and supper rooms, and as well through the +corridors and halls of the Carlton. At one of the small tables bearing a +great expensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh Ruggles, in a new +evening dress, sat waiting for his party. Dan had dined with Lord +Galorey, and the two men had gone out together afterward, and Ruggles +had not seen the boy to give him Letty Lane's note. + +"Got it with you?" Blair asked when he came in, and Ruggles responded +that he didn't carry love letters around in his dress clothes. + +They could tell by the interest in the room when the actress was coming, +and both men rose as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a crowd of +last arrivals. + +She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her dark +simplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan took +from her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze of +sparkling _paillettes_. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blond +head, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thing +about her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs of +gold like moonshine on a starry sea. The actress' look of surprise when +she saw Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a boy of his age. + +"The other boy?" she asked. "Well, this is the nicest supper party ever! +And you are awfully good to invite me." + +Ruggles patted his shirt front and adjusted his cravat. + +"My idea," he told her, "all the blame on me, Miss Lane. Charge it up to +me! Dan here had cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn't come." + +She laughed deliciously. + +"He did? Hasn't got much faith, has he?" + +Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched the orchids with her little +hands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking to +Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to address her conversation. + +"I'm simply crazy over these flowers." + +The older man showed his pleasure. "My choice again! Walked up myself +and chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start to +finish--hope you'll like it. I would have added some Montana peas and +some chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand the +joke." + +Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was not +fully at ease: he was not the kind of man she had expected to see. +Accustomed to young fellows like the boy and their mad devotion, +accustomed to men with whom she could be herself, the big, bluff, +middle-aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, his rumpled +iron-gray hair, and his deference to her, though an unusual diversion, +was a little embarrassing. + +"Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. Ruggles. I'm on a diet of milk +and eggs myself, and I expect your order didn't take in those." But at +his fallen countenance she hurried to say: "Oh, I wouldn't have told you +that if I hadn't been intending to break through." + +And with childlike anticipation she clapped her hands and said: "We're +going to have 'lots of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that means +here in London. They say 'heaps of sport, you know.'" She imitated the +accent maliciously. "It's just we Americans who know what 'lots of fun' +is, isn't it?" + +Near her Dan Blair's young eyes were drinking in the spectacle of +delicate beauty beautifully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and he +gazed like a child at a pantomime. Under his breath he exclaimed now, +with effusion, "You bet your life we are going to have lots of fun!" And +turning to him, Miss Lane said: + +"Six chocolate sodas running?" + +"Oh, don't," he begged, "not that kind of jag." + +She shook with laughter. + +"Are you from Blairtown, Mr. Ruggles? I don't think I ever saw you +there." + +And the Westerner returned: "Well, from what Dan tells me, you're not +much of a fixture yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born and then +kidnapped." + +Her gay expression faded. And she repeated his word, "Kidnapped? That's +a good word for it, Mr. Ruggles." + +She picked up between her fingers a strand of the green fern, and looked +at its delicate tracery as it lay on the palm of her hand. + +"I sang one day after a missionary sermon in the Presbyterian Church." +She interrupted herself with a short laugh. "But I guess you're not +thinking of writing my biography, are you?" + +And it was Dan's voice that urged her. "Say, do go on. I was there that +day with my father, and you sang simply out of sight." + +"Yes," she accepted, "out of sight of Blairtown and everybody I ever +knew. I went away the next day." She lifted her glass of champagne to +her lips. "Here's one thing I oughtn't to do," she said, "but I'm going +to just the same. I'm going to do everything I want this evening. +Remember, I let you drink six glasses of chocolate soda once." She +drained her glass and her friends drank with her. "I like this soup +awfully. What is it?"--just touching it with her spoon. + +"Why," Ruggles hastened to tell her, "it ain't a _party_ soup, it's +Scotch broth. But somehow it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixed +the rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but I let myself go on the +soup, it's my favorite." + +She did not eat it, however, although she said it was splendid and that +she was crazy about it. + +"Did you come East then?" Dan returned to what she had been saying. + +"Yes, that week; went to Paris and all over the place." + +She instantly fell into a sort of melancholy. It was easy to be seen +that she did not want to talk about her past and yet that it fascinated +her. + +"Just think of it!" he exclaimed. "I never heard a word about you until +I heard you sing the other night." + +The actress laughed and told him that he had made up for lost time, and +that he was a regular "sitter" now at the Gaiety. + +Ruggles said, "He took me every night to see you dance until I balked, +Miss Lane." + +"Still, it's a perfectly great show, Mr. Ruggles, don't you think so? I +like it better than any part I ever had. I am interested about it for +the sake of the man who wrote it, too. It's his first opera; he's an +invalid and has a wife and five kids to look after." + +And Ruggles replied, "Oh, gracious! I feel better than ever, having gone +ten times, although I wasn't _very_ sore about it before! Ain't you +going to eat anything?" + +She only picked at her food, drinking what they poured in her glass, and +every time she spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness crossed her +face, an expression of good fellowship which Ruggles noted with +interest. + +"I wish you could have seen this same author to-day at the rehearsal of +the play," Letty Lane went on. "He's too ill to walk and they had to +carry him in a chair. We all went round to his apartments after the +theater. He lives in three rooms with his whole family and he's had so +many debts and so much trouble and such a poor contract that he hasn't +made much out of _Mandalay_, but I guess he will out of this new piece. +He hugged and kissed me until I thought he would break my neck." + +London had gone mad over Letty Lane, whose traits and contour were the +admiration of the world at large and well-known even to the news-boys, +and whose likeness was nearly as familiar as that of the Madonnas of +old. Her face was oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest of +mouths--the most delicious and softest of mouths--the line of her brows +clear and straight, and her gray eyes large and as innocent and +appealing as a child's; under their long lashes they opened up like +flowers. It was said that no man could withstand their appeal; that she +had but to look to make a man her slave; and as more than once she +turned to Dan, smiling and gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutely +thinking of what he had heard this day, for after her letter came +accepting their invitation he had taken pains to find out the things he +wanted to know. It had not been difficult. As her face and form were +public, on every post-card and in every photographer's shop, so the +actress' reputation was the property of the public. + +As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, he watched her beside the +son of his old friend. They were talking--rather she was--and behind the +orchids and the ferns her voice was sweet and enthralling. Ruggles tried +to appreciate his bill of fare while the two appreciated each other. It +was strange to Dan to have her so near and so approachable. His sights +of her off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. On the boards she +had seemed to be an unreal creation made for the public alone. Her +dress, cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young bosom--soft, +bloomy, white as a shell--and her head and ears were as delicate as the +petals of a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her golden hair lay +lightly, and from its soft masses fragrance came to him. + +Ruggles could hear her say: "Roach came to the house and told my people +that I had a fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle and my +step-aunt and working in the store. And that same day your father sent +down a check for five hundred dollars. He said it was 'for the little +girl with the sweet voice,' and it gives me a lot of pleasure to think +that I began my lessons on _that money_." + +The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: "I'm darned glad you did--I'm +darned glad you did!" + +Letty Lane nodded. "So am I. But," with some sharpness, "I don't see why +you speak that way. I've earned my way. I made a fortune for Roach all +right." + +"You mean the man you married?" + +"Married--goodness gracious, what made you think that?" She threw back +her pretty head and laughed--a laugh with the least possible merriment in +it. "Oh, Heavens, marry old Job Roach! So they say _that_, do they? I +never heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that fairy tale." She +put her hands to her checks, which had grown crimson. "That's not true!" + +Dan swore at himself for his tactless stupidity. + +Ruggles had heard both sides. She was adored by the poor, and, as far as +rumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and the +Westerner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whom +there was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whom +she might be, listened with embarrassment to tales he had been told in +answer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories of +Letty Lane's charity, and to the stories of her popularity and her +success. They were more agreeable, but they couldn't make him forget the +rest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids and +ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still a +decided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn't let +himself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a man +of the world in any sense; he was simple and Puritan in his judgments, +and his gentle nature and his big heart kept him from pharisaical and +strenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by a +diplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi would +have thought out under the circumstances. + +"Tell Mr. Ruggles," he heard Dan say to her, "tell him--tell him!" + +And she answered: + +"I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so frightfully rich, I want him +to give me some money." + +Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly: + +"Well, he's a great giver, Miss Lane." + +"I guess he is if he's like his father!" she returned. "I am trying to +get a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night I +said to myself, 'I'll accept, for it will be a good time to ask Mr. +Blair to help me out in what I want to do.'" + +At Ruggles' face she smiled sweetly and said graciously: + +"Oh, don't think I wouldn't have come anyway. But I'm awfully tired +these days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! I +want Mr. Blair," she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word from +him would make the thing go through, "to help me build a rest home down +on the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When I +think of the _luck_ I have had and how these things have been from the +beginning, and how money has just poured in, why," she said ardently, +"it just makes my heart ache to think of the girls who try and fail, who +go on for a little while and have to give up. You can't tell,"--she +nodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,--"you +can not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them go +to pieces." + +Ruggles listened with interest. + +"I haven't thought it all out yet, but so many come to me tired out and +discouraged, and I think a nice home taken care of by a good creature +like my Higgins, let us say, would be a perfect blessing to them. They +could go there and rest and study and just think, and perhaps," she said +slowly, as though while she spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, for +whom there had been no rest home and no place of retreat, "perhaps a lot +of them would pull through in a different way. Now to-day"--she broke her +meditative tone short--"I got a letter from a hospital where a poor thing +that used to sing with me in New York was dying with consumption--all +gone to pieces and discouraged, and there is where your primroses went +to--" she nodded to Dan. "Higgins took them. You don't mind?" And Blair, +with a warmth in his voice, touched by her pity more than by her +charity, said: + +"Why, they grew for you, Miss Lane; I don't care what you do with them." + +Letty Lane sank her head on her hands, her elbows leaned on the table. +She seemed suddenly to have lost interest even in her topic. She looked +around the room indifferently. The orchestra was softly playing _The +Dove Song_ from _Mandalay_, and very softly under her breath the star +hummed it, her eyes vaguely fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and to +Ruggles she had grown strange. The music, her brilliancy, her sudden +indifference, put her out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to himself +thought with relief: + +"She doesn't care one rap for the boy anyway, thank God. She's got other +fish to land." + +And Dan Blair thought: "It's my infernal money again." But he was +generous at heart and glad to be of service to her, and was perfectly +willing to be "touched" for her poor. Then two or three men came up and +joined them. She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word or a look on +this one or on that; all fire and light seemed to have gone out of her, +and Dan said: + +"You are tired. I guess I had better take you home." + +She did not appear to hear him. Indeed she was not looking at him, and +Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky making his way toward their table across the +room. + +Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about her shoulders, and glancing +toward Ruggles and toward the boy as indifferently as she had considered +the new-comers, who formed a small group around the brilliant figure of +the actress, she nodded good night to both Ruggles and Blair and went up +to the Hungarian as though he were her husband, who had come to take her +home. However, at the door she sufficiently shook off her mood to smile +slightly at Dan: + +"I have had 'lots of fun,' and the Scotch broth was great! Thank you +both so much." + +Until they were up in their sitting-room her hosts did not exchange a +word. Then Ruggles took a book up from the table and sat down with his +cigar. "I am going to read a little, Dan. Slept all day; feel as +wide-awake as an owl." + +Dan showed no desire to be communicative, however, to Ruggles' +disappointment, but he exclaimed abruptly: + +"I'll be darned, Ruggles, if I can guess what you asked her for!" + +"Well, it did turn out to be a pretty expensive party for you, Dannie, +didn't it?" Ruggles returned humorously. "I'll let you off from any more +supper parties." + +And Dan fumed as he turned his back. "_Expensive!_ There you are again, +Ruggles, with your infernal intrusion of money into everything I do." + +When the older man found himself alone, he read a little and then put +his book down to muse. And his meditations were on the tide of life and +the beds it runs over; the living whirlpool as Ruggles himself had seen +it coursing through London under fog and mist. It seemed now to surge up +in the dark to his very windows, and the flow mysteriously passed under +his windows in these silent hours when no one can see the muddy, muddy +bottom over which the waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, the +cries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: "God bless her--God bless +Letty Lane!" And with this sound he closed his meditations, thinking of +a more peaceful stream, the brighter, sweeter waters of the boy's +nature, translucent and clear. The vision was happier, and with it +Ruggles rose and yawned, and shut his book. + + + + +CHAPTER XII--THE GREEN KNIGHT + + +The Duchess of Breakwater had made Dan promise at Osdene the day he went +back to London that he would take her over to her own place, Stainer +Court, and with her see the beauty, ruins and traditions of the place. + +When Dan got up well on in the morning, Ruggles had gone to the bank. +Dan's thoughts turned from everything to Letty Lane. With irritation he +put her out of his mind. There had come up between himself and the girl +he had known slightly in his own town years ago a wall of partition. +Every time he saw her Poniotowsky was there, condescending, arrogant, +rude and proud. The prince the night before had given the tips of his +fingers to Dan, nodded to Ruggles as if the Westerner had been his +tailor, and had appropriated Letty Lane, and she had gone away under his +shadow. The simplicity of Dan's life, his decent bringing up, his +immaculate youth, for such it was, his aloofness from the world, made +him naive, but he was not dull. He waited--not like a skeptic who would +fit every one into his pigeonholes--on the contrary, he waited to find +every one as perfect as he knew they must be, and every time he tried to +think of Letty Lane, Poniotowsky troubled him horribly and seemed to +rise before him, and sardonically look at him through his eye-glass, +making the boy's belief in good things ridiculous. + +He wrote a note to Ruggles, saying that he would be back late and not to +wait for him, and set out in his own car for Blankshire, where the +duchess was to meet him at Stainer Court at noon. On his way out he +decided that he had been a fool to discuss Letty Lane with the Duchess +of Breakwater, and that it had been none of his business to put her duty +before her, and that he had judged her quickly and unfairly. He fell in +love with the lovely English country over which his motor took him, and +it made him more affectionate toward the English woman. He sat back in +his car, looking over the fine shooting land, the misty golden forests, +as through the misty country his motor took its way. The breath of +England was on his cheeks, he breathed in its odors fresh and sweet, the +windless air was cool and fragrant. His cheeks grew red, his eyes shone +like stars, and he was content with his youth and his lot. When they +stopped at Castelene, the property belonging to Stainer Court, he felt +something of proprietorship stir in him, and at Stainer Arms ordered a +drink, bought petroleum, and then pushed up the avenue under the +leafless giant trees, whose roots were older than his father's name or +than any state of the Union. And he felt admiration and something like +emotion as he saw the first towers of Stainer Court finally appear. + +The duchess waited for him in the room known as the "Green Knight's +Room," because of a figure in tapestry on the walls. The legend in wool +had been woven in Spain, somewhere about the time when Isabella was +kind, and when in turn a continent loomed up for the world in general +out of the mist. The subject of the Green Knight's tapestry was simple +and convincing. On a sheer-cut village of low ferns, where daisies stood +up like trees, a slender lady poised, her dark sandaled feet on the +pin-like turf. Her figure was all swathed round with a spotless dress of +woolly white, softened by age into a golden misty tone, and a pair of +friendly and confidential rabbits sat close to her golden slippers. The +lady's face was candid and mild; her eyes were soft, and around her head +was wound a fillet of woven threads, mellow in tone, a red, no doubt, +originally, but softened to a coral pink by time. This lady in all her +grace and virginal sweetness was only half of the woven story. To her +right stood a youth in forest green, his sword drawn, and his intention +evidently to kill a creature which, near to the gentle rabbits, out of +the daisied grass lifted its cruel snakelike head. For nearly five +hundred years the serpent's venom had been poised, and if the serpent +should start the Green Knight would strike, too, at the same magic +moment. + +Close to the tapestry a fire had been laid in the broad fireplace, and +the duchess had ordered the luncheon table for Dan and herself spread +with the cold things England knows how to combine into a delectable +feast. The room was full of mediaeval furnishings, but the Green Knight +was the best of all. The Duchess of Breakwater took him for granted. She +had known him all her life, and she had only been struck by his +expensive beauty when the offer came to her from the National Museum to +buy him, and she wondered how long she could afford to stick to her +price. + +When Dan came in he found her in a short tweed skirt, a mannish blouse, +looking boyish and wholly charming, and she mixed him a cocktail under +the Green Knight's very nose and offered it with the wisdom of the +serpent itself, and the duchess didn't in the least suggest the +white-robed, milk-white lady. + +The friends drank their cocktails in good spirits, and Dan presented the +lady with the flowers he had brought her, and he felt a strong sentiment +stir at the sight of her in this old room, alone and waiting for him. +The servants left them, the duchess put her hands on the boy's broad +shoulders. Nearly as tall as he, she was a good example of the +best-looking English woman, straight and strong, and her eyes were +level, and Dan met them with his own. + +"I am so glad you came," she murmured. "I've been ragging myself every +minute since you went away from Osdene." + +"You have? What for?" + +"Because I was such a perfect prig. I'll do anything you like for Miss +Lane. I mean to say, I'll arrange for a musicale and ask her to sing." + +The color rushed into Dan's face. How bully of her! What a brick this +showed her to be! He said: "You are as sweet as a peach!" + +The duchess' hands were still on his shoulders. She could feel his rapid +breath. + +"I don't make you think of a box of candy now?" she murmured, and the +boy covered her hand with his own. + +"I don't know what you make me think of--it is bully, whatever it is!" + +If the Spanish tapestry could only have reversed its idea, and if the +immaculate lady, or even one of the rabbits, could have drawn a sword to +protect the Green Knight, it would have been passing well. But the woven +work, when it first had been embroidered, was done for ever; it was +irrevocable in its mistaken idea, that it is only the _woman_ who needs +protection! