The Girl From His Town

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

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:

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:

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.