The Girl From His Town

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 fiancée, 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

“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 fiancé 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 fiancé.

“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 tête-à-tête.

“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 rôle 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

“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 fiancée 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.”