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII--THE FACE OF LETTY LANE + + +As Dan went through the halls of the Carlton on his way to his rooms +that same evening, the porter gave him two notes, which Dan went down +into the smoking-room to read. He tore open the note bearing the Hotel +Savoy on the envelope, and read: + + "Dear Boy: Will you come around to-night and see me about five + o'clock? Don't let anything keep you." (Letty Lane had the habit of + scratching out phrases to insert others, and there was something + scratched out.) "I want to talk to you about something very + important. Come sure. L. L." + +Dan looked at the clock; it was after nine, and she would be at the +Gaiety going on with her performance. + +The other note, which he opened more slowly, was from Ruggles, and it +began in just the same way as the dancer's had begun: + + "Dear Boy: I have been suddenly called back to the United States. As + I didn't know how to get at you, I couldn't. I had a cable that + takes me right back. I get the _Lusitania_ at Liverpool and you can + send me a Marconi. Better make the first boat you can and come over. + + "Joshua Ruggles." + +Ruggles left no word of advice, and unconscious of this master stroke on +the part of the old man, whose heart yearned for him as for his own son, +Dan folded the note up and thought no more about Ruggles. + +When an hour later he came out of the Carlton he was prepared for the +life of the evening. He stopped at the telephone desk and sent a +telegram to Ruggles on the _Lusitania_: + + "Can't come yet a while; am engaged to be married to the Duchess of + Breakwater." + +He wrote this out in full and the man at the Marconi "sat up" and smiled +as he wrote. With Letty Lane's badly written note in his pocket, and +wondering very much at her summons of him, Dan drove to the Gaiety, and +at the end of the third act went back of the scenes. There were several +people in her dressing-room. Higgins was lacing her into a white bodice +and Miss Lane, before her glass, was putting the rouge on her lips. + +"Hello, you," she nodded to Dan. + +"I am awfully sorry not to have shown up at five. Just got your note. +Just got in at the hotel; been out of town all day." + +Dan saw that none of the people in the room was familiar to him, and +that they were out of place in the pretty brocaded nest. One of them was +a Jew, a small man with a glass eye, whose fixed stare rested on Miss +Lane. He had kept on his overcoat, and his derby hat hung on the back of +his head. + +"Give Mr. Cohen the box, Higgins," Miss Lane directed, and bending +forward, brought her small face close to the glass, and her hands +trembled as she handled the rouge stick. + +Mr. Cohen in one hand held a string of pearls that fell through his fat +fingers, as if eager to escape from them. Higgins obediently placed a +small box in his hand. + +"Take it and get out of here," she ordered Cohen. "Miss Lane has only +got five minutes." + +Cohen turned the stub of his cigar in his mouth unpleasantly without +taking the trouble to remove it. "I'll take the box," he said rapidly, +"and when I get good and ready I'll get out of here, but not before." + +"Now see here," Blair began, but Miss Lane, who had finished her task, +motioned him to be quiet. + +"Please go out, Mr. Blair," she said. "Please go out. Mr. Cohen is here +on business and I really can't see anybody just now." + +Behind the Jew Higgins looked up at Dan and he understood--but he didn't +heed her warning; nothing would have induced him to leave Letty Lane +like this. + +"I'm not going, though, Miss Lane," he said frankly. "I've got an +appointment with you and I'm going to stay." + +As he did so the other people in the room took form for him: a blind +beggar with a stick in his hand, and by his side a small child wrapped +in a shawl. With relief Dan saw that Poniotowsky was absent from the +party. + +Cohen opened the box, took its contents out and held up the jewels. +"This," he said, indicating a string of pearls, "is all right, Miss +Lane, and the ear-drops. The rest is no good. I'll take or leave them, +as you like." + +She was plainly annoyed and excited, and, as Higgins tried to lace her, +moved from her dressing-table to the sofa in a state of agitation. + +"Take them or leave them, as _you_ like," she said, "but give me the +money and go." + +The Jew took from his wallet a roll of banknotes and counted them. + +"Six," he began, but she waved him back. + +"Don't tell me how much it is. I don't want to know." + +"Let the other lady count it," the Jew said. "I don't do business that +way." + +Dan, who had laid down his overcoat and hat on a chair, came quietly +forward, his hands in his pockets, and standing in front of the Jew, he +said again: + +"Now you look here--" + +Letty Lane threw the money down on the dressing-table. "Please," she +cried to Dan, "let me have the pleasure of sending this man out of my +room. You can go, Cohen, and go in a hurry, too." + +The Jew stuffed the pearls in his pocket and went by Dan hurriedly, as +though he feared the young man intended to help him. But Dan stopped +him: + +"Before this deal goes through I want you to tell me why you are--" + +Miss Lane broke in: "My gracious Heavens! Can't I even sell my jewels +without being bossed? What business is it of yours, Mr. Blair? Let this +man go, and go all of you--all of you. Higgins, send them out." + +The blind man and the child stirred, too, at this outburst. The little +girl wore a miserable hat, a wreck of a hat, in which shook a feather +like a broken mast. The rest of her garments seemed made of the +elements--of dirt and mud--mere flags of distress, and the odor of the +poor filled the room: over the perfume and scent and smell of stage +properties, this miserable smell held its own. + +"Come, Daddy," whispered the child timidly, "come along." + +"Oh, no, not you, not you," Letty Lane said. + +Job Cohen crawled out with ten thousand pounds' worth of pearls in his +pockets, and as soon as the door had closed the actress took up the roll +of notes. + +"Come here," she said to the child. "Now you can take your father to the +home I told you of. It is nice and comfortable--they will treat his eyes +there." + +"Miss Lane--Miss Lane!" called the page boy. + +"Never mind that," said the actress, "it is a long wait this act. I +don't go on yet." + +Higgins went to the door and opened it and stood a moment, then +disappeared into the side scenes. + +Letty Lane ruffled the pile of banknotes and without looking drew out +two or three bills, putting them into the child's hands. "Don't you lose +them; stuff them down; this will keep you and your father for a couple +of years. Take care of it. You are quite rich now. Don't get robbed." + +The child tremblingly folded the notes and hid them among her rags. The +tears of happiness were straggling over her face. She said finally, +finding no place to stow away her riches, "I expect I'd best put them in +daddy's pocket." + +And Dan came to her aid; taking the notes from her, he folded and put +them inside the clothes of the old beggar. + +"Miss Lane," said Higgins, who had come in, "it is time you went on." + +"I'll see your friends out of the theater," Blair offered. And as he did +so, for the first time she looked at him, and he saw the fever in her +brilliant eyes. + +"Thanks awfully," she accepted. "It is perfectly crazy to give them so +much money at once. Will you look after it like a good boy and see +something or other about them?" + +He thought of her, however, and caught up a great soft shawl from the +chair, wrapped it around her tenderly, and she flitted out, Higgins +after her, leaving the rest of the money scattered on her +dressing-table. + +"Come along," said Blair kindly to the two who stood awaiting his orders +with the docility of the poor, the obedience of those who have no right +to plan or suggest until told to move on. "Come, I'll see you home." And +he didn't leave them until he had taken them in a cab to their +destination--until he had persuaded the girl to let him have the money, +look after it for her, come to see her the next day and tell her what to +do. + +Then he went back to the theater and stood up in the rear, for the house +was crowded, to hear Letty sing. It was souvenir night; there were +post-cards and little coral caps with feathers as _bonbonnieres_. They +called her out before the curtain a dozen times, and each time Dan +wanted to cry "Mercy" for her. He felt as though this little act had +established a friendship between them; and his hands clenched as he +thought of Poniotowsky, and he tried to recall that he was an engaged +man. He had an idea that Letty Lane was looking for him through the +performance. She finished in a storm of applause, and flowers were +strewn upon her, and Dan found himself, in spite of his resolution, +going back into the wings. + +This time two or three cards were sent in. One by one he saw the +visitors refused, and Dan, without any formality, himself knocked at +Letty Lane's small door, which Higgins opened, looked back over her +shoulder to give his name to her mistress, and said to Dan confidently, +"Wait, sir; just wait a bit." Her lips were affable. And in a few +moments, to Dan's astonished delight, the actress herself appeared, a +big scarf over her head and her body enveloped in her snowy cloak, and +he understood with a leap of his heart that she had singled him out to +take her home. + +She went before him through the wings to the stage entrance, which he +opened for her, and she passed out before him into the fog and the mist. +For the first time Blair followed her through the crowd, which was a big +one on this night. On the one side waited the poor, who wished her many +blessings, and on the other side her admirers, whose thoughts were quite +different. Something of this flashed through Dan's mind,--and in that +moment he touched the serious part of life for the first time. + +In Letty Lane's motor, the small electric light lit over their heads and +the flower vase empty, he sat beside the fragrant human creature whom +London adored, and knew his place would have been envied by many a man. + +"I took your friends to their place all right," he told her, "and I'm +going to see them myself to-morrow. I advised the girl not to get +married for her money. Say, this is awfully nice of you to let me take +you home!" + +She seemed small in her corner. "You were great to-night," Dan went on, +"simply great! Wasn't the crowd crazy about you, though! How does it +feel to stand there and hear them clap like a thunderstorm and call your +name?" + +She replied with effort. "It _was_ a nice audience, wasn't it? Oh, I +don't know how it feels. It is rather stimulating. How's the other boy?" +she asked abruptly, and when Dan had said that Ruggles had left him +alone in London, she turned and laughed a little. + +Dan asked her why she had sent for him to-day. "I'm mighty sorry I was +out of town," he said warmly. "Just to think you should have wanted me +to do something for you and I didn't turn up. You know I would be glad +to do anything. What was it? Won't you tell me what it was?" + +"The Jew did it for me." + +And Dan exclaimed: "It made me simply sick to see that animal in your +room. I would have kicked him out if I hadn't thought that it would make +an unpleasant scene for you. We have passed the Savoy." He looked out of +the window, and Letty Lane replied: + +"I told the driver to go to the Carlton first." + +She was taking _him_ home then! + +"Well, you've got to come in and have some supper with me in that case," +he cried eagerly, and she told him that she had taken him home because +she knew that Mr. Ruggles would approve. + +"Not much you won't," he said, and put his hand on the speaking tube, +but she stopped him. + +"Don't give any orders in my motor, Mr. Blair. You sit still where you +are." + +"Do you think that I am such a simple youth that I--" + +Letty Lane with a gesture of supreme ennui said to him impatiently: + +"Oh, I just think I am pretty nearly tired to death; don't bother me. I +want my own way." + +Her voice and her gesture, her beauty and her indifference, her sort of +vague lack of interest in him and in everything, put the boy, full of +life as he was, out of ease, but he ventured, after a second: + +"Won't you please tell me what you wanted me to do this afternoon?" + +"Why, I was hard up, that's all. I have used all my salary for two +months and I couldn't pay my bill at the Savoy." + +"Lord!" he said fervently, "why didn't you--" + +"I did. Like a fool I sent for you the first thing, but I was awfully +glad when five o'clock came you didn't turn up. Please don't bother or +speak of it again." + +And burning with curiosity as to what part Poniotowsky played in her +life, Dan sat quiet, not venturing to put to her any more questions. She +seemed so tired and so overcome by her own thoughts. When they had +turned down toward the hotel, however, he decided that he must in honor +tell her his news. + +"Got some news to tell you," he exclaimed abruptly. "Want you to +congratulate me. I'm engaged to be married to the Duchess of Breakwater. +She happens to be a great admirer of your voice." + +The actress turned sharply to him and in the dark he could see her +little, white face. The covering over her head fell back and she +exclaimed: + +"Heavens!" and impulsively put her hands out over his. "Do you really +mean what you say?" + +"Yes." He nodded surprisedly. "What do you look like that for?" + +Letty Lane arranged her scarf and then drew back from him and laughed. + +"Oh, dear, dear, dear," she exclaimed, "and I ... and I have been...." + +She looked up at him swiftly as though she fancied she might detect some +new quality in him which she had not observed before, but she saw only +his clear, kind eyes, his charming smile and his beautiful, young +ignorance, and said softly to him: + +"No use to cry, little boy, if it's true! But that woman isn't half good +enough for you--not half, and I guess you think it funny enough to hear +_me_ say so! What does the other boy from Montana say?" + +"Don't know," Dan answered indifferently. "Marconied him; didn't tell +him about it before he left. You see he doesn't understand +England--doesn't like it." + +A little dazed by the way each of the two women took the mention of the +other, he asked timidly: + +"You don't like the Duchess of Breakwater, then?" + +And she laughed again. + +"Goodness gracious, I don't know her; actresses don't sit around with +duchesses." Then abruptly, her beautiful eyes, under their curled dark +lashes, full on him, she asked: + +"Do _you_ like her?" + +"You bet!" he said ardently. "Of course I do. I am crazy about her." Yet +he realized, as he replied, that he didn't have any inclination to begin +to talk about his fiancee. + +They had reached the Carlton and the door of Letty Lane's motor was held +open. + +"Better get out," he urged, "and have something to eat." + +And she, leaning a little way toward him, laughed. + +"Crazy! Your engagement would be broken off to-morrow." And she further +said: "If I really thought it would, why I'd come like a shot." + +As she leaned forward, her cloak slipping from her neck, revealing her +throat above the dark collar of the simple dress she wore, he looked in +her dove-gray eyes, and murmured: + +"Oh, say, do come along and risk it. I'm game, all right." + +She hesitated, then bade him good night languidly, slipping back into +her old attitude of indifference. + +"I am going home to rest. Good night. I don't think the duchess would +let you go, no matter what you did!" + +Dan, standing there at her motor door, this beautiful, well-known woman +bantering him, leaning toward him, was conscious of her alone, all snowy +and small and divine in her enveloping scarf, lost in the corner of her +big car. + +"I hate to have you go back alone to the Savoy. I really do. Please let +me--" + +But she shook her head. "Tell the man the Savoy," and as Dan, carrying +out her instructions, closed the door, he said: "I don't like that empty +vase in there. Would you be very good and put some flowers in it if they +came?" + +She wouldn't promise, and he went on: + +"Will you put only my flowers in that vase always hereafter?" + +Then, "Why, of course not, goose," she said shortly. "Will you please +let me close the door and go home?" + +Dan walked into the Carlton when her bright motor had slipped away, his +evening coat long and black flying its wings behind him, his hat on the +back of his blond head, light of foot and step, a gay young figure among +the late lingering crowd. + +He went to his apartments and missed Ruggles in the lonely quiet of the +sitting-room, but as the night before Ruggles had done, Dan in his +bedroom window stood looking out at the mist and fog through which +before his eyes the things he had lately seen passed and repassed, +specter-like, winglike, across the gloom. Finally, in spite of the fact +that he was an engaged man with the responsibilities of marriage before +him, he could think of but one thing to take with him when he finally +turned to sleep. The face of the woman he was engaged to marry eluded +him, but the face under the white hood of Letty Lane was in his dreams, +and in his troubled visions he saw her shining, dovelike eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV--FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS + + +Mrs. Higgins, in Miss Lane's apartment at the Savoy, was adjusting the +photographs and arranging the flowers when she was surprised by a +caller, who came up without the formality of sending his name. + +"Do you think," Blair asked her, "that Miss Lane would see me half a +minute? I called yesterday, and the day before, as soon as I saw that +there was a substitute singing in _Mandalay_. Tell her I'm as full of +news as a charity report, please, and I rather guess that will fetch +her." + +Something fetched her, for in a few minutes she came languidly in, and +by the way she smiled at her visitor it might be thought Dan Blair's +name alone had brought her in. The actress had been ill for a fortnight +with what the press notices said was influenza. She wore a teagown, long +and white as foam, her hair rolled in a soft knot, and her face was pale +as death. Frail and small as she was, she was more ethereal than when in +perfect health. + +"Don't stand a minute." And by the hand she gave him Dan led her over to +the lounge where the pillows were piled and a fur-lined silk cover +thrown across the sofa. + +"Don't give me that heavy rug, there's that little white shawl." She +pointed to it, and Dan, as he gave it to her, recognized the shawl in +which she wrapped herself when she crossed the icy wings. + +"It's in those infernal side scenes you get colds." + +He sat down by her. She began to cough violently and he asked, troubled, +"Who's taking care of you, anyway?" + +"Higgins and a couple of doctors." + +"That's all?" + +"Yes. Why, who should be?" + +Dan didn't follow up his jealous suspicion, but asked in a tone almost +paternal and softly confidential: + +"How are your finances getting on?" + +Her lips curved in a friendly smile. But she made a dismissing gesture +with her frail little hand. + +"Oh, I'm all right; Higgins told me you had some news about my poor +people." + +The fact that she did not take up the financial subject made him +unpleasantly sure that her wants had been supplied. + +"Got a whole bunch of news," Dan replied cheerfully. "I went to see the +old man and the girl in their diggings. Gosh, you couldn't believe such +things were true." + +She drew her fine brows together. "I guess there are a good many things +that would surprise you. But you don't need to tell me about hard times. +That's the way I am. I'll do anything, give anything, so long as I don't +have to hear hard stories." She turned to him confidentially. "Perhaps +it's acting in false scenes on the stage; perhaps it's because I'm lazy +and selfish, but I can't bear to hear about tales of woe." + +What she said somewhat disturbed his idea of her big-hearted charity. + +"I don't believe you're lazy or selfish," he said sincerely, "but I've +got an idea that not many people really know you." + +This amused her. Looking at him quizzically, she laughed. "I expect you +think you do." + +Dan answered: "Well, I guess the people that see you when you are a kid, +who come from your own part of the country, have a sort of friendship." +And the girl on the sofa from the depths of her shawl put out a thin +little hand to him and said in a voice as lovely in tone as when she +sang in _Mandalay_: + +"Well, I guess that's right! I guess that's about true." + +After the tenth of a second, in which she thought best to take her +little cold hand away from those big warm ones, she asked: + +"Now please do tell me about the poor people." + +In this way giving him to understand how really true his better idea of +her had been. + +"Why, the old duffer is as happy as a house afire," said the boy. "Not +to boast, I've done the whole thing up as well as I knew how. I've got +him into that health resort you spoke of, and the girl seems to have got +a regular education vice! She wants to study something, so she's going +to school." + +"Go on talking," the actress invited languidly. "I love to hear you talk +Montana! Don't change your twang for this beastly English drawl, +whatever you do." + +"You have, though, Miss Lane. I don't hear a thing of Blairtown in the +way you speak." + +And the girl said passionately: "I wish to God I spoke it right through! +I wish I had never changed my speech or anything in me that was like +home." + +And the boy leaning forward as eagerly exclaimed: "Oh, do you mean that? +Think how crazy London is about you! Why, if you ever go back to +Montana, they will carry you from the cars in a triumphal chair through +the town." + +She waited until she could control the emotion in her voice. + +"Go on telling me about the little girl." + +"She was so trusting as to give the money up to me and I guess it will +draw interest for her all right." + +"Thank you," smiled the actress, "you are terribly sweet. The child got +Higgins to let her into my dressing-room one day after a matinee. I +haven't time to see anybody except then." + +Here Higgins made her appearance in the room, with an egg-nog for her +lady, which, after much coaxing, Dan succeeded in getting the actress to +drink. Higgins also had taken away the flowers, and Letty Lane said to +Dan: + +"I send them to the hospital; they make me sick." And Dan timidly asked: + +"Mine, too?" + +This brought a flush across the ivory pallor of her cheek. "No, no, +Higgins keeps them In the next room." And with an abrupt change of +subject she asked: "Is the Duchess of Breakwater very charitable?" And +Blair quickly replied: + +"Anyhow she wants you to sing for her at a musicale in Park Lane when +you're fit." + +Miss Lane gave a soft little giggle. "Is _that_ what you call being +charitable?" + +Dan blushed crimson and exclaimed: "Well, hardly!" + +"Did you come here to ask me that?" + +"I came to tell you about 'our mutual poor.' You'll let me call them +that, won't you, because I happened to be in your dressing-room when +they struck their vein?" + +Miss Lane had drawn herself up in the corner of the sofa, and sat with +her hands clasped around her knees, all swathed around and draped by the +knitted shawl, her golden head like a radiant flower, appearing from a +bank of snow. Her fragility, her sweetness, her smallness, appealed +strongly to the big young fellow, whose heart was warm toward the world, +whose ideals were high, and who had the chivalrous longing inherent in +all good men to succor, to protect, and above all to adore. No feeling +in Dan Blair had been as strong as this, to take her in his arms, to +lift her up and carry her away from London and the people who