The Girl From His Town

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 boutonnière, 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, chérie, 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 naïveté 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 pré salé 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 phœbe 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 —