applauded +her, from the people that criticized her, and from Poniotowsky. + +He was engaged to the Duchess of Breakwater. And as far as his being +able to do anything for Letty Lane, he could only offer her this +politeness from the woman he was going to marry. + +"I never sing out of the theater." Her profile was to him and she looked +steadily across the room. "It's a perfect fight to get the manager to +consent." + +Blair interrupted and said: "Oh, I'll see him; I'll make it all right." + +"Please don't," she said briskly, "it's purely a business affair. How +much will she pay?" + +Dan was rather shocked. "Anything you like." + +And her bad humor faded at his tone, and she smiled at him. "Well, I'll +tell Roach that. I guess it'll make my singing a sure thing." + +She changed her position and drew a long sigh as though she were very +tired, leaned her blond head with its soft disorder back on the pillow, +put both her folded hands under her cheek and turned her face toward +Dan. The most delicate coral-like color began to mount her cheeks, and +her gray eyes regained their light. + +"Will two thousand dollars be too much to ask?" she said gently. + +If she had said two million to the young fellow who had not yet begun to +spend his fortune, which as far as he was concerned was nothing but a +name, it would not have been too much to him; not too much to have given +to this small white creature with her lovely flushed face, and her +glorious hair. + +"Whatever is your price, Miss Lane, goes." + +"I'll sing three songs: one from _Mandalay_, an English ballad and +something or other, I don't know what now, and I expect you don't +realize how cheaply you are getting them." She laughed, and began to hum +a familiar air. + +"I wish you would sing just one song for me." + +"For another thousand?" she asked, lifting her eyebrows. "What song is +it?" + +And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give form to words that were so +full of spell to him, she said deliciously: "Why, can you see a London +drawing-room listening to me sing a Presbyterian hymn tune?" Without +lifting her head from the pillow she began in a charming undertone, her +gray eyes fixed on his: + + "From Greenland's icy mountains, + From India's coral strands, + Where Afric's sunny fountains + Roll down their golden sands." + +Blair, near her, turned pale. There rose in him the same feeling that +she had stirred years ago in the little church, and at the same time +others. He had lost his father since then, and he thought of him now, +but that big, sad emotion was not the one that swayed him. + +"Please stop," he pleaded; "don't go on. Say, there's something in that +hymn that hurts." + +Letty Lane, unconscious of how subtly she was playing, laughed, and +suddenly remembered that Dan had sat before her that day by the side of +old Mr. Blair. She asked abruptly: + +"Why does the Duchess of Breakwater want me to sing?" + +"Because she's crazy about your voice." + +"Is she awfully rich?" + +"Um ... I don't know." + +Letty Lane flashed a look at him. "Oh," she said coolly, "I guess she +won't pay the price then." + +Dan said: "Yes, she will; yes, she will, all right." + +"Now," Letty Lane went on, "if it were a charity affair, I could sing +for nothing, and I don't doubt the duchess, if she is as benevolent as +you say she is, could get me up some kind of a charity show." + +Dan, who had started to rise, now leaned toward her and said: "Don't you +worry about it a bit. If you'll come and sing we will make it right +about the price and the charity; everything shall go your way." + +She was seized upon by a violent fit of coughing, and Dan leaned toward +her and put his arm around her as a brother might have done, holding her +tenderly until the paroxysm was past. + +"Gosh!" he exclaimed fervently, "it's heartbreaking to hear you cough +like that and to think of your working as you do. Can't you stop and +take a good rest? Can't you go somewhere?" + +"To Greenland's icy mountains?" she responded, smiling. "I hate the +cold." + +"No, no; to some golden sands or other," he murmured under his breath. +"And let me take you there." + +But she pushed him back, laughing now. "No golden sands for me. I'm +afraid I've got to sing in _Mandalay_ to-night." + +He looked at her in dismay. + +She interrupted his protest: "I've promised on my word of honor, and the +box-office has sold the seats with that understanding." + +By her sofa, leaning over her, in a choked voice he murmured: + +"You _shan't_ sing! You shan't go out to-night!" + +"Don't be a goose, boy," she said. "You've no right to order me like +that. Stand back, please." As he did so she whisked herself off the sofa +with a sudden ardor and much grace. "Now," she told him severely, "since +you've begun to take that tone with me, I'm going to tell you that you +mustn't come here day after day as you have been doing. I guess you know +it, don't you?" + +He stood his ground, but his bright face clouded. They had been so near +each other and were now so removed. + +"I don't care a damn what people say," he replied. + +She interrupted him. She could be wonderfully dignified, small as she +was, wrapped as she was in the woolen shawl. "Well," she drawled with a +sudden indolence and indifference in her voice, "I expect you'll be +surprised to hear that _I_ do care. Sounds awfully funny, doesn't it? +But as you have been coming to the theater now night after night till +everybody's talking about it--" + +"You don't want my friendship," he stammered. + +And Letty Lane controlled her desire to laugh at his boyish subterfuge. +"No, I don't think I do." + +Her tone struck him deeply: hurt him terribly. He threw his head up +defiantly. + +"All right, I'm turned down then," he said simply. "I didn't think you'd +act like this to a boy you'd known all your life!" + +"Don't be silly, you know as well as I do that it won't do." + +He did know it and that he had already done enough to make it reasonable +for the duchess, if she wanted to, to break their engagement. Slowly +preparing to take his leave, he said wistfully: "Can't I help you in any +way? Let me do something with you for your poor. It's a comfort to have +them between us, and you can count on me." + +She said she knew it. "But don't come any more to the wings; get a habit +of _not_ coming." + +On the threshold of her door he asked her to let him know when she would +sing in Park Lane, and in touching her hand he repeated that she must +count on him. With more tenderness in his blue eyes than he was himself +aware, he murmured devotedly: + +"Take care of yourself, won't you, please?" + +As Blair passed from the sitting-room into the hall and toward the lift, +Mrs. Higgins came out hurriedly from one of the rooms and joined him. + +"How did you find her, Mr. Blair?" + +"Awfully seedy, Mrs. Higgins; she needs a lot of care." + +"She won't take it though," returned the woman. "Just seems to let +herself go, not to mind a bit, especially these last weeks. I'm glad you +came in; I've been hoping you would, sir." + +"I'm not any good though, she won't listen to a word I say." + +It seemed to surprise the dressing woman. + +"I'm sorry to hear it, sir; I thought she would. She talks about you +often." + +He colored like a school-boy. "Gosh, it's a shame to have her kill +herself for nothing." Reluctant to talk longer with Mrs. Higgins, he +added in spite of himself: "She seems so lonely." + +"It's two weeks now since that human devil went away," Mrs. Higgins said +unexpectedly, looking quietly into the blue eyes of the visitor. + +"She hasn't opened one of his letters or his telegrams. She has sold +every pin and brooch he ever gave her, scattered the money far and wide. +You saw how she went on with Cohen, and her pearls." + +Dan heard her as through a dream. Her words gave form and existence to a +dreadful thing he had been trying to deny. + +"Is she hard up now, Mrs. Higgins?" he asked softly. And glancing at him +to see just how far she might go, the woman said: + +"An actress who spends and lives as Miss Lane does is always hard up." + +"Could you use money without her knowing about it?" + +"Lord," exclaimed the woman, "it wouldn't be hard, sir! She only knows +that there is such a thing as money when the bills come and she hasn't +got a penny. Or when the poor come! She's got a heart of gold, sir, for +everybody that is in need." + +He took out of his wallet a wad of notes and put them in Higgins' hands. +"Just pay up some bills on the sly, and don't you tell her on your life. +I don't want her to be worried." Explaining with sensitive +understanding: "It's all right, Mrs. Higgins; I'm from her town, you +know." And the woman who admired him and understood him, and whose life +had made her keen to read things as they were, said earnestly: + +"I quite understand how it is, sir. It is just as though it came +straight from 'ome. She overdraws her salary months ahead." + +"Have you been with Miss Lane long?" + +"Ever since she toured in Europe, and nobody could serve her without +being very fond of her indeed." + +Dan put out his big warm hand eagerly. "You're a corker, Mrs. Higgins." + +"I could walk around the world for her, sir." + +"Go ahead and do it then," he smiled, "and I'll pay for all the boot +leather you wear out!" + +As he went down-stairs, already too late to keep an engagement made with +his fiancee, he stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note of +excuse to the duchess. At the opposite table Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, +writing, as well. The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he had +finished his note he called a page boy and Dan could hear him send his +letter up to Miss Lane's suite. The young Westerner thought with +confident exaltation, "Well, he'll get left all right, and I'm darned if +I don't sit here and see him turned down!" + +Dan sat on until the page returned and gave Poniotowsky a verbal +message. + +"Will you please come up-stairs, sir?" + +And Blair saw the Hungarian rise, adjust his eye-glass, and walk toward +the lift. + + + + +CHAPTER XV--GALOREY GIVES ADVICE + + +Lord Galorey had long been used to seeing things go the way they would +and should not, and his greatest effort had been attained on the day he +gave his languid body the trouble to go in and see Ruggles. + +"My God," he muttered as he watched Dan and the duchess on the terrace +together--they were nevertheless undeniably a handsome pair--"to think +that this is the way I am returning old Blair's hospitality!" And he was +ashamed to recall his western experiences, when in a shack in the +mountains he had watched the big stars come out in the heavens and sat +late with old Dan Blair, delighted with the simple philosophies and the +man's high ideals. + +"What the devil does it all mean?" he wondered. "She has simply seduced +him, that's all." + +He got Dan finally to himself and without any preparation began, pushing +Dan back into a big leather chair, and standing up like a judge over +him: + +"Now, you really must listen to me, my dear chap. I shan't rest in my +grave unless I get a word with you. Your father sent you here to me and +I'm damned if I know what for. I've been wondering every day about it +for two months. He didn't know what this set was like or how rotten it +is." + +"What set?" The boy looked appallingly young as Gordon stared down at +him. There wasn't a line or wrinkle on his smooth brow or on his lips +and forehead finely cut and well molded--but there were the very seals of +what his father would have been glad to see. The boy had the same clear +look and unspoiled frankness that had charmed Galorey at the first. He +had been a lazy coward to delay so long. + +"Why, the rottenness of this set right here in my house." And as the +host began to see that he should have to approach a woman's name in +speaking, he stopped short, his mouth wide open, and Dan thought he had +been drinking. + +"You are talking of marrying Lily," Gordon got out. + +"I am _going_ to marry her." + +"You mustn't." + +Blair got up out of his chair. It didn't need this attack of Galorey's +to bring to his mind hints that had been dropped that Galorey was in +love with the Duchess of Breakwater. It illuminated what Galorey was +saying fast and incoherently. + +"I mean to say, my dear chap, that you mustn't marry the Duchess of +Breakwater. Look at most of these European marriages. They all go to +smash. She is older than you are and she has lived her life. You are +much too young." + +"Hold up, Galorey; you mustn't go on, you know. You know I am engaged; +that's all there is about it. Now, let's go and have a game of pool." + +Galorey had not worked himself up to this pitch to break off now at a +fatal point. + +"I'm responsible for this, and by gad, Dan, I'm going to put you on your +guard." + +"You are responsible for nothing, Galorey, and I warn you to drop it." + +"You would listen to your father if he were here, wouldn't you?" + +"I don't know," said the boy slowly. Then followed up with an honest, +"Yes, I would." + +Gordon caught eagerly, "Well, he sent you to me. Your friend Ruggles has +gone off and washed his hands of you, but I can't." + +Lord Galorey walked across the room briskly and came back to Dan. "First +of all, you are not in love with Lily--not a bit of it. You couldn't +be--and what's more she is not in love with you." + +Blair laughed coolly. "You certainly have got things down to a fine +point, Gordon. I'll be hanged if I understand your game." + +Galorey went bravely on: "Therefore, if neither of you are in love, you +understand that there is nothing between you but your money." + +The Englishman got his point out brutally, relieved that the impersonal +thing money opened a way for him. He didn't want to be the bounder and +the cad that the mention of the woman would have made him. + +The boy drew in an angry breath. "Gosh," he said, "that cursed money +will make me crazy yet! You are not very flattering to me, Gordon, I +swear, and Lily wouldn't thank you for the motives you impute to her." + +"Oh, rot!" returned Gordon more tranquilly. "She hasn't got a human +sentiment in her. She's a rock with a woman's face." + +Dan turned his back on his host and walked off into the billiard-room. +Galorey promptly followed him, took down a cue and chalked it, and said: + +"Well, come now; let's put it to the test." Blair began stacking the +balls. + +"How do you mean?" + +"Well, when you have had time to get your first news over from Ruggles, +tell her you have gone to smash and that you are a pauper." + +"I don't play tricks like that," said the Westerner quietly. + +"No," responded Galorey bitterly, "you let others play tricks on you." + +The young man threw his cue smartly down, his youth looked +contemptuously at the worldly man, and he turned pale, but he said in a +low voice: + +"Now, you've got to let up on this, Gordon; I thought at first you had +been drinking. I won't listen. Let's get on another subject, or I'll +clear out." + +Galorey, however, cool and pitiful of the tangle in the boy's affairs, +wouldn't let himself be angry. "You are my old chum's boy, Dan," he went +on, "and I'm not going to stand by and see you spoil your life in +silence. You are of age. You can go to the devil if you like, but you +can't go there under my roof, without a word from me." + +"Then I'll get out from under your roof, to-night." + +"Right! I don't blame you there, but, before you go, tell Lily you have +lost your money, and see what she is made of. My dear chap"--he changed +his tone to one of affection--"don't be an ape; listen to me, for your +father's sake; remember your whole life's happiness is in this game. +Isn't it worth looking after?" + +"Not at the risk of hurting a woman's feelings," said the boy. + +"How can it hurt her, my dear man, to tell her you are poor?" + +"It's a lie. I'm not up to lying to her; I don't care to. And you mean +to think that if I told her I was busted she would throw me over?" + +"Like a shot, my green young friend--like a shot." + +"You haven't a very good opinion of women," Blair threw out with as near +a sneer as his fine young face could express. + +"No, not very," agreed the pool player, who had continued his shots with +more or less sangfroid. When Galorey had run off his string of balls he +said, looking up from the table: "But I've got a very good opinion of +that 'nice girl' you told me of when you first came, and I wish to +Heaven she had kept you in the States." + +This caught the boy's attention as nothing else had. "There never was +any such girl," he said slowly; "there never has been anywhere; I rather +guess they don't grow. You have made me a cad in listening to you, +Gordon, but as to playing any of those comedy tricks you suggest, they +are not in my line. If she is marrying me for my money, why, she'll get +it." + +"You're a coward," said Galorey, "like the rest of American husbands--all +ideal and no common sense. You want to make a mess of your life. You +haven't the grit to get out of a bad job." + +He spurred himself on and his weak face grew strong as he felt he was +compelling the boy's attention. "If you only had half the character your +father had, you wouldn't make a mistake like this; you wouldn't run +blind into such a deal as this." + +Blair was impressed by his host. Galorey was so deadly in earnest and so +honest, and, as Dan's face grew set and hardened, his companion prayed +for wisdom. "If I can only win through this without touching Lily hard," +he thought, and as he waited, Blair said: + +"You haven't hesitated to call me names, Gordon. You're not my build or +my age, and I can't thrash you." + +And his host said cheerfully: "Oh, yes, you can; come on and try," and, +metaphorically speaking, Dan struck his first blow: + +"They say--people have said to me--that you once cared for Lily yourself." + +The Englishman's heavy eyelids did not flicker. "It's quite true." + +Taken back by this frank response, Blair stammered: "Well, I guess that +explains everything. It's not surprising that you should feel as you do. +If you are jealous, I can forgive it a little bit, but it is low down to +call a woman a fortune hunter." + +Now Gordon Galorey's face changed and grew slightly white. "Don't make +me angry, my dear chap," he said in a low tone; "I have said what I +wanted to say. Now, go to the devil if you like and as soon as you +like." + +And the boy said hotly, stammering in his excitement: + +"Not yet--not yet--not before I tell you what I think." + +Gordon, with wonderful control of his own anger, met the boy's eyes, and +said with great patience: + +"No, don't, Dan; don't go on. There are many things in this affair that +we can't touch upon. Let it drop. The right woman would make a ripping +man of you, but you oughtn't to marry for ten years." + +Dan took the hand which Galorey put out to him, and the Englishman said +warmly: "My dear chap, I hope it will all come out right, from my +heart." + +Dan, who had regained his balance, said to his friend: + +"I've been very angry at what you said, but you're the chap my father +sent me to. There must be something back of this, and I'm going to find +out what it is, and I'm going to take my own way to find out. I wouldn't +give a rap for anything that came to me through a trick or a lie, and I +wouldn't know how to go to her with a cock-and-bull story. I shall act +as I feel and go ahead being just as I am, and perhaps she won't want me +after all, even if I have got the rocks!" + +And Galorey said heartily: "I wish there was a chance of it." + +When, later, Gordon thought of Dan it was with a glow. "What a chip of +the old block he is," he said; "what a good bit of character, even at +twenty-two years." He was divided between feeling that he had made a +mess of things between Dan and himself, and feeling sure that some of +his advice had gone home. After a moment's silence, Dan Blair's son +said: "I'm going up to London to-morrow." + +"For long?" + +"Don't know." + +Then returning with boyish simplicity to their subject, which Galorey +thought had been dropped, Dan said: + +"There may be something true in what you say, Gordon. Perhaps she does +want my money. I'm not a titled man and I'll never be known for anything +except my income. At any rate I was rich when I asked her to marry me, +and I'm going to fix up that old place of hers, and I'm glad I've got +the coin to do it." + +When, later, for they had been interrupted in their conversation by the +entrance of the lady herself, Gordon, as Ruggles had done, mentally +thought of the flowing tide of life, and how it flowed over what he +himself had called "rotten ground." Perhaps old Blair was right, he +mused, after all. What does it matter if the source is pure at the head +water? It's awfully hard to force it at the start, at least. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI--THE MUSICALE PROGRAM + + +The duchess ran Dan, made plans, set the pace, and they were very much +in evidence during the season. The young American, good-natured and +generous, the duchess beautiful and knowing, were the observed of +London, and those of her friends who would have tolerated Dan on account +of his money, ended by sincerely liking him. The wedding-day had not +been fixed as yet, and Dan was not so violently carried away that he +could not wait to be married. Meanwhile Gordon Galorey thanked God for +the delay and hoped for a miracle to break the spell over his friend's +son before it should be too late. In early May the question came up +regarding the musicale. The duchess made her list and arranged the +Sunday afternoon and her performers to suit her taste, and the week +before lounged in her boudoir when Dan and Galorey appeared for a late +morning call. + +"There, Dan," she said, holding out a bit of paper, "look at the list +and the program, will you?" + +"Sounds and reads all right," commented Dan, handing it on to Galorey. + +Besides being an artistic event, she intended that the concert should +serve to present Dan to her special set. She now lit a cigarette and +gave one to each of her friends, lighting the Englishman's herself. + +"The best names in London," Lord Galorey said. "You see, Dan, we shall +trot you out in a royal way. I hope you fully appreciate how swagger +this is to be." + +Glancing at the list Blair remarked: + +"But I don't see Miss Lane's name?" + +"Why should you?" the duchess answered sharply. + +"Why, we planned all along that she was to sing," he returned. + +She gave a long puff to her cigarette. + +"We did _rather_ speak of it. But we shall do very well as we are. The +program is full up and it's perfectly ripping as it stands." + +"Yes, there's only just one thing the matter with it," the boy smiled +good-naturedly, "and it's easy enough to run her in. I guess Miss Lane +could be run in most anywhere on any program and not clear the house." + +Lord Galorey, who knew nothing about the subject under discussion, said +tactfully: "Why, of course, Letty Lane is perfectly charming, but you +couldn't get her, my dear chap." + +"I think we will let the thing stand as it is," said the duchess, going +back to her desk and stirring her paper about. "It's really too late +now, you know, Dan." + +Unruffled, but with a determination which Lord Galorey and the lady were +far from guessing, Blair resumed tranquilly: + +"Oh, I guess she'll come in all right, late as it is. We'll send word to +her and fix it up." + +The duchess turned to him, annoyed: "Oh, don't be a beastly bore, +dear--you are not really serious." + +Dan still smiled at her sweetly. "You bet your life I am, though, Lily." + +She rang a bell at the side of her desk, and when the footman came in +gave him the sheet of paper. "See that this is taken at once to the +stationer's." + +"Better wait, Lily"--her fiance extended his hand--"until the program is +filled out the way it is going to stand." And Blair fixed his handsome +eyes on his future wife. "Why, we got this shindig up," he noted +irreverently, "just so Miss Lane could sing at it." + +"Nonsense," she cried, angry and powerless, "you ridiculous creature! +Fancy me getting up a musicale for Letty Lane! Do tell Dan to stop +bothering and fussing, Gordon. He's too ridiculous!" + +And Lord Galorey said: "What is the row anyway?" + +"Why, I want Miss Lane to sing here on Sunday," Dan explained.... + +"And I don't want her," finished the Duchess of Breakwater, who was +evidently unwilling to force a scene before Lord Galorey. She handed the +list to her servant, but Dan intercepted it. + +"Don't send out that list, Lily, as it is." + +He gave it back to her, and his tone was so cool, his expression so +decided and quiet, that she was disarmed, and dismissed the servant, +telling him to return when she should ring again. Coloring with anger, +she tapped the envelope against her brilliantly polished nails. + +If she had been married to Blair she would have burst into a violent +rage; if he had been poorer than he was she would have put him in his +place. Lord Galorey understood the contraction of her brows and lips as +Dan reminded: "You promised me that you would have her, you know, Lily." + +"Give in, Lily," Galorey advised, rising from the chair where he was +lounging. "Give in gracefully." + +And she turned on Galorey the anger which she dared not show the other +man. But Dan interrupted her, explaining simply: + +"I knew the girl when she was a kid: she is from my old home, and I want +Lily to ask her here to sing for us, and then to see if we can't do +something to get her out of the state she is in." + +Galorey repeated vaguely, "State?" + +"Why, she's all run down, tired out; she's got no real friends in +London." + +The other man flicked the ash from his cigarette and looked at Blair's +boy through his monocle. + +"And you thought that Lily might befriend her, old chap?" + +"Yes," nodded Dan, "just give her a lift, you know." + +Galorey nodded back, smiling gently. "I see, I see--a moral, spiritual +lift? I see--I see." He glanced at the woman with his strange smile. + +She put her cigarette down and seated herself, clasping her hands around +her knees and looked at her fiance. + +"It's none of my business what Letty Lane's reputation is. I don't care, +but you must understand one thing, Dan, I'm not a reformer, or a +charitable institution, and if she comes here it is purely +professional." + +He took the subject as settled, and asked for a copy of the program and +put it in his pocket. "I'll get the names of her songs from her and take +the thing myself to Harrison's. And I'd better hustle, I guess; there's +no time to lose between now and Sunday." And he went out triumphant. + +Galorey remained, smoking, and the duchess continued her notes in +silence, cooling down at her desk. Her companion knew her too well to +speak to her until she had herself in hand, and when finally she took up +her pen and turned about, she appeared conscious for the first of his +presence. + +"Here still!" she exclaimed. + +"I thought I might do for a safety valve, Lily. You could let some of +your anger out on me." + +The duchess left her desk and came over to him. + +"I expect you despise me thoroughly, don't you, Gordon?" + +They had not been alone together since her engagement to Blair, for she +had taken pains to avoid every opportunity for a tete-a-tete. + +"Despise you?" he repeated gently. "It's awfully hard, isn't it, for a +chap like me to despise anybody? We're none of us used to the best +quality of behavior, you know, my dear girl." + +"Don't talk rot, Gordon," she murmured. + +"You didn't ask my advice," he continued, "but I don't hesitate to tell +you that I have done everything I could to save the boy." + +She accepted this philosophically. "Oh, I knew you would; I quite +expected it, but--" and in the look she threw at him there was more +liking than resentment--"I knew you, too; you _couldn't_ go very far, my +dear fellow." + +"I think Dan Blair is excellent stuff," Gordon said. + +"He is the greenest, youngest, most ridiculous infant," she exclaimed +with irritation, and he laughed. + +"His money is old enough to walk, however, isn't it, Lily?" She made an +angry gesture. + +"I expected you'd say something loathsome." + +Her companion met her eyes directly. She left her chair and came and sat +down beside him on the small sofa. As he did not move, or look at her, +but regarded his cigarette with interest, she leaned close to him and +whispered: "Gordon, try to be nice and decent. Try to forget yourself. +Don't you see what a wonderful chance it is for me, and that, as far as +you and I are concerned, it can't go on?" + +The face of the man by her side grew somber. The charm this woman had +for him had never lessened since the day when he told her he loved her, +long before his marriage, and they were both too poor. + +"We have always been too poor, and Edith is jealous of me every day and +hour of her life. Can't you be generous?" + +He rose and stood over her, looking down at her beautiful form and her +somewhat softened face, but his eyes were hard and his face very pale. + +"You had better go, Gordon," she said slowly; "you had better go...." + +Then, as he obeyed her and went like a flash as far as the door, she +followed him and whispered softly: "If you're really only jealous, I can +forgive you." + +He managed to get out: "His father was my friend; he sent the boy to me +and I've been a bad guardian." He made a gesture of despair. "Put +yourself in my place. Let Dan Blair go, Lily; let him go." + +Her eyelids flickered a little, and she said sharply: "You're out of +your senses, Gordon--and what if I love him?" + +With a low exclamation he caught her hand at the wrist so hard that she +cried out, and he said between his teeth: "You _don't_ love him! Take +those words back!" + +"Of course I do. Let me free!" + +"No," he said passionately, holding her fast. "Not until you take that +back." + +His face, his tone, his force, dominated her; the remembrance of their +past, a possible future, made her waver under his eyes, and the woman +smiled at him as Blair had never seen her smile. + +"Very well, then, goose," she capitulated almost tenderly; "I don't love +that boy, of course. I'm marrying him for his money. Now, will you let +me go?" + +But he held her still more firmly and kissed her several times before he +finally set her free, and went out of the house miserable--bound to her +by the strongest chains--bound in his conscience and by honor to his +trust to Dan's father, and yet handicapped by another sense of honor +which decrees that man must keep silence to the end. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII--LETTY LANE SINGS + + +The house of the Duchess of Breakwater in Park Lane was white, with +green blinds and green balconies; beautiful, distinguished and old, +mellow with traditions, and the tide of fashion poured its stream into +the music-room to listen to the Sunday concert. Without, the day was +bland and beautiful, mild spring in the deep sweet air, and already the +bloom lay over the park and along the turf. Piccadilly was ablaze with +flowers, and in the windows and in the flower-women's baskets they were +so sweet as to make the heart ache and to make the senses thrill. Keen +to the spring beauty, the last guest to go into the drawing-room of the +Duchess of Breakwater was the young American man in whom the magic of +the season had stirred the blood. He seemed the youngest and the +brightest guest to cross the sill of the great house whose debts he was +going to pay, and whose future he was going to secure with American +money. + +Close after him a motor car rolled up to the curb, and under the awning +Letty Lane passed quickly, as though thistledown, blown into the +distinguished house. The actress was taken possession of by several +people and shown up-stairs. + +Dan spoke to his hostess, who wore, over her azure dress, a necklace +given her by Dan. She said he was "too late for words," and why hadn't +he come before. After greeting him she set him free, and he went eagerly +to find his place next an elderly woman whom he liked immensely, Lady +Caiwarn. She had given him twenty pounds for some of his poor. Lady +Caiwarn had a calm, kind face, and Dan sat down beside her, well out of +the crush, and they talked amiably throughout the violin solo. + +"Think of it," she said, "Letty Lane of the Gaiety is going to sing. I'd +sit through a great deal for that. Let that man with the fiddle do his +worst." + +Blair laughed appreciatively. He thought Lady Caiwarn would be a good +friend for Miss Lane, better than the duchess herself. "I wish Lily +could hear you talk about her violinist," he said, delighted; "she +thinks he's the whole show." And tentatively, his ingenuous eyes fixed +on his friend, he asked: "I wonder how you would like to meet Miss Lane. +She's perfectly ripping, and she's from my State." + +"_Meet her!_" Lady Caiwarn exclaimed, but before she could finish, +through the room ran the little anticipatory rustle that comes before +the great, and which, when they have gone, breaks into applause. The +great actress had appeared to give her number. Dan and Lady Caiwarn, +behind the palms in a little corner of their own, watched her. + +A clever understanding of the world into which she was to come this day, +had made the girl dress like a charm. She stood quietly by the piano, +her hands folded. Among the high ladies of the English world in their +splendid frocks, their jewels and feathers, she was a simple figure, her +dress snow white, high to her throat, unadorned by any gay color, +according to the fashion of the time. It was such a dress as Romney +might have painted, and under her arms and from across her breast there +fell a soft coral-colored silken scarf. The costume was daring in its +simplicity. She might have been Emma, Lady Hamilton, because perfectly +beautiful, perfectly talented, she could risk severe simplicity, having +in herself the fire and the art and the seduction. Her hair was a golden +crown and her eyes like stars. She was excited, and the scarlet had run +along her cheeks like wine spilled over ivory. + +She looked around the room, failed to see Blair, but saw the Duchess of +Breakwater in her velvet and her jewels. Letty Lane began to sing. Dan +and she had chosen _Mandalay_ and she began with it. Her dress only was +simple. All the complexity of her talent, whatever she knew of seduction +and charm, she put in the rendering of her song. Even the conventional +audience, most of which knew her well, were enchanted over again, and +they went wild about her. She had never been so charming. The men +clapped her until she began in self-defense another favorite of the +moment, and ended in a perfect huzzah of applause. + +She refused to sing again until, in the distance, she saw Dan standing +by the column near his seat. Then indicating to the pianist what she +wanted, she sang _The Earl of Moray_, such a rendering of the old ballad +as had not been heard in London, and coming, as it did, from the lips of +a popular singer whose character and whose verve were not supposed to be +sympathetic to a piece of music of this kind, the effect was startling. +Letty Lane's face grew pale with the touching old tragedy, the scarlet +faded from her cheeks, her eyes grew dark and moist, she might indeed +herself have been the lady looking from the castle wall while they +carried the body of her dead lover under those beautiful eyes. + +Dan felt his heart grow cold. If she had awakened him when he was a +little boy, she thrilled him now; he could have wept. Lady Caiwarn did +wipe tears away. When the last note of the accompaniment had ended, +Dan's friend at his side said: "How utterly ravishing! What a beautiful, +lovely creature; how charming and how frail!" + +He scarcely answered. He was making his way to Letty Lane, and he wrung +her hand, murmuring, "Oh, you're great; you're great!" And the pleasure +on his face repaid her over and over again. "Come, I want you to meet +the Duchess of Breakwater, and some other friends of mine." + +As he let her little cold hand fall and turned about, the room as by +magic had cleared. The prime minister had arrived late and was in the +other room. The refreshments were also being served. There was no one to +meet Letty Lane, except for several young men who came up eagerly and +asked to be presented, Gordon Galorey among them. + +"Where's Lily?" Dan asked him; "I want her to meet Miss Lane." + +"In the conservatory with the prime minister," and Galorey looked +meaningly at Dan, as much as to say, "Now don't be an utter fool." + +But Letty Lane herself saved the situation. She shook hands with the +utmost cordiality and sweetness with the men who had been presented to +her, and asked Dan to take her to her motor. He waited for her at the +door and she came down wrapped around as usual in her filmy scarf. + +"Are you better?" he asked eagerly. "You look awfully stunning, and I +don't think I can ever thank you enough." + +She assured him that she was "all right," and that she had a "lovely new +role to learn and that it was coming on next month." He helped her in +and she seemed to fill the motor like a basket of fresh white flowers. +Again he repeated, as he held the door open: + +"I can't thank you enough: you were a great success." + +She smiled wickedly, and couldn't resist: + +"Especially with the women." + +Dan's face flushed; he was already deeply hurt for her, and her words +showed him that the insult had gone home. + +"Where are you going now?" + +"Right to the Savoy." + +Without another word, hatless as he was, he got into the motor and +closed the door. + +"I'm going to take you home," he informed her quietly, "and there's no +use in looking at me like that either! When I'm set on a thing I get +it!" + +They rolled away in the bland sunset, passed the park, down Piccadilly, +where the flowers in the streets were so sweet that they made the heart +ache, and the air through the window was so sweet that it made the +senses swim! + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII--A WOMAN'S WAY + + +When the duchess thought of looking for Blair later in the afternoon he +was not to be found. Galorey told her finally he had gone off in the +motor with Letty Lane, bareheaded. The duchess was bidding good-by to +the last guest; she motioned Galorey to wait and he did so, and they +found themselves alone in the room where the flowers, still fresh, +offered their silent company; the druggets strewn with leaves of smilax, +the open piano with its scattered music, the dark rosewood that had +served for a rest for Letty Lane's white hand. Galorey and the duchess +turned their backs on the music-room, and went into a small conservatory +looking out over the park. + +"He's nothing but a cowboy," the lady exclaimed. "He must be quite mad, +going off bareheaded through London with an actress." + +"He's spoiled," Lord Galorey said peacefully. + +She carried a bunch of orchids Dan had given her, and regarded them +absently. "I've made him angry, and he's taking this way of exhibiting +his spleen." + +Galorey said cheerfully: "Oh, Dan's got lots of spirit." + +Looking up from the contemplation of her flowers to her friend, the +duchess murmured with a charming smile: "I don't hit it off very well +with Americans, Gordon." + +His color rising, Galorey returned: "I think you'll have to let Dan go, +Lily!" + +For a second she thought so herself; and they both started when the +voice of the young man himself was heard in the next room. + +"Good-by, I'll let you make your peace, Lily," and Gordon passed Dan in +the drawing-room in leaving, and thought the boy's face was a study. + +The duchess held out her hand to Dan as he came across the room. + +"Come here," she called agreeably. "Every one has gone, thank heaven! +I've been waiting for you for an age. Let's talk it all over." + +"Just what I've come back to do." + +There had been royalty at the musicale, and the hostess spoke of her +guests and their approval, mentioning one by one the names of the great. +It might have impressed the ear of a man more snob than was the Montana +copper king's son. "I did so want you to meet the Bishop of London," she +said. "But nobody could find you. You look most awfully well, Dan," and +with the orchids she held, she touched his hand. + +He was so direct, so incapable of anything but the honest truth, that +Dan didn't know deceit when he saw it, and his lady spoke so naturally +that he thought for a moment her rudeness had been unintentional. +Perhaps she hadn't really meant--Everybody in her set was rude, great and +rude, but she could be deliciously gracious, and was so now. + +"Don't you think it went off well?" + +Dan said that it had been ripping and no mistake. + +"I like Lady Caiwarn; she's bully, and I liked the king. He spoke to me +as if he had known me for a year." + +She began to be a little more at her ease. + +"I didn't care much for the fiddling, but Letty Lane made up for all the +rest," said Dan. "Wasn't she great?" + +"Ra-ther!" The duchess' tone was so warm that he asked frankly: "Well, +why didn't you speak to her, Lily?" And the directness caught her +unprepared. The insult to the actress by which she had planned to teach +him a lesson failed to give her the bravado she found she needed to meet +Dan's question. Her part of the transaction, deliberate, unkind, seemed +worse and more serious through his headlong act, when he had driven off, +braving her, in the motor of an actress. She didn't dare to be jealous. + +"Wasn't it too dreadful?" she murmured. "Do you think she noticed it too +awfully? I was just about to go up and speak to her when the prime +minister--" + +Dan interrupted the duchess. He blushed for her. + +"Never mind, Lily." His tone had in it something of benevolence. "If you +really didn't mean to be mean--" + +She was enchanted by her easy victory. "It was abominable." + +"Yes," he accepted, "it was just that! I was mortified. You wouldn't +treat a beggar so. But she's got too much sense to care." + +Eager to do the duchess justice, even though he was little by little +being emancipated, he was all the more determined to be fair to her. + +"It was too sweet of her not to mind. I dare say her check helped to +soothe her feelings," the woman said. + +"You don't know her," he replied quietly. "She wouldn't touch a cent." + +The duchess exclaimed in horror: "Then she _did_ mind." + +And he returned slowly: "She's eaten and drunk with kings, and if the +king hadn't gone so early you can bet he would have set the fashion +differently. Let's drop the question. She sent you back your check, and +I guess you're quits." + +With a sharp note in her voice she said: "I hope it won't be in the +papers that you drove bareheaded back to the hotel with her. Don't +forget that we are dining with the Galoreys, and it's past seven." + +After Dan had left her, the duchess glanced over the dismantled room +which the servants were already restoring to order. She was not at case +and not at peace, but there was something else besides her tiff with Dan +that absorbed her, and that was Galorey. She couldn't quite shake him +off. He was beginning to be imperious in his demands on her; and, in +spite of her cupidity and her debts, in spite of the precarious position +in which she found herself with Dan, she could not break with Galorey +yet. She went up-stairs humming under her breath the ballad Letty Lane +had sung in the music-room: + + "And long will his lady look from the castle wall." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX--DAN AWAKES + + +The next night Dan, magnetically drawn down the Strand to the Gaiety, +arrived just before the close of the last act, slipped in, and sat far +back watching Letty Lane close her part. After hearing her sing as she +had the afternoon before in the worldly group, it was curious to see her +before the public in her flashing dress and to realize how much she was +a thing of the people. To-night she was a completely personal element to +Dan. He could never think of her again as he had hitherto. The sharp +drive through the town that afternoon in her motor had made a change in +his feelings. He had been hurt for her, with anger at the Duchess of +Breakwater's rudeness, and from the first he had always known that there +was in him a hot championship for the actress. To-night, whenever the +man who sang with her, put his arms around her, danced with her, held +her, it was an offense to Dan Blair; it had angered him before, but +to-night it did more. One by one everything faded out of his foreground +but the brilliant little figure with her golden hair, her lovely face, +her beautiful graceful body, and in her last gesture on the stage before +the curtain went down, she seemed to Blair to call him and distinctly to +make an appeal to him: + + "You might rest your weary feet + If you came to Mandalay." + +Well, there was nothing weary about the young, live, vigorous American, +as, standing there in his dark edge of the theater, his hands in his +pockets, his bright face fixed toward the stage, he watched the slow +falling of the curtain on the musical drama. Dan realized how full of +vigor he was; he felt strong and capable, indeed a feeling of power +often came to him delightfully, but it had never been needful for him to +exert his forces, he had never had need to show his mettle. Now he felt +at those words: + + "You might rest your weary feet" + +how, with all his heart, he longed that the dancer should rest those +lovely tired little feet of hers, far away from any call of the public, +far away on some lovely shore which the hymn tune called the coral +strand. As he gazed at her mobile, sensitive face, whose eyes had seen +the world, and whose lips--Dan's thoughts changed here with a great pang, +and the close of all his meditations was: "Gosh, she ought to rest!" + +The boy walked briskly back of the scenes toward the little door, behind +which, as he tapped, he hoped with all his heart to hear her voice bid +him come in. But there were other voices in the room. He rattled the +door-knob and Letty Lane herself called to him without opening the door: + +"Will you go, please, Mr. Blair? I can't see any one to-night." + +He had nothing to do but to go--to grind his heel as he turned--to swear +deeply against Poniotowsky. His late ecstasy was turned to gall. The +theater seemed horrible to him: the chattering of the chorus girls, +their giggles, their laughter as he passed the little groups, all seemed +weird and infernal, and everything became an object of irritation. + +As he went blindly out of the theater he struck his arm against a piece +of stage fittings and the blow was sharp and stinging, but he was glad +of the hurt. + +Without, in the street, Dan took his place with the other men and +waited, a bitter taste in his mouth and anger in his breast, waited +until Letty Lane fluttered down, followed by Poniotowsky, and the two +drove away. + +The young man could have gone after, running behind the motor, but there +was a taxicab at hand; he jumped in it, ordering the man to follow the +car to the Savoy. There the boy had the pleasure of seeing Miss Lane +enter the hotel, Poniotowsky with her--had the anguish of seeing them +both go up in the lift to her apartments. + +When Dan came to himself he heard the chimes of St. Martin's ring out +eleven. He then remembered for the first time that he had promised to +dine alone at home with the Duchess of Breakwater. + +"Gosh, Lily will be wild!" + +In spite of the lateness of the hour he hurried to Park Lane. The +familiar face of the manservant who let him in blurred before the young +man's eyes. Her grace was out at the theater? Blair would wait then, and +he went into the small drawing-room, quiet, empty, reposeful, with a +fire across the andirons, for the evening was damp and cool. Still dazed +by his jealous, passionate emotions, he glanced about the room, chose a +long leather sofa, and stretching out his length, fell asleep. There in +the shadow he slept profoundly, waking suddenly to find that he was not +alone. Across the room the Duchess of Breakwater stood by the table; she +was in evening dress, her cloak and gloves on the chair at her side. She +laughed softly and the man to whom she laughed, on whom she smiled, was +Lord Galorey. + +Blair raised himself up on the sofa without making any noise, and he saw +Galorey take the woman in his arms. The sight didn't make the fiancee +angry. He realized instantly that he _wanted to believe that it was +true_, and as there was nothing theatrical in the young Westerner, he +sprang up, slang so much a part of his nature that the first words that +came to his lips was a phrase in vogue. + +"Look who's here!" he cried, and came blithely forward, his head clear, +his lips smiling. + +The duchess gave a little scream and Dan lounged up to the two people +and held his hand frankly out to the lady. + +"That's all right, Lily! Go right on, Gordon, please. Only I had to let +you know when I waked up! Only fair. I guess I must have been asleep +quite a while." + +The Duchess of Breakwater shrugged. "I don't know what you dreamed," she +said acidly, "if you were asleep." + +"Well, it was a very pretty dream," the boy returned, "and showed what a +stupid ass I've been to think I couldn't have dreamed it when I was +awake." + +"I think you are crazy," the duchess exclaimed. + +But Blair repeated: "That's all right. I mean to say as far as I am +concerned--" + +And Galorey, in order to stand by his lady, murmured: + +"My dear chap, you _have_ been dreaming." + +But Blair met the Englishman's gray eyes with his blue ones. "I did have +a bottle of champagne, Gordon, that's a fact, but it couldn't make me +see what I did see." + +"Dan," the Duchess of Breakwater broke in, "let Gordon take you home, +like a dear. You're really ragging on in a ridiculous way." + +Blair looked at her steadily, and as he did so he repeated: + +"That's all right, Lily. Gordon cares a lot, and the truth of the matter +is that I _do not_." + +She grew very pale. + +"I would have stuck to my word, of course," he went on, "but we'd have +been infernally unhappy and ended up in the divorce courts. Now, this +little scene here of yours lets me out, and I don't lay it up against +either of you." + +"Gordon!" she appealed to her lover, "why, in Heaven's name, don't you +speak!" + +The Englishman realized that while he was glad at heart, he regretted +that he had been the means of her losing the chance of her life. + +"What do you want me to say, Lily?" he exclaimed with a desperate +gesture. "I can't tell him I don't love you. I have loved you, God help +me, for ten years." + +She could have killed him for it. + +"I can tell you, Dan, if you want me to," Galorey went on, "that I don't +believe she cares a penny for any one on the face of the earth, for you +or me." + +Old Dan Blair's son showed his business training. His one idea was to +"get out," and as he didn't care who the Duchess of Breakwater loved or +didn't love, he wanted to break away as fast as he could. He sat down at +the table under the light of the lamp and drew out his wallet with its +compact, thick little check book, the millionaire's pass to most of the +things that he wants. + +"You've taught me a lot," he said to the Duchess of Breakwater, "and my +father sent me over here for that. I have been awfully fond of you, too. +I thought I was fonder than I am, I guess. At any rate I want to stand +by one of my promises. That old place of yours--Stainer Court--now that's +got to be fixed up." + +He made a few computations on paper, lifted the pad to her with the +figures on it, round, generous and full. + +"At home," he said, "in Blairtown, we have what we call 'engagement' +parties, when each fellow brings a present to the girl, but this is what +we might call a 'broken engagement party.' Now, I can't," the boy went +on, "give this money to you very well; it won't look right. We will have +to fix that up some way or other. You will have to say you got an +unexpected inheritance from some uncle in Australia." He smiled at +Galorey: "We will fix it up together." + +His candor, his simplicity, were so charming, he stood before the two so +young, so clear, so clean, that a sudden tenderness for him, and a sense +of what she had lost, what she never had had, made her exclaim: + +"Dan, I really don't care a pin for the money--I don't"--but the hand she +held out was seized by the other man and held fast. Galorey said: + +"Very well, let it go at that. You don't care for the money, but you +will take it just the same. Now, don't, for God's sake, tell him that +you care for him." + +He made her meet his eyes this time: stronger than she, Galorey forced +her to be sincere. She set Dan free and he turned and left them standing +there facing each other. He softly crossed the room, and looking back, +he saw them, tall, distinguished, both of them under the +lamplight--enemies, and yet the closest friends bound by the strongest +tie in the world. + +As Dan went out through the curtains of the room and they fell behind +him, the Duchess of Breakwater sank down in the chair by the side of the +table; she buried her face. Gordon Galorey bent over her and again took +her in his arms, and she suffered it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX--A HAND CLASP + + +It was one o'clock. Blair called a hansom and told the driver to take +him to the Carlton, and leaning back in the vehicle he breathed a long +sigh. He looked like his father, but he didn't know it. He felt old. He +was a man and a tired one and a free one, and the sense of this liberty +began to refresh him like a breeze over parched sand. He thought over +what he had left for a second, stopped longest in pitying Galorey, then +went into the Carlton restaurant to order some supper, for he began to +feel the need of food. He had not time to drink his wine and partake of +the cold pheasant before he saw that opposite him the two people who had +taken their table were Letty Lane and Poniotowsky. The woman's slender +back was turned to Blair, and his heart gave a leap of pain at the sight +of the man with her, and the cruel suffering began again. + +Dan gave up the idea of eating: drank a whole bottle of champagne, then +pushed it away from him violently. "Hold up," he told himself, "you're +getting dangerous; this drinking won't do." So he sat drumming on the +table looking into the air. When those two got up to go, however, he +would go with them; that was sure. He could never see them go out +together again; no--no--no! As his brain grew a bit clearer he saw that +they were having a heated discussion between them, and as the room +emptied finally, save for themselves, Dan, though he could not hear what +Poniotowsky said, understood that he was urging something which the girl +did not wish to grant. When they left he rose as well, and at the door +of the restaurant the actress and her companion paused, and Dan saw her +face, deadly pale. There were tears in her eyes. + +"For God's sake!" he heard her murmur, and she impatiently drew her +cloak around her shoulders. Poniotowsky put out his hand to help her, +but she drew back from him, exclaiming violently: "Oh, no--no!" Before he +was aware what he was doing, Dan was holding his hand out to Miss Lane. + +How she turned to him! God of dreams! How she took in one cold hand his +hand; just the grasp a man needs to lead him to offer the service of his +life. Her hand was icy--it thrilled him to his marrow. + +"Oh--you--" she breathed. "Hello!" + +No words could have been more commonplace, less in the category of +dramatic or poetic welcome, but they were music to the boy, and when the +actress looked at him with a ghost of a smile on her trembling lips, Dan +was sure there was some kind of blessing in the greeting. + +"I am going to see you home," he said with determination, and she caught +at it: + +"Yes, yes, do! Will you?" + +The third member of the party had not spoken. A servant fetched him a +light to which he bent, touching his cigar. Then he lifted his head--a +handsome one--with its cold and indifferent eyes, to Letty Lane. + +"Good night, Miss Lane." A deep color crept under his dark skin. + +"Come," said the actress eagerly, "come along; my motor is out there and +I am crazy tired. That is all there is about it. Come along." + +Snatched from a marriage contract, still bitter from his jealous anger, +this--to be alone with her--by the side of this white, fragrant, wonderful +creature--to have been turned to by her, to be alone with her, the +Duchess of Breakwater out of his horizon, Poniotowsky gone--Oh, it was +sweet to him! They had rolled out from the Carlton down toward the +Square and he put his arm around her waist, his voice shook: + +"You are dead tired! And when I saw that brute with you to-night I could +have shot him." + +"Take your arm away, please." + +"Why?" + +"Take it away. I don't like it. Let my hand go. What's the matter with +you? I thought I could trust you." + +He said humbly: "You can--certainly you can." + +"I am tired--tired--tired!" + +Under his breath he said: "Put your head on my shoulder, Letty, +darling." + +And she turned on him nearly as violently as she had on Poniotowsky, and +burst into tears, crouching almost in the corner of the motor, away from +him, both her hands upon her breast. + +"Oh, can't you see how you bother me? Can't you see I want to rest and +be all alone? You are like them all--like them all. Can't I rest +anywhere?" + +The very words she used were those he had thought of when he saw her +dance at the theater, and his heart broke within him. + +"You can," he stammered, "rest right here. God knows I want you to rest +more than anything. I won't touch you or breathe again or do anything +you don't want me to." + +She covered her face with her hands and sat so without speaking to him. +The light in her motor shone over her like a kindly star, as, wrapped in +her filmy things she lay, a white rose blown into a sheltered nook. +After a little she wiped her eyes and said more naturally: + +"You look perfectly dreadfully, boy! What have you been doing with +yourself?" + +They had reached the Savoy. It seemed to Dan they were always just +driving up to where some one opened a door, out of which she was to fly +away from him. He got out before her and helped her from the car. + +"Well, I've got a piece of news to tell you. I have broken my engagement +with the duchess." + +This brought her back far enough into life to make her exclaim: "Oh, I +_am_ glad! That's perfectly fine! I don't know when I've heard anything +that pleased me so much. Come and see me to-morrow and tell me all about +it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI--RUGGLES RETURNS + + +Dan did not fall asleep until morning, and then he dreamed of Blairtown +and the church and a summer evening and something like the drone of the +flies on the window-pane soothed him, and came into his waking thoughts, +for at noon he was violently shaken by the shoulder and a man's voice +called him as he opened his eyes and looked into Ruggles' face. + +"Gee Whittaker!" Ruggles exclaimed. "You _are_ one of the seven +sleepers! I've been here something like seventeen minutes, whistling and +making all kinds of barnyard noises." + +As Dan welcomed him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Ruggles told him +that he had come over "the pond" just for the wedding. + +"There isn't going to be any wedding, Josh! Got out of all that last +night." + +Ruggles had the breakfast card in his hand, which the waiter had brought +in, and Dan, taking it from his friend, ordered a big breakfast. + +"I'm as hungry as the dickens, Rug, and I guess you are, too." + +"What was the matter with the duchess?" Ruggles asked. "Were you too +young for her, or not rich enough?" + +Significantly the boy answered: "One too many, Josh," and Ruggles winced +at the response. + +"Here are the fellows with my trunks and things," he announced as the +porters came in with his luggage. "Just drop them there, boys; they're +going to fix some kind of a room later." + +Blair's long silk-lined coat lay on a chair where he had flung it, his +hat beside it, and Ruggles went over to the corner and lifted up a +fragrant glove. It was one of Letty Lane's gloves which Dan had found in +the motor and taken possession of. The young man had gone to his +dressing-room and begun running his bath, and Ruggles, laying the glove +on the table, said to himself: + +"I knew he would get rid of the duchess, all right." + +But when Dan came back into the room later in his dressing-gown for +breakfast, Ruggles said: + +"You'll have to send her back her glove, Dannie." + +At the sight of it beside the breakfast tray, Dan blushed scarlet. He +picked up the fragrant object. + +"That's all right; I'll take care of it." + +"Is _Mandalay_ running the same as ever?" Ruggles asked over his bacon +and eggs. + +"Same as ever." + +Ruggles saw he had not returned in vain, and that he was destined to +take up his part of the business just as he had laid it out for himself +to Lord Galorey. "It's up to me now: I'll have to take care of the +actress, and I'm darned if I haven't got a job. If Dan colors up like +that at the sight of her glove, I wonder what he does when he holds her +hand!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXII--WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? + + +When Dan, on the minute of two, went to the Savoy, Higgins, as was her +custom, did not meet him. Miss Lane met him herself. She was reading a +letter by the table, and when Dan was announced she put it back in its +envelope. Blair had seen her only in soft clinging evening dresses, in +white visionary clothes, or in her dazzling part costume, where the play +dress of the dancer displayed her beauty and her charms. To-day she wore +a tailor-made gown, and in her dark cloth dress, in her small hat, she +seemed a new woman--some one he hadn't known and did not know, and he +experienced the thrill a man always feels when the woman he loves +appears in an unaccustomed dress and suggests a new mystery. + +"Oh, I say! You're not going out, are you?" + +In the lapel of her close little coat was a flower he had given her. He +wanted to lean forward and kiss it as it rested there. She assured him: + +"I have just come in; had an early lunch and took a long walk--think of +it! I haven't taken a walk alone since I can remember!" + +Her walk had given her only the ghost of a flush, which rose over her +delicate skin, fading away like a furling flag. Her frailness, her +slenderness, the air of good-breeding her dress gave her, added to Dan's +deepening emotions. She seemed infinitely dear, and a thing to be +protected and fostered. + +"Can't you sit down for a minute? I've come to make you a real call." + +"Of course," she laughed. "But, first, I must answer this letter." + +His jealousy rose and he caught hold of her hand that held the envelope. +"Look here, you are not to write it if it is to that damned scoundrel. I +took you away from him last night and you are never to see him again." + +For the first time the two really looked at each other. Her lips parted +as though she would reprove him, and the boy murmured: + +"That's all right. I mean what I say--never to see him again! Will you +promise me? Promise me--I can't bear it! I won't have it!" + +A film of emotion crossed his clear young eyes and her slender hands +were held fast in his clasp. His face was beautiful in its tenderness +and in a righteous anger as he bent it on her. Instead of reproving him +as she had done before, instead of snatching away her hands, she swayed, +and at the sight of her weakness his eyes cleared, and the film lifted +like a curtain. She was not fainting, but, as her face turned toward +his, he saw it transformed, and Dan caught her in her dark dress, the +flowers in her bodice, to his heart. He held her as if he had snatched +her from a wreck and in a safe embrace lifted her high to the shore of a +coral strand. He kissed her, first timidly, wonderingly, with the +sacrament of first love on his lips. Then he kissed her as his heart +bade him, and when he set her free she was crying, but the tears on his +face were not all her tears. + +"Little boy, how crazy, how perfectly crazy! Oh, Dan--Dan!" + +She clung to him, looking up at him just as his boy-dreams had told him +a girl _would_ look some day. Her face was suffused and softened, her +lips--her coral-red, fine, lovely lips were trembling, and her eyes were +as gray, as profound as those seas his imagination had longed to +explore. Made poet for the first time in his life, as his arms were +around her, he whispered: "You are all my dreams come true. If any man +comes near you I'll kill him just as sure as fate. I'll kill him!" + +"Hush, hush! I told you you were crazy. We're both perfectly mad. I have +tried my best not to come to this with you. What would your father say? +Let me go, let me go; I'll call Higgins." + +The boy laughed aloud, the laugh of happy youth. He held her so close +that she might as well have tried to loose herself from an iron image of +the Spanish Inquisition as from his young arms. This slender, delicious, +willowy thing he held was Letty Lane, the adored star London went mad +over: the triumph of it! It flashed through him as his pulses beat and +his heart was high with the conquest, but it was to the woman only that +he whispered: + +"I've said a lot of stuff and I am likely to say a lot more, but I want +you to say something to me. _Don't you love me?_" + +The word on his lips to him was as strange, as wonderful, as though it +had been made for him. + +"I guess I must love you, Dan. I guess I must have for a long time." + +"God, I'm so glad! How long?" + +"Why, ever since you used to come to the soda-fountain and ask for +chocolate. You don't know how sweet you were when you were a little +boy." + +She put her slender hand against his hot cheek. "And you are nothing but +a little boy now! I think I must be crazy!" + +As he protested, as she listened intently to what his emotion taught him +to say to her, she whispered close to his ear: + +"What will _you_ take, little boy?" + +And he answered: "I'll take you--you!" + +At a slight sound in the next room Letty Lane started as though the +interruption really brought her to her senses, put her hand to her +disheveled hair, and before she could prevent it, Dan had called Mrs +Higgins to "come in," and the woman, in response, came into the +sitting-room. The boy went up to her and took her hands eagerly, and +said: + +"It's all right, all right, Mrs. Higgins. Just think of it! She belongs +to me!" + +"Oh, don't be a perfect lunatic, Dan," the actress exclaimed, half +laughing, half crying, "and don't listen to him, Higgins. He's just +crazy." + +But the old woman's eyes went bright at the boy's face and tone. "I +never was so glad of anything in my life." + +"As of what?" asked her mistress sharply, and the tone was so cold and +so suddenly altered that Dan felt a chill of despair. + +"Why, at what Mr. Blair says, Miss." + +"Then," said her mistress, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself. He's +only twenty-two, he doesn't know anything about life. You must be crazy. +He's as mad as a March hare and he ought to be in school." + +Then, to their consternation, she burst into a passion of weeping; threw +herself on Higgins' breast and begged her to send Dan away--to send +everybody away--and to let her die in peace. + +In utter despair the boy obeyed the dresser's motion to go, and his +transport was changed into anxiety and dread. He hung about down-stairs +in the Savoy for the rest of the afternoon, finally sending up to +Higgins for news in sheer desperation, and the page fetched Blair a note +in Letty Lane's own hand. His eyes blurred so as he opened the sheet, he +could hardly read the scrawl which said: + + "It was perfectly sweet of you to wait down there. I'm all + right--just tired out! Better get on a boat and go to Greenland's Icy + Mountains and cool off. But if you don't, come in to-morrow and have + lunch with me. + + Letty." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII--IN THE SUNSET GLOW + + +He lived through a week of bliss and of torture. One minute she promised +to marry him, give up the stage, go around the world on a yacht, whose +luxuries, Dan planned, should rival any boat ever built, or they would +motor across Asia and see, one by one, the various coral strands and the +golden sands of the East. He could not find terms to express how he +would spend upon her this fortune of his, which, for the first time, +began to have value in his eyes. Money had been lavished on her, still +she seemed dazzled. Then she would push it all away from her in +disgust--tell him she was sick of everything--that she didn't want any new +jewels or any new clothes, and that she never wanted to see the stage +again or any place again; that there was nowhere she wanted to go, +nothing she wanted to see--that he must get some fresh girl to whom he +could show life, not one whom he must try to make forget it. Then, +again, she would say that she loved the stage and her art--wouldn't give +it up for any one in the world--that it was fatal to marry an +actress--that it was mad for him to think of marrying her, anyway--that +she didn't want to marry any one and be tied down--that she wanted to be +her own mistress and free. + +He found her a creature of a thousand whims and caprices, quick to cry, +quick to laugh, divine in everything she did. He never knew what she +would want him to do next, or how her mood would change, and after one +of their happiest hours, when she had been like a girl with him, she +would burst into tears, beg him to leave the room, telling him that she +was tired--tired--tired, and wanted to go to sleep and never to wake up +again. Between them was the figure of Poniotowsky, though neither spoke +of him. She appeared to have forgotten him. Dan would rather have cut +out his tongue than to speak his name, and yet he was there in the mind +of each. During the fortnight Dan spent thousands of pounds on her, +bought her jewels which she alternately raved over or but half looked +at. He had made his arrangements with Galorey peacefully, coolly and +between the two men it had been understood that the world should think +the engagement broken by the duchess, and Dan's attention to Letty Lane, +already the subject of much comment, already conspicuous, was enough to +justify any woman in taking offense. + +One day, the pearl of warm May days, when England even in springtime +touches summer, Blair was so happy as to persuade his sweetheart to go +with him for a little row on the river. The young fellow waited for her +in the boat he had secured, and she, motoring out with Higgins, had +appeared, running down to the edge of the water like a girl, gay as a +child let out from school, in a simple frock, in a marvelously fetching +hat, white gloves, white parasol, white shoes, and as Dan helped her +into the boat, pushed it out, pushed away with her on the crest of the +sun-flecked waters, spring was in his heart, and he found the moment +almost too great to bear. + +The actress had been a girl with him all day, giving herself to his +moods, doing what he liked without demur, talking of their mutual past, +telling him one amusing story after another, proving herself an ideal +companion, fresh, varied, reposeful; and no one to have seen Letty Lane +with the boy on that afternoon would have dreamed that she ever had +known another love. They had moored their boat down near Maidenhead, and +he had helped her up the bank to the little inn, where tea had been made +for them, and served to him by her own beautiful white hands. He had +called for strawberries, and, like a shepherd in a pastoral, had fed +them to her, and as they lingered the sunset came creeping steadily in +through the windows where they sat. + +As they neither called for their account nor to have the tea things +taken away, after a while the woman stealthily opened the door and, +unknown, looked at one of the prettiest pictures ever within her walls. +Letty Lane sat on the window-seat, her golden head, her white form +against the glow, and the boy by her side had his arms around her, and +her head was on his breast. They were both young. They might have been +white birds blown in there, nesting in the humble inn, and the woman of +the house, who had not heard the waters of the Thames flow softly for +nothing, judged them gently and sighed with pleasure as she shut the +door. + +Here at Maidenhead Dan had left his boat and the motor took them back. +Nothing spoiled his bliss that day, and he said her name a thousand +times that night in his dreams. Jealousies--and, when he would let +himself think, they were not one, they were many--faded away. The duties +that a life with her would involve did not disturb him. For many a long +year, come what might, be what would, he would recall the glowing of +that sunset reflected under the inn windows, the singing of the thrushes +and the flash of the white dress and the fine little white shoes which +he had held in the palm of his ardent hand, which he had kissed, as he +told her with all his heart that she should rest her tired feet for +ever. + +There grew in him that day a reverence for her, determined as he was to +bring into her life by his wealth and devotion everything of good. His +loving plans for her forming in his brain somewhat chaotic and very much +fevered, brought him nearer than he had ever been before to the picture +of his mother. His father it wasn't easy for Dan to think of in +connection with the actress. He didn't dare to dwell on the subject, but +he had never known his mother, and that pale ideal he could create as he +would. In thinking of her he saw only tenderness for Letty Lane--only +love; and in his room the night after the row on the river, the night +after the long idyl in the sunset-room of the inn, something like a +prayer came to his young lips, and, when its short form was finished, a +smile brought it to an end as he remembered the line in Letty Lane's own +opera: + + "She will teach you how to pray in an Eastern form of prayer." + +The ring he had given the Duchess of Breakwater had been her own choice, +a ruby. He had asked her, through Galorey, to keep it and to wear it +later, when she could think of him kindly, in an ornament of some kind +or another. The duchess had not refused. The ring he bought for Letty +Lane, although there was no engagement announced between them, was the +largest, purest diamond he could _with decency_ ask her to put on her +hand! It sparkled like a great drop of clear water from some fountain on +a magic continent. In another shop strands of pink coral set through +with diamonds caught his fancy and he bought her yards of them, ropes of +them, smiling to think how his boyhood's dreams were come true. + +He never saw Ruggles except at meals, hardly spoke to the poor man at +all, and the boy's absorbed face, his state of mind, made the older man +feel like death. He repeated to himself that he was too late--too late, +and usually wound up his reflections by ejaculating: + +"Gosh almighty, I'm glad I haven't got a son!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV--RUGGLES' OFFER + + +He felt as he waited for her in that flower-filled room, for she had +recovered from her distaste for flowers, as he glanced at the +photographs of women like herself in costumes more or less frank, more +or less vulgar, he felt as though he wanted to knock down the walls and +let in a big view of the West--of Montana--of the hills. With such a +setting he thought he could better talk with the lady whom he had come +to see. + +Ruggles held an unlighted cigar between his fingers and goose-flesh rose +all over him. His glasses bothered him. He couldn't get them bright +enough, though he polished them half a dozen times on his silk +handkerchief. His clothes felt too large. He seemed to have shrunken. He +moistened his lips, cleared his throat, tried to remember what kind of +fellow he had been at Dan's age. At Dan's age he was selling a suspender +patent on the road, supporting his mother and his sisters--hard work and +few temptations; he was too tired and too poor. + +Miss Lane kept him waiting ten minutes, and they were hours to her +guest. He was afraid every minute that Dan would come in. The thoughts +he had gathered together, the plan of action, disarranged itself in his +mind every time he thought of the actress. He couldn't forget his vision +of her on the stage or at the Carlton, where she had sat opposite them +and bewitched them both. When she came into the sitting-room at length, +he started so violently that he knocked over a vase of flowers, the +water trickling all over the table down on to the floor. + +She had dazzled him before the footlights, charmed him at dinner, and it +was singular to think that he knew how this dignified, quiet creature +looked in ballet clothes and in a dinner dress, whose frankness had made +him catch his breath. It was a third woman who stood before Ruggles now. +He had to take her into consideration. She had expected him, saw him by +appointment. She was a woman of mind and intelligence. She had not +climbed to her starry position without having acquired a knowledge of +men, and it was the secret of her success. She showed it in the dress in +which she received her visitor. She wore a short walking skirt of heavy +serge, a simple shirtwaist belted around, a sailor hat on her beautiful +little head. She was unjeweled and unpainted, very pale and very sweet. +If it had not been for the marks of fatigue under her eyes, she would +not have looked more than eighteen. On her left hand a single diamond, +clear as water, caught the refracted light. + +"How-de-do? Glad you are back again." + +She gave him a big chair and sat down before him smiling. Leaning her +elbows on her knees, she sank her face upon her hands and looked at him, +not coquettishly in the least, but as a child might have looked. From +her small feet to her golden head she was utterly charming. + +[Image] + +Ruggles made himself think of Dan. Miss Lane spoke slowly, nodding +toward him, in her languid voice: "It's no use, Mr. Ruggles, no use." + +Holding her face between her hands, her eyes gray as winter's seas and +as profound, she looked at him intently; then, in a flash, she changed +her position and instantly transformed her character. He saw that she +was a woman, not an eighteen-year-old girl, but a woman, clever, poised, +witty, understanding, and that she might have been twenty years older +than the boy. + +"I'm sorry you spoke so quick," he said. + +"I knew," she interrupted, "just what you wanted to say from the start. +I couldn't help it, could I? I knew you would want to come and see me +about it. It isn't any use. I know just what you are going to say." + +"No, ma'am," he returned, "I don't believe you do--bright as you are." + +Ruggles gazed thoughtfully at the cold end of his unlighted cigar. It +was a comfort to him to hold it and to look at it, although not for +anything in the world would he have asked to light it. + +"Dan's father and me were chums. We went through pretty much together, +and I know how he felt on most points. He was a man of few words, but I +know he counted on me to stand By the boy." + +Ruggles was so chivalrous that his role at present cost him keen +discomfort. + +"A lady like you," he said gently, "knows a great deal more about how +things are done than either Dan or me. We ain't tenderfeet in the West, +not by a long shot, but we see so few of a certain kind of picture shows +that when they do come round they're likely to make us lose our minds! +You know, yourself, a circus in a town fifty miles from a railroad +drives the people crazy. Now, Dan's a little like the boy with his eyes +on the hole in the tent. He would commit murder to get inside and see +that show." He nodded and smiled to her as though he expected her to +follow his crude simile. "Now, I have seen _you_ a lot of times." And +she couldn't help reminding him, "Not of your own accord, Mr. Ruggles." + +"Well, I don't know," he slowly admitted; "I always felt I had my +money's worth, and the night you ate with us at the Carlton I understood +pretty well how the boy with his eyes at the tent hole would feel." But +he tapped his broad chest with the hand that held the cigar between the +first and second fingers. "I know just what kind of a heart you've got, +for I waited at the stage door and I know you don't get all your +applause inside the Gaiety Theater." + +"Goodness," she murmured, "they make an awful fuss about nothing." + +"Now," he continued, leaning forward a trifle toward her languid, half +interested figure, "I just want you to think of him as a little boy. +He's only twenty-two. He knows nothing of the world. The money you give +to the poor doesn't come so hard perhaps as this will. It's a big +sacrifice, but I want you to let the boy go." + +She smiled slightly, found her handkerchief, which was tucked up the +cuff of her blouse, pressed the little bit of linen to her lips as +though to steady them, then she asked abruptly: + +"What has he said to you?" + +"Lord!" Ruggles groaned. "_Said_ to me! My dear young lady, he is much +too rude to speak. Dan sort of breathes and snorts around like a +lunatic. He was dangling around that duchess when I was here before, but +she didn't scare me any." + +And Letty Lane, now smiling at him, relieved by his break from a more +intense tone, asked: + +"Now, you are scared?" + +"Well," Ruggles drawled, "I was pretty sure that woman didn't _care_ +anything for the boy. Are you her kind?" + +It was the best stroke he had made. She almost sprang up from her chair. + +"Heavens," she exclaimed, "I guess I'm not!" Her face flushed. + +"I had rather see a son of mine dead than married to a woman like that," +he said. + +"Why, Mr. Ruggles," she exclaimed passionately, addressing him with +interest for the first time, "what do you know about me? What? What? You +have seen me dance and heard me sing." + +And he interrupted her. + +"Ten times, and you are a bully dancer and a bully singer, but you do +other things than dance and sing. There is not a man living that would +want to have his mother dress that way." + +She controlled a smile. "Never mind that. People's opinions are very +different about that sort of thing. You have seen me at dinner with your +boy, as you call him, and you can't say that I did anything but ask him +to help the poor. I haven't led Dan on. I have tried to show him just +what you are making me go through now." + +If she acted well and danced well, it was hard for her to talk. She was +evidently under strong emotion and it needed her control not to burst +into tears and lose her chance. + +"Of course, I know the things you have heard. Of course, I know what is +said about me"--and she stopped. + +Ruggles didn't press her any further; he didn't ask her if the things +were true. Looking at her as he did, watching her as he did, there was +in him a feeling so new, so troubling that he found himself more anxious +to protect her than to bring her to justice. + +"There are worse, far worse women than I am, Mr. Ruggles. I will never +do Dan any harm." + +Here her visitor leaned forward and put one of his big hands lightly +over one of hers, patted it a moment, and said: + +"I want you to do a great deal better than that." + +She had picked up a photograph off the table, a pretty picture of +herself in _Mandalay_, and turned it nervously between her fingers as +she said with irritation: + +"I haven't been in the theatrical world not to guess at this 'Worried +Father' act, Mr. Ruggles. I told you I knew just what you were going to +say." + +"Wrong!" he repeated. "The business is old enough perhaps, lots of good +jobs are old, but _this_ is a little different." + +He took the turning picture and laid it on the table, and quietly +possessed himself of the small cold hands. Blair's solitaire shone up to +him. Ruggles looked into Letty Lane's eyes. "He is only twenty-two; it +ain't fair, it ain't fair. He could count the times he has been on a +lark, I guess. He hasn't even been to an eastern college. He is no fool, +but he's darned simple." + +She smiled faintly. The man's face, near her own, was very simple +indeed. + +"You have seen so much," he urged, "so many fellows. You have been such +a queen, I dare say you could get any man you wanted." He repeated. +"Most any one." + +"I have never seen any one like Dan." + +"Just so: He ain't your kind. That is what I am trying to tell you." + +She withdrew her hand from his violently. + +"There you are wrong. He _is_ my kind. He is what I like, and he is what +I want to be like." + +A wave of red dyed her face, and, in a tone more passionate than she had +ever used to her lover, she said to Ruggles: + +"I love him--I love him!" Her words sent something like a sword through +the older man's heart. He said gently: "Don't say it. He don't know what +love means yet." + +He wanted to tell her that the girl Dan married should be the kind of +woman his mother was, but Ruggles couldn't bring himself to say the +words. Now, as he sat near her, he was growing so complex that his brain +was turning round. He heard her murmur: + +"I told you I knew your act, Mr. Ruggles. It isn't any use." + +This brought him back to his position and once more he leaned toward her +and, in a different tone from the one he had intended to use, murmured: + +"You don't know. You haven't any idea. I do ask you to let Dan go, +that's a fact. I have got something else to propose in its place. It +ain't quite the same, but it is clear--marry me!" + +She gave a little exclamation. A slight smile rippled over her face like +the sunset across a pale pool at dawn. + +"Laugh," he said humbly; "don't keep in. I know I am old-fashioned as +the deuce, and me and Dan is quite a contrast, but I mean just what I +say, my dear." + +She controlled her amusement, if it was that. It almost made her cry +with mirth, and she couldn't help it. Between laughing breaths she said +to him: + +"Oh, is it all for Dan's sake, Mr. Ruggles? Is it?" And then, biting her +lips and looking at him out of her wonderful eyes, she said: "I know it +is--I know it is--I beg your pardon." + +"I asked a girl once when I was poor--too poor. Now this is the second +time in my life. I mean just what I say. I'll make you a kind husband. I +am fifty-five, hale as a nut. I dare say you have had many better +offers." + +"Oh, dear," she breathed; "oh, dear, please--please stop!" + +"But I don't expect you to marry me for anything but my money." + +Ruggles put his cigar down on the edge of the table. He looked at his +chair meditatively, he took out his silk handkerchief, polished up his +glasses, readjusted them, put them on and then looked at her. + +"Now," he said, "I am going to trust you with something, and I know you +will keep my secret for me. This shows you a little bit of what I think +about you. Dan Blair hasn't got a red cent. He has nothing but what I +give him. There's a false title to all that land on the Bentley claim. +The whole thing came up when I was home and the original company, of +which I own three-quarters of the stock, holds the clear titles to the +Blairtown mines. It all belongs now to me, if I choose to present my +documents. Dan knows nothing about this--not a word." + +The actress had never come up to such a dramatic point in any of her +plays. With her hands folded in her lap she looked at him steadily, and +he could not understand the expression that crossed her face. He heard +her exclamation: "Oh, gracious!" + +"I've brought the papers back with me," said the Westerner, "and it is +between you and me how we act. If Dan marries you I will be bound to do +what old Blair would have done--cut him off--let him feel his feet on the +ground, and the result of his own folly." + +He had taken his glasses off while he made this assertion. Now he put +them on again. + +"If you give him up I'll divide with the boy and be rich enough still to +hand over to my wife all she wants to spend." + +She turned her face away from him and leaned her head once more upon her +hands. He heard her softly murmuring under her breath, with an absent +look on her face, accompanied by a still more incomprehensible smile. + +"That's how it stands," he concluded. + +She seemed to have forgotten him entirely, and he caught his breath when +she turned about abruptly and said: + +"My goodness, how Dan will hate being poor! He will have to sell all his +stickpins and his motor cars and all the things he has given me. It will +be quite a little to start on, but he will hate it, he is so very +smart." + +"Why, you don't mean to say--" Ruggles gasped. + +And with a charming smile as she rose to put their conversation at an +end, she said: + +"Why, you don't mean to say that you thought I _wouldn't stand by him_?" +She seemed, as she put her hands upon her hips with something of a +defiant look at the older man, as though she just then stood by her +pauperized lover. + +"I thought you cared some for the boy," Ruggles said. + +"Well, I am showing it." + +"You want to ruin him to show it, do you?" + +As though he thought the subject dismissed he walked heavily toward the +door. + +"You know how it stands. I have nothing more to say." He knew that he +had signally failed, and as a sudden resentment rose in him he +exclaimed, almost brutally: + +"I am darned glad the old man is dead; I am glad his mother's dead, and +I am glad I have got no son." + +The next moment she was at his side, and he felt that she clung to his +arm. Her sensitive, beautiful face, all drawn with emotion, was raised +to his. + +"Oh, you'll kill me--you'll kill me! Just look how very ill I am; you are +making me crazy. I just worship him." + +"Give him up, then," said Ruggles steadily. + +She faltered: "I can't--I can't--it won't be for long"--with a terrible +pathos in her voice. "You don't know how different I can be: you don't +know what a new life we were going to lead." + +Stammering, and with intense meaning, Ruggles, looking down at her, +said: "My dear child--my dear child!" + +In his few words something perhaps made her see in a flash her past and +what the question really was. She dropped Ruggles' arm. She stood for a +moment with her arms folded across her breast, her head bent down, and +the man at the door waited, feeling that Dan's whole life was in the +balance of the moment. When she spoke again her voice was hard and +entirely devoid of the lovely appealing quality which brought her so +much admiration from the public. + +"If I give him up," she said slowly, "what will you do?" + +"Why," he answered, "I'll divide with Dan and let things stand just as +they are." + +She thought again a moment and then as if she did not want him to +witness--to detect the struggle she was going through, she turned away +and walked over toward the window and dismissed him from there. "Please +go, will you? I want very much to be alone and to think." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV--LETTY LANE RUNS AWAY + + +He had not got up-stairs to his rooms at the Carlton before a note was +handed him from the actress, bidding him to return at once to the Savoy, +and Ruggles, his heart hammering like a trip-hammer, rushed up to his +rooms, made an evening toilet, for it was then half-past seven, threw +his cravats and collars all around the place, cursed like a miner as he +got into his clothes, and red almost to apoplexy, nervous and full of +emotion, he returned to the rooms he had left not three hours before. + +The three hours had been busy ones at the actress' apartment. Letty +Lane's sitting-room was full of trunks, dressing-bags and traveling +paraphernalia. She came forward out of what seemed a world of confusion, +dressed as though for a journey, even her veil and her gloves denoting +her departure. She spoke hurriedly and almost without politeness. + +"I have sent for you to come and see me here. Not a soul in London knows +I am going away. There will be a dreadful row at the theater, but that's +none of your affairs. Now, I want you to tell me before I go just what +you are going to do for Dan." + +"Who are you going with?" Ruggles asked shortly, and she flashed at him: + +"Well, really, I don't think that is any of your business. When you +drive a woman as you have driven me, she will go far." + +He interrupted her vehemently, not daring to take her hand. "I couldn't +do more. I have asked you to marry me. I couldn't do more. I stand by +what I have said. Will you?" he stammered. + +She knew men. She looked at him keenly. Her veil was lifted above her +eyes and its shadow framed her small pale face on which there were marks +of utter disenchantment, of great ennui. She said languidly: "What I +want to know is, what you are going to do for Dan?" + +"I told you I would share with him." + +"Then he will be nearly as rich?" + +"He'll have more than is good for him." + +That satisfied her. Then she pursued: "I want you to stand by him. He +will need you." + +Ruggles lifted the hand he held and kissed it reverently. "I'll do +anything you say--anything you say." + +Down-stairs in the Savoy, as Dan had done countless times, Ruggles +waited until he saw her motor car carry her and her small luggage and +Higgins away. + +In their sitting-room in the Carlton a half-hour later the door was +thrown open and Dan Blair came in like a madman. Without preamble he +seized Ruggles by the arm. + +"Look here," he cried, "what have you been doing? Tell me now, and tell +me the truth, or, by God, I don't know what I'll do. You went to the +Savoy. You went there twice. Anyhow, where is she?" + +Dan, slender as he was beside Ruggles' great frame, shook the elder man +as though he had been a terrier. "Speak to me. Where has she gone?" + +He stared in the Westerner's face, his eyes bloodshot. "Why in thunder +don't you say something?" + +And Ruggles prayed for some power to unloose his thickening tongue. + +"You say she's gone?" he questioned. + +"I say," said the boy, "that you've been meddling in my affairs with the +woman I love. I don't know what you have said to her, but it's only your +age that keeps me from striking you. Don't you know," he cried, "that +you are spoiling my life? Don't you know that?" A torrent of feeling +coming to his lips, his eyes suffused, the tears rolled down his face. +He walked away into his own room, remained there a few moments, and when +he came out again he carried in his hand his valise, which he put down +with a bang on the table. More calmly, but still in great anger, he said +to his father's friend: + +"Now, can you tell me what you've done or not?" + +"Dan," said Ruggles with difficulty, "if you will sit down a moment we +can--" + +The boy laughed in his face. "Sit down!" he cried. "Why, I think you +must have lost your reason. I have chartered a motor car out there and +the damned thing has burst a tire and they are fixing it up for me. It +will be ready in about two minutes and then I am going to follow +wherever she has gone. She crossed to Paris, but I can get there before +she can even with this damned accident. But, before I go, I want you to +tell me what you said." + +"Why," said Ruggles quietly, "I told her you were poor, and she turned +you down." + +His words were faint. + +"God!" said the boy under his breath. "That's the way you think about +truth. Lie to a woman to save my precious soul! But I expect," he said; +"you think she is so immoral and so bad that she will hurt me. Well," he +said, with great emphasis, "she has never done anything in her life that +comes up to what you've done. Never! And nothing has ever hurt me so." + +His lips trembled. "I have lost my respect for you, for my father's +friend, and as far as she is concerned, I don't care what she marries me +for. She has got to marry me, and if she doesn't"--he had no idea, in his +passion, what he was saying or how--"why, I think I'll kill you first and +then blow my own brains out!" And with these mad words he grabbed up his +valise and bolted from the room, and Ruggles could hear his running feet +tearing down the corridor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI--WHITE AND CORAL + + +Spring in Paris, which comes in a fashion so divine that even the most +calloused and indifferent are impressed by its beauty, awakened no +answering response in the heart of the young man who, from his hotel +window, looked out on the desecrated gardens of the Tuileries--on the +distant spires of the churches whose names he did not know--on the square +block of old palaces. He had missed the boat across the Channel taken by +Letty Lane, and the delay had made him lose what little trace of her he +had. In the early hours of the morning he had flung himself in at the +St. James, taken the indifferent room they could give him in the crowded +season, and excited as he was he slept and did not waken until noon. +Blair thought it would be a matter of a few hours only to find the +whereabouts of the celebrated actress, but it was not such an easy job. +He had not guessed that she might be traveling incognito, and at none of +the hotels could he hear news of her, nor did he pass her in the +crowded, noisy, rustling, crying streets, though he searched motors for +her with eager eyes, and haunted restaurants and cafes, and went +everywhere that he thought she might be likely to be. + +At the end of the third day, unsuccessful and in despair, having hardly +slept and scarcely eaten, the unhappy young lover found himself taking a +slight luncheon in the little restaurant known as the Perouse down on +the Quais. His head on his hand, for the present moment the joy of life +gone from him, he looked out through the windows at the Seine, at the +bridge and the lines of flowering trees. He was the only occupant of the +upper room where, of late, he had ordered his luncheon. + +The tide of life rolled slowly in this quieter part of the city, and as +Blair sat there under the window there passed a piper playing a shrill, +sweet tune. It was so different from any of the loud metropolitan +clamors, with which his ears were full, that he got up, walked to the +window and leaned out. It was a pastoral that met his eyes. A man +piping, followed by little pattering goats; the primitive, unlooked-for +picture caught his tired attention, and, just then, opposite the Quais, +two women passed--flower sellers, their baskets bright with crocuses and +girofles. The bright picture touched him and something of the springlike +beauty that the day wore and that dwelt in the May light, soothed him as +nothing had for many hours. + +He paid his bill, took courage, picked up his hat and gloves and stick +and walked out briskly, crossing the bridge to the Rue de Rivoli, +determined that night should not fall until he found the woman he +sought. Nor did it, though the afternoon wore on and Dan, pursuing his +old trails, wandered from worldly meeting place to worldly meeting +place. Finally, toward six o'clock, he saw the lengthening shadows steal +into the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, and in one of the smaller +alleys, where the green-trunked trees of the forests were full of purple +shadows and yellow sun discs, flickering down, he picked up a small iron +chair and sat himself down, with a long sigh, to rest. + +While he sat there watching the end of the _allee_ as it gave out into +the broader road, a beautiful red motor rolled up to the conjunction of +the two ways and Letty Lane, in a summer frock, got out alone. She had a +flowing white veil around her head and a flowing white scarf around her +shoulders. As the day on the Thames, she was all in white--like a dove. +But this time her costume was made vivid and picturesque by the coral +parasol she carried, a pair of coral-colored kid shoes, around her neck +and falling on their long chain, she wore his coral beads. He saw that +he observed her before she did him. All this Dan saw before he dashed +into the road, came up to her with something like a cry on his lips, +bareheaded, for his hat and his stick and his gloves were by his chair +in the woods. + +Letty Lane's hands went to her heart and her face took on a deadly +pallor. She did not seem glad to see him. Out of his passionate +description of the hours that he had been through, of how he had looked +for her, of what he thought and wanted and felt, the actress made what +she could, listening to him as they both stood there under the shadows +of the green trees. Scanning her face for some sign that she loved him, +for it was all he cared for, Dan saw no such indication there. He +finished with: + +"You know what Ruggles told you was a lie. Of course, I've got money +enough to give you everything you want. He's a lunatic and ought to be +shut up." + +"It may have been a lie, all right," she said with forced indifference; +"I've had time to think it over. You are too young. You don't know what +you want." She stopped his protestations: "Well, then, _I_ am too old +and I don't want to be tied down." + +When he pressed her to tell him whether or not she had ceased to care +for him, she shook her head slowly, marking on the ground fine tracery +with the end of her coral parasol. He had been obliged to take her back +to the red motor, but before they were in earshot of her servants, he +said: + +"Now, you know just what you have done to me, you and Ruggles between +you. For my father's sake and the things I believed in I've kept pretty +straight as things go." He nodded at her with boyish egotism, throwing +all the blame on her. "I want you to understand that from now, right +now, I'm going to the dogs just as fast as I can get there, and it won't +be a very gratifying result to anybody that ever cared." + +She saw the determination on his fine young face, worn by his sleepless +nights, already matured and changed, and she believed him. + +"Paris," he nodded toward the gate of the woods which opened upon Paris, +"is the place to begin in--right here. A man," he went on, and his lips +trembled, "can only feel like this once in his life. You know all the +talk there is about young love and first love. Well, that's what I've +got for you, and I'm going to turn it now--right now--into just what older +people warn men from, and do their best to prevent. I have seen enough +of Paris," he went on, "these days I have been looking for you, to know +where to go and what to do, and I am setting off for it now." + +She touched his arm. + +"No," she murmured. "No, boy, you are not going to do any such thing!" + +This much from her was enough for him. He caught her hand and cried: +"Then you marry me. What do we care for anybody else in the world?" + +"Go back and get your hat and stick and gloves," she commanded, keeping +down the tears. + +"No, no, you come with me, Letty; I'm not going to let you run to your +motor and escape me again." + +"Go; I'll wait here," she promised. "I give you my word." + +As he snatched up the inanimate objects from the leaf-strewn ground +where he had thrown them in despair, he thought how things can change in +a quarter of an hour. For he had hope now, as he hurried back, as he +walked with her to her car, as he saw the little coral shoes stir in the +leaves when she passed under the trees. The little coral shoes trod on +his heart, but now it was light under her feet! + +Jubilant to have overcome the fate which had tried to keep her hidden +from him in Paris, he could hardly believe his eyes that she was before +them again, and, as the motor rolled into the Avenue des Acacias, he +asked her the question uppermost in his mind: + +"Are you alone in Paris, Letty?" + +"Don't you count?" + +"No--no--honestly, _you know what I mean_." + +"You haven't any right to ask me that." + +"I have--I have. You gave me a right. You're engaged to me, aren't you? +Gosh, you haven't _forgotten_, have you?" + +"Don't make me conspicuous in the Bois, Dan," she said; "I only let you +come with me because you were so terribly desperate, so ridiculous." + +"Are you alone?" he persisted. "I have got to know." + +"Higgins is with me." + +"Oh, God," he cried wildly, "how can you joke with me? Don't you +understand you're breaking my heart?" + +But she did not dare to be kind to him, knowing it would unnerve her for +the part she had promised to play. + +He sat gripping his hands tightly together, his lips white. "When I +leave you now," he said brokenly, "I am going to find that devil of a +Hungarian and do him up. Then I am going to tackle Ruggles." + +"Why, what's poor Mr. Ruggles got to do with it?" + +Dan cried scornfully: "For God's sake, don't keep this up! You know the +rot he told you? I made him confess. He has had this mania all along +about money being a handicap; he was bent on trying this game with some +girl to see how it worked." He continued more passionately. "I don't +care a rap what you marry me for, Letty, or what you have done or been. +I think you're perfect and I'll make you the happiest woman in the +world." + +She said: "Hush, hush! Listen, dear; listen, little boy. I am awfully +sorry, but it won't do. I never thought it would. You'll get over it all +right, though you don't, you can't believe me now. I can't be poor, you +know; I really couldn't be poor." + +He interrupted roughly: "Who says you'll be? What are you talking about? +Why, I'll cover you with jewels, sweetheart, if I have to rip the earth +open to get them out." + +She understood that Dan believed Ruggles' story to have been a +cock-and-bull one. + +"You talk as though you could buy me, Dan. Wait, listen." She put him +back from her. "Now, if you won't be quiet, I'm going to stop my car." + +He repeated: "Tell me, are you alone in Paris? Tell me. For three days I +have wandered and searched for you everywhere; I have hardly eaten a +thing, I don't believe I have slept a wink." And he told her of his +weary search. + +She listened to him, part of the time her white-gloved hand giving +itself up to the boy; part of the time both hands folded together and +away from him, her arms crossed on her breast, her small shoes of coral +kid tapping the floor of the car. Thus they rolled leisurely along the +road by the Bois. Through the green-trunked trees the sunlight fell +divinely. On the lake the swans swam, pluming their feathers; there were +children there in their ribbons and furbelows. The whole world went by +gay and careless, while for Dan the problem of his existence, his +possibility for happiness or pain was comprised within the little room +of the motor car. + +"Are you alone in Paris, Letty?" + +And she said: "Oh, what a bore you are! You're the most obstinate +creature. Well, I am alone, but that has nothing to do with you." + +A glorious light broke over his face; his relief was tremendous. + +"Oh, thank God!" he breathed. + +"Poniotowsky"--and she said his name with difficulty--"is coming to-night +from Carlsbad." + +The boy threw back his bright head and laughed wildly. + +"Curse him! The very name makes me want to commit a crime. He will go +over my body to you. You hear me, Letty. I mean what I say." + +People had already remarked them as they passed. The actress was too +well-known to pass unobserved, but she was indifferent to their +curiosity or to the existence of any one but this excited boy. + +Blair, who had not opened a paper since he came to Paris, did not know +that Letty Lane's flight from London had created a scandal in the +theatrical world, that her manager was suing her, and that to be seen +with her driving in the Bois was a conspicuous thing indeed. She thought +of it, however. + +"I am going to tell the man to drive you to the gate on the other side +of the park where it's quieter, we won't be stared at, and then I want +you to leave me and let me go to the Meurice alone. You must, Dan, you +must let me go to the hotel alone." + +He laughed again in the same strained fashion and forced her hand to +remain in his. + +"Look here. You don't suppose I am going to let you go like this, now +that I have seen you again. You don't suppose I am going to give you up +to that infamous scoundrel? You have got to marry me." + +Bringing all her strength of character to bear, she exclaimed: "I expect +you think you are the only person who has asked me to marry him, Dan. I +am going to _marry_ Prince Poniotowsky. He is perfectly crazy about me." + +Until that moment she had not made him think that she was indifferent to +him, and the idea that such a thing was possible, was too much for his +overstrained heart to bear. Dan cried her name in a voice whose appeal +was like a hurt creature's, and as the hurt creature in its suffering +sometimes springs upon its torturer, he flung his arms around her as she +sat in the motor, held her and kissed her, then set her free, and as the +motor flew along, tore open the door to spring out or to throw himself +out, but clinging to him she prevented his mad act. She stopped the car +along the edge of the quiet, wooded _allee_. Blair saw that he had +terrified her. She covered her beating heart with her hands and gasped +at him that he was "crazy, crazy," and perhaps a little late his dignity +and self-possession returned. + +"I am mad," he acknowledged more calmly, "and I am sorry that I +frightened you. But you drive me mad." + +Without further word he got out and left her agitated, leaning toward +him, and Blair, less pale and thoroughly the man, lifted his hat to her +and, with unusual grace, bowed good night and good-by. Then, rushing as +he had come, he walked off down through the _allee_, his gray figure in +his gray clothes disappearing through the vista of meeting trees. + +For a moment she stared after him, her eyes fastened on the tall slender +beautiful young man. Blair's fire and ardor, his fresh youthfulness, his +protection and his chivalry, his ardent devotion, touched her +profoundly. Tears fell, and one splashed on her white glove. Was he +really going to ruin his life? The old ballad, _The Earl of Moray_, ran +through her head: + + "And long may his lady look from the castle wall." + +Dan had neither title nor, according to Ruggles, had he any money, and +she could marry the prince; but Dan, as he walked so fast away, misery +snapping at his heels as he went, stamping through the woods, seemed +glorious to Letty Lane and the only one she wanted in the world. What if +anything should happen to him really? What if he should really start out +to do the town according to the fashion of his Anglo-Saxon brothers, but +more desperately still? She took a card from the case in the corner of +the car, scribbled a few words, told the man to drive around the curve +and meet the outlet of the path by which Dan had gone. When she saw him +within reaching distance she sent the chauffeur across the woods to give +Mr. Blair her scribbled word and consoled herself with the belief that +Dan wouldn't "go to the dogs or throw himself in the river until he had +seen her again." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII--AT MAXIM'S + + +At the Meurice, Miss Lane gave strict orders to admit only Mr. Blair to +her apartments. She described him. No sooner had she drunk her cup of +tea, which Higgins gave her, than she began to expect Dan. + +He didn't come. + +Her dinner, without much appetite, she ate alone in her salon; saw a +doctor and made him prescribe something for the cough that racked her +chest; looked out to the warm, bright gardens of the Tuileries fading +into the pallid loveliness of sunset, indifferent to everything in the +world--except Dan Blair. She believed she would soon be indifferent to +him, too; then everything would be done with. Now she wondered had he +really gone--had he done what he threatened? Why didn't he come? At +twelve o'clock that night, as she lay among the cushions of her sofa, +dozing, the door of her parlor was pushed in. She sprang up with a cry +of delight; but when Poniotowsky came up to her she exclaimed: + +"Oh, you!" And the languor and boredom with which she said his name made +the prince laugh shortly. + +"Yes, I. Who did you think it was?" Cynically and rather cruelly he +looked down at Letty Lane and admired the picture she made: small, +exquisite, her blond head against the dark velvet of the lounge, her +gray eyes intensified by the fatigue under them. + +"Just got in from Carlsbad; came directly here. How-de-do? You look, you +know--" he scrutinized her through his single eye-glass--"most frightfully +seedy." + +"Oh, I'm all right." She left the sofa, for she wanted to prevent his +nearer approach. "Have you had any supper? I'll call Higgins." + +"No, no, sit down, please, will you? I want to know why you sent to +Carlsbad for me? Have you come to your senses?" + +He was as mad about the beautiful creature as a man of his temperament +could be. Exhausted by excess and bored with life, she charmed and +amused him, and in order to have her with him always, to be master of +her caprices, he was willing to make any sacrifice. + +"Have you sent off that imbecile boy?" And at her look he stopped and +shrugged. "You need a rest, my child," he murmured practically, "you're +neurasthenic and very ill. I've wired to have the yacht at +Cherbourg--It'll reach there by noon to-morrow." + +She was standing listlessly by the table. A mass of letters sent by +special messenger from London after her, telegrams and cards lay there +in a pile. Looking down at the lot, she murmured: "All right, I don't +care." + +He concealed his triumph, but before the look had faded from his face +she saw it and exclaimed sharply: + +"Don't be crazy about it, you know. You'll have to pay high for me; you +know what I mean." + +He answered gallantly: "My dear child, I've told you that you would be +the most charming princess in Hungary." + +Once more she accepted indifferently: "All right, all right, I don't +care tuppence--not tuppence"--and she snapped her fingers; "but I like to +see you pay, Frederigo. Take me to Maxim's." + +He demurred, saying she was far too ill, but she turned from him to call +Higgins, determined to go if she had to go alone, and said to him +violently: "Don't think I'll make your life easy for you, Frederigo. +I'll make it wretched; as wretched--" and she held out her fragile arms, +and the sleeves fell back, leaving them bare--"as wretched as I am +myself." + +But she was lovely, and he said harshly: "Get yourself dressed. I'll go +change and meet you at the lift." + + * * * * * + +She made him take a table in the corner, where she sat in the shadow on +the sofa, overlooking the brilliant room. Maxim's was no new scene to +either of them, no novelty. Poniotowsky scarcely glanced at the crowd, +preferring to feast his eyes on his companion, whose indifference to him +made his abstraction easy. She was his property. He would give her his +title; she had demanded it from the first. The Hungarian was a little +overdressed, with his jeweled buttons, his large _boutonniere_, his +faultless clothes, his single eye-glass through which he stared at Letty +Lane, whose delicate beauty was in fine play: her cheeks faintly pink, +her starry eyes humid with a dew whose luster is of the most precious +quality. Her unshed tears had nothing to do with Poniotowsky--they were +for the boy. Her heart sickened, thinking where he might be; and more +than that, it cried out for him. She wanted him. + +Oh, she would have been far better for Dan than anything he could find +in this mad city, than anything to which in his despair he would go for +consolation. She had kept her word, however, to that old man, Mr. +Ruggles; she had got out of the business with a fatal result, as far as +the boy was concerned. She thought Dan would drift here probably as most +Americans on their wild nights do for a part of the time, and she had +come to see. + +She wore a dress of coral pink, tightly fitting, high to her little +chin, and seemed herself like a coral strand from neck to toe, clad in +the color she affected, and which had become celebrated as the Letty +Lane pink. Her feathered hat hid her face, and she was completely +shielded as she bent down drawing pictures with her bare finger on the +cloth. After a little while she said to Poniotowsky without glancing at +him: + +"If you stare any longer like that, Frederigo, you'll break your +eye-glass. You know how I hate it." + +Used as he was to her sharpness, he nevertheless flushed and sat back +and looked across the room, where, to their right, protected from them +as they were from him by the great door, a young man sat alone. Whether +or not he had come to Maxim's intending to join a congenial party, +should he find one, or to choose for a companion some one of the women +who, at the entrance of the tall blond boy, stirred and invited him with +their raised lorgnons and their smiles, will not be known. Dan Blair was +alone, pale as the pictures Letty Lane had drawn on the cloth, and he, +too, feasted his eyes on the Gaiety girl. + +"By Jove!" said the Hungarian under his breath, and she eagerly asked: +"What? Whom? Whom do you see?" + +Turning his back sharply he evaded her question and she did not pursue +the idea, and as a physical weakness overwhelmed her, when Poniotowsky +after a second said, "Come, _cherie_, for heaven's sake, let's go"--she +mechanically rose and passed out. + +Several young men supping together came over eagerly to speak to her and +claim acquaintance with the Gaiety girl, and walked along out to the +motor. There Letty Lane discovered she had dropped her handkerchief, and +sent the prince back for it. + +As though he had been waiting for the reappearance of Poniotowsky, Dan +Blair stood close to the little table which Letty Lane had left, her +handkerchief in his hand. As Poniotowsky came up Dan thrust the small +trifle of sheer linen into his waistcoat pocket. + +"I will trouble you for Miss Lane's handkerchief," said Poniotowsky, his +eyes cold. + +"You may," said Dan as quietly, his blue eyes like sparks from a star, +"trouble me for hell!" And lifting from the table Poniotowsky's own +half-emptied glass of champagne, the boy flung the contents full in the +Hungarian's face. + +The wine dashed against Poniotowsky's lips and in his eyes. Blair +laughed out loud, his hands in his pockets. The insult was low and +noiseless; the little glass shattered as it fell so softly that with the +music its gentle crash was unheard. + +Poniotowsky wiped his face tranquilly and bowed. + +"You shall hear from me after I have taken Miss Lane home." + +"Tell her," said the boy, "where you left the handkerchief, that's all." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII--SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS + + +Dan was in his room at the hotel. He woke and then slept again. Nothing +seemed strange to him--nothing seemed real. It was three o'clock in the +morning, the rumble of Paris was dull; it did not disturb him, for he +seemed without the body and to have grown giantlike, and to fill the +room. He had a sense of suffocation and the need to break through the +windows and to escape into ether. + +The entrance of Poniotowsky's two friends was a part with the unreal +naturalness. One was a Roumanian, the other a Frenchman--both spoke +fluent English. Dan, his eyes fixed on the foreign faces, only half saw +them; they blurred, their voices were small and far away. Finally he +said: + +"All right, all right, I can shoot well enough; this kind of thing isn't +our custom, you know--I'd as soon kill him one way as another, as a +matter of fact. No, I don't know a darned soul here." There was a confab +incomprehensible to Dan. "It's all one to me, gentlemen," he said. "I'd +rather not drag in my friends, anyhow. Fix it up to suit yourselves." + +He wanted them to go--to be alone--to stretch his arms, to rid himself of +the burden of sense, and be free. And after they had left, he remained +in his window till dawn. It came soon, midsummer dawn, a singularly +tender morning in his heart. His mind worked with great rapidity. He had +made his will in the States. He wished he could have left everything to +Letty Lane, but if, as Ruggles said, he was a pauper? Perhaps it wasn't +a lie after all. Dan had written and telegraphed Ruggles asking for the +solemn truth, and also telling him where he was and asking the older man +to come over. If Ruggles proved he was poor, why, some of his burden was +gone. His money had been a burden, he knew it now. He might have no use +for money the next day. What good could it do him in a fix like this? He +was to meet Poniotowsky at five o'clock in a place whose name he +couldn't recall. He had seen it advertised, though; people went there +for lunch. + +They were to shoot at twenty-five paces--he might be a Rockefeller or a +beggar for all the good his money could do him in a pinch like this. + +His father wouldn't approve, the old man wouldn't approve, but he had +sent him here to learn the ways of the old world. A flickering smile +crossed his beautiful, set face. His lessons hadn't done him much good; +he would like to have seen good old Gordon Galorey again; he loved +him--he had no use for Ruggles, no use--it had been all his fault. His +mind reached out to his father, and the old man's words came dinning +back: "Buy the things that stay above ground, my boy." What were those +things? He had thought they were passion--he had thought they were love, +and he had put all on one woman. She couldn't stand by him, now that he +was poor. + +The spasm in his heart was so sharp that he made a low sound in his +throat and leaned against the casing of the window. He must see her, +touch her once more. + +The fellows Poniotowsky's seconds had chosen to be Dan's representatives +came in to "fix him up." They were in frock-coats and carried their silk +hats and their gloves. He could have laughed at them. Then they made him +think of undertakers, and his blood grew cold. He handled the revolvers +with care and interest. + +"I'm not going to let him murder me, you know," he told his seconds. + +They helped him dress, at least one of them did, while the other took +Dan's place by the window and looked to the boy like a figure of death. + +The hour was getting on; he heard his own motor drive up, and they went +down, through the deserted hotel. The men who had consented to act for +Dan regarded their principal curiously. He wasn't pale, there was a +brightness on his face. + +"_Partons_," said one of them, and told Blair's chauffeur where to go +and how to run. "_Partons._" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX--THE PICTURE OF IT ALL + + +As far as his knowing anything of the customs of it all, it was like +leading a lamb to slaughter. + +Villebon, lovely, vernal, at a later hour the spot for gay breakfasts +and gentle rendezvous, had been designated for the meeting between Dan +and Poniotowsky. There in his motor he gave up his effort to set his +thoughts clear. Nothing settled down. Even the ground they flew over, +the trees with their chestnut plumes, blurred, were indistinct, +nebulous, as if seen through a diving-bell under the sea. Fear--he didn't +know the word. He wasn't afraid--it wasn't that; yet he had a certainty +that it was all up with him. He was young--very young--and he hadn't done +much with the job. His father would have been ashamed of him. Then all +his thoughts went to Her. The two men in the motor floated off and she +sat there as she had sat yesterday in her marvelously pretty clothes--her +little coral shoes. + +He had held those bright, little feet in his hand on the Thames day: +they had just filled his great hands. Mechanically he spread out his +firm, broad palms on the soft shoes. Letty Lane--Letty Lane--a shiver +passed through his body; the sense of her, the touch of her, the kisses +he had taken, the way she had blown up against him like a cloud--a cloud +that, as he held her, became the substance of Paradise. This brought him +back to physical life, brutally. He was too young to die. + +Those little, red shoes would dance on his grave. Was she asleep now? +How would she know? What would she know? + +Then Letty Lane, too, spirited away, and the boy's thoughts turned to +the man he was to meet. "The affairs are purely formal," he had heard +some one say, "an exchange of balls, without serious results." + +One of his companions offered Blair a cigar. He refused, the idea +sickened him. Here the gentlemen exchanged glances, and one murmured, +"Is he afraid?" + +The other shrugged. + +"Not astonishing--he's a child." + +At this Dan glanced up and smiled--what Lily, Duchess of Breakwater, had +called his divine young smile. The two secretly were ashamed--he was +charming. + +As they got out of the motor Dan said: + +"I want to ask a question of Prince Poniotowsky--if it is allowed. I'll +write it on my card." + +After a conference between Prince Poniotowsky's seconds and Dan's, the +slip was handed the prince. + + "If you get out all right, will you marry Miss Lane? I shall be glad + to know." + +The Hungarian, who read it under the tree, half smiled. The naivete of +it, the touching youth of it, the crude lack of form--was perfect enough +to touch his sense of humor. On the back of Dan's card Poniotowsky +scrawled: + +"Yes." + +It was a haughty inclination, a salute of honor before the fight. + +The meeting place was within sight of the little rustic pavilion of Les +Trois Agneaux, celebrated for its _pre sale_ and _beignets_: the +advertisements had confronted Dan everywhere during his wanderings those +miserable days. Under a group of chestnut trees in bright feathery +flower Prince Poniotowsky and his seconds waited, their frock-coats +buttoned up and their gloves and silk hats in their hands. As Blair and +his companions came up the others stood uncovered, grim and formal, +according to the code. + +On the highroad a short distance away ranged the motors which had +fetched the gentlemen from Paris, and the car in which the physician had +come--an ugly and sinister gathering in the peace and beauty of the +serene summer morning. + +Finches and thrashes sang in the bushes, over the grass the dew still +hung in crystals, and a peasant walking at his horses' heads on the slow +tramp back from the Paris market, was held up and kept stolidly waiting +at a few hundred yards away. + +Twenty-five paces. They were measured off by the four seconds, and at +their signal Dan Blair and the prince took their positions, the +revolvers raised perpendicularly in their right hands. + +Still more indistinctly the boy saw the sharp-cut picture of it all ... +the diving-bell was sinking deeper--deeper--into the sea. + +"If I aim," he said to himself, "I shall kill sure--sure." + +Blair heard the command: "Fire!" and supposed that after that he fired. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX--SODAWATER FOUNTAIN GIRL + + +His next sensation was that a warm stream flowed about his heart. + +"My life's blood," he could dimly think, "my heart's blood." Redder than +coral, more precious, more costly than any gift his millions could have +bought her. "I've spent it for the girl I love." The stream pervaded +him, caressed him, folded his limbs about, became an enchanted sea on +which he floated, and its color changed from crimson to coral pale, and +then to white, and became a cold, cold polar sea--and he lay on it like a +frozen man, whose exploration had been in vain, and above him +Greenland's icy mountains rose like emerald, on every side. + +That is it--"Greenland's icy mountains." How she sang it--down--down. Her +voice fell on him like magic balm. He was a little boy in church, +sitting small and shy in the pew. The tune was deep and low and heavenly +sweet. What a pretty mouth the soda-fountain girl had--like coral; and +her eyes like gray seas. The flies buzzed, they droned so loudly that he +couldn't hear her. Ah, that was terrible--_he couldn't hear her_. + +No--no, it wouldn't do. He must hear the hymn out before he died. +Buzz--buzz--drone--drone. Way down he almost heard the soft note. It was +ecstasy. Sky--high up--too faint. Ah, Sodawater Fountain +Girl--sing--sing--with all your heart so that it may reach his ears and +charm him to those strands toward which he floats. + + * * * * * + +The expression of anguish on the young fellow's face was so +heartbreaking that the doctor, his ear at Dan's lips, tried to learn +what thing his poor, fading mind longed for. + +From the bed's foot, where he stood, Dan's chauffeur came to his +gentleman's side, and nodded: + +"Right, sir, right, sir--I'll fetch Miss Lane--I'll 'ave 'er 'ere, +sir--keep up, Mr. Blair." + + * * * * * + +He was going barefoot, a boy still following the plow through the +mountain fields. Miles and miles stretched away before him of dark, +loamy land. He saw the plow tear up the waving furrows, tossing the +earth in sprinkling lines. He heard the shrill note of the phoebe bird, +and looking heavenward saw it darting into the pale sky. + +"What a dandy shot!" he thought. "What a bully shot!" + +Prince Poniotowsky had made a good shot.... + +Ah, there was the smell of the hayfields--no--violets that sweetly laid +their petals on his lips and face. He was back again in church, lying +prone before an altar. If she would only sing, he would rise again--that +he knew--and her coral shoes would not dance over his grave. + +He opened his eyes wide and looked into Letty Lane's. She bent over him, +crying. + +"Sing," he whispered. + +She didn't understand. + +"Sodawater Fountain Girl--if you only knew how ... the flies buzzed, and +how the droning was a living pain...." + +She said to Ruggles: "He wants something so heartbreakingly--what can we +do?" She saw his hands stir rhythmically on the counterpane--he didn't +look to her more than ten years old.... What a cruel thing--he was a boy +just of age--a boy-- + +Ruggles remembered the nights he had spent before the footlights of the +Gaiety, and that the pale woman trembling there weeping was a great +singer. + +"I guess he wants to hear you sing." + +She kneeled down by him; she trembled so she couldn't stand. + +The others, the doctor and Ruggles, the waiters and porters gathered in +the hall, heard. No one of them understood the Gaiety girl's English +words. + + "From Greenland's icy mountains, + From India's coral strands ..." + +They were merciful and let him listen in peace. Through the blur in his +brain, over the beat of his young ardent heart, above the short breaths +the notes reached his failing senses, and lifted him--lifted him. There +wasn't a very long distance between his boyhood and his twenty-two years +to go, and he was not so weak but that he could travel so far. + +He sat there by his father again--and heard. The flies buzzed, and he +didn't mind them. The smell of the fields came in through the windows +and the Sodawater Fountain Girl sang--and sang; and as she sang her face +grew holy to his eyes--radiant with a beauty he had not dreamed a woman's +face could wear. Above the choir rail she stood and sang peerlessly, and +the church began to fade and fade, and still she stood there in a shaft +of light, and her face was like an angel's, and she held her arms out to +him as the waters rose to his lips. She bent and lifted him--lifted him +high upon the strands.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI--IN REALITY + + +Dan awoke from his dream, and sat suddenly up in bed in his shirt +sleeves, and stared at the people in his room,--a hotel boy and two +strangers, not unlike the men in his dream. He brushed his hand across +his eyes. + +"Sit down, will you? Do you speak English?" + +They were foreigners, but they did speak English, no doubt far more +perfectly than did Dan Blair. + +"Look here," the boy said, "I don't know what's the matter with me--I +must have had a ripping jag on last night--let me put my head in a basin +of water, will you?" + +He dived into the dressing-room, and came out in another second, his +blond head wet, wiping his face and hair furiously with a towel. He +hadn't beamed as he did now on these two strange men--for weeks. + +"Well," he asked slowly, "I expect you've come to ask me to fight with +Prince Poniotowsky--yes? It's against our principles, you know, in the +States--we don't do that way. Personally, I'd throw anything at him I +could lay my hands on, but I don't care to have him let daylight through +me, and I don't care to kill your friend. See? I'm an American--yes, I +know, I know," he nodded sagely, "but we don't have your kind of fights +out our way. It means business when we go out to shoot." + +He threw the towel down on the table, soaking wet as it was, put his +hands in the pockets of his evening clothes, which he still wore, for he +had not undressed, threw his young, blond head back and frankly told his +visitors: + +"I'm not up on swords. I've seen them in pictures and read about them, +but I'll be darned if I've ever had one in my hand." + +His expression changed at the quiet response of Poniotowsky's seconds. + +"_Gee._ Whew!" he exclaimed, "he does, does he? Twenty +paces--revolvers--why, he's a bird--a bird!" + +A slight flush rose along Dan's cheeks. "I never liked him, and you +don't want to hear what I think of him. But I'll be darned if he isn't a +bird." + +His eyes caught sight of a blue envelope on the table. He tore the +telegram open. It was Ruggles' answer to his question: + + "Quite true. Tell you about it. Arrive your hotel around noon." + +The despatch informed him that he was really a pauper and also that he +had a second for his duel with Poniotowsky. His guests stood formally +before the young barbarian. + +"Look here," he continued amiably, "I can't meet your Dago friend like +this, it's not fair. He hasn't seen me shoot; it isn't for me to say it, +but I can't miss. Hold," he interrupted, "he has, too. He was at the +Galoreys' at that first shoot. Ah--well, I refuse, tell him so, will you? +Tell him I'm an American and a cowboy and that for me a duel at twenty +paces with a pistol would mean murder. I like his pluck--it's all +right--tell him anything you like. He ought to have chosen swords. He +would have had me there." + +They retired as formally as they had entered, and took his answer to +their client, and after a bath and careful toilet Dan went out, leaving +a line for Ruggles, to say that he would be at the hotel to meet him at +noon. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII--THE PRINCE ACCEPTS + + +The Hungarian, in the Continental, was drinking his coffee in his room +when his friends found him. He listened to what they had to say coolly. +His eye-glass gave him an air of full dress even at this early hour. +Poniotowsky had not fallen into a deep sleep and had a dream as Dan +Blair had--indeed he had only reached his rooms the night before when a +letter had been brought him from Miss Lane. He was used to her caprices, +which were countless, and he never left her with any certainty that he +should see her again, or with any idea of what her next move would be. +The letter read: + + "It's no use. I just can't. I've always told you so, and I mean it. + I'm tired out--I want to go away and never see any one again. I want + to die. I shall be dead next year, and I don't care. Please leave me + alone and don't come to see me, and for heaven's sake don't bore me + with notes." + +When Poniotowsky received this note he had shrugged, and decided that if +he lived after his duel with the young savage he would go to see the +actress, taking a jewel or a gift--he would get her a Pomeranian dog, and +all would be well. He listened coolly to what his friends had to say. + +"_C'est un enfant_," one of them remarked sneeringly. + +"In my mind, he is a coward," said the other. + +"On the contrary," answered Poniotowsky coolly, "he shoots to +perfection. You will be surprised to hear that I admire his refusal. I +accept his decision, as his skill is unquestioned with arms. I choose to +look upon this reply as an apology. I would like to have you inform Mr. +Blair of this fact. He's young enough to be my son, and he is a +barbarian. The incident is closed." + +He put Letty Lane's note in his pocket, and leisurely prepared to go out +on the Rue de Castiglione to buy her a Pomeranian dog. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII--THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND + + +Higgins let him in, and across the room Blair saw the figure of the +actress against the light of the long window. Her back was to him as he +came up, and though she knew who it was, she was far from dreaming how +different a man it was that came in to see her this morning from the one +she had known. + +"Won't you turn around and bid me good-by?" he asked her. "I'm going +away." + +She gave him a languid hand without looking at him. + +"Has Higgins gone?" + +"Yes. Won't you turn round and say how-de-do, and good-by? Gosh," he +cried as she turned, "how pale you are, darling." And he took her in his +arms. + +The vision he had had of her in her coral-colored dress at Maxim's gave +place to the more radiant one which had shone on him in his curious +dream. + +"Are you very ill?" he murmured. "Speak to me--tell me--are you going to +die?" + +"Don't be a goose, boy." + +"I've had a wire from Ruggles," Dan said; "he tells me it's true. I have +nothing but my own feet to stand on, and I'm as poor as Job's turkey." +Looking at her impressively, he added, "I only mind because it will be +hard on you." + +"Hard on me?" + +"Yes, you'll have to start poor. Mother did with father, out there in +Montana. It will be rough at first, but others have done it and been +happy, and we've got each other." The eyes fixed on her were as blue as +the summer skies. "Money's a darned poor thing to buy happiness with, +Letty. It didn't buy me a thing fit to keep, that's the truth. I've +never been so gay since I was born as I am to-day. Why, I feel," he +said, and would have stretched out his arms, only he held her with them, +"like a king. Later I'll have money again, all right--don't fret--and then +I'll know its worth. I'll bet you weren't all unhappy there in Blairtown +before you turned the heads of all those Johnnies." He put one hand +against her cheek and lifted her drooping head. "Lean on me, +sweetheart," he said with great tenderness. "It will be all right." + +A coral color stole along her cheek: it rose like a sweet tide under his +hand. She looked at him, fascinated. + +"It's not a real tragedy," he went on. "I've got my letter of credit, +and old Ruggles will let me hang on to that, and you'll find the motor +cars and jewels will look like thirty cents when we stand in the door of +our little shack and look out at the Value Mine." He lifted her hand to +his lips, held it there, and the spark ignited in her; his youth and +confidence, his force and passion, woke a woman in Letty Lane that had +never lived before that hour. + +He murmured: "I'll be there with you, darling--night and day--night and +day!" He brought his bright face close to hers. + +She found breath to say, "What has happened to you, Dan--what?" + +"I don't know," he gravely replied. "I guess I came up pretty close +against it last night; things got into their right places, and then and +there I knew you were the girl for me, and I the man for you, rich or +poor." + +He kissed her and she passively received his caresses, so passively, so +without making him any sign, that his magnificent assurance began to be +shaken--his arms fell from her. + +"It's quite true," he murmured, "I am poor." + +She led him to the lounge and made him sit down by her. He waited for +her to speak, but she remained silent, her eyes fixed on her frail +hands, ringless--tears forced themselves under her eyelids, but she kept +them back. + +"I guess," she said in a veiled tone, "you've no idea all I've been +through, Dan, since I stood there in the church choir." + +American though he was, and down on foreign customs--he wouldn't fight a +duel--he got down on his knees and put his arms around her from there. + +"I know what you are, all right, Letty. You are an angel." + +She gave way and burst into tears and hid her face on his shoulder, and +sobbed. + +"I believe you do--I believe you do. You've saved my soul and my life. +I'll go with you--I'll go--I'll go!" + + * * * * * + +Later she told him how she would learn to cook and sew, and that +together they would stand in the door of their shack at sunset, or that +she would stand and watch for him to come home; and, the actress in her +strong, she sprang up for a minute and stood shielding her eyes with her +slender hand to show him how. And he gazed, charmed at her, and drew her +back to him again. + +"You've made dad's words come true." Dan wouldn't tell her what they +were--he said she wouldn't understand. "I nearly had to die to learn them +myself," he said. + +She leaned toward him, a slight shadow crossed her face as if memories +laid a darkling wing for a moment there. Such shadows must have passed, +for she kissed him of her own accord on the lips and without a sigh. + +Side by side they sat for a long time. Higgins softly opened a door, saw +them, and stepped back, unheard. + +Ruggles came in, and his steps in the soft carpet made no sound; and he +looked at the pair long and tenderly before he spoke. They sat there +before him like children, holding hands. + +Letty Lane's hat lay on the floor. Her hair was a halo around her pale, +charming face; she had caught youth from the boy, she was laughing like +a girl--they were making plans. And as the subject was Love, and there +was no money in the question, and as there was sacrifice on the part of +each, it is safe to think that old Dan Blair's son was planning to +purchase those things that stay above ground and persist in the hearts +of us all. + + THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Girl From His Town, by Marie Van Vorst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN *** + +***** This file should be named 36961.txt or 36961.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/9/6/36961/